Online shopping teaches us a valuable lesson. It teaches us that sure when you press “purchase” you may get that excited feeling in your tummy because you just bought something awesome but that doesn’t mean you’ll get to enjoy that item right away, not like when you go shopping in a store.
Oh delayed gratification, how you taunt me!
Recently I bought boots, boots that I have been wanting for months and months. I patiently stalked the boots online, waiting until they were at a sale price I could afford and when they were reduced in price I pounced! I quickly put a pair of those boots in my online shopping cart, hit the checkout button and presto! I became the proud owner of a pair of kick ass boots. Wellll, an owner in name only since they didn’t just magically jump out of my computer screen onto my lap. Nope. They are in transit somewhere, sloooooowly making their way to me. Ok fine, not that slowly, I’m just impatient so the 3-5 business days it will take to get those boots feels like forever. I know I know, first world problems *rolls eyes*
The other day, I bought a jacket, yup, I was online shopping again. I can vaguely justify this purchase because I have been trying since November to find a jacket and snow pants for snowshoeing and have been having miserable luck with it. I have basically stopped looking in the stores because the jackets they put on sale only seem to be in extra-small size and even then they cost $300 and up. How is that a sale price?? And how is it that everyone is ok with the cost of winter sports gear?? It’s ridiculous! So yeah, every week or so I check online for jackets and snow pants. I haven’t been too rushed because we’ve had a depressing lack of snow on the mountains this year so even if I had all my gear I wouldn’t be able to go snowshoeing yet. The lateness of the snow kinda worked in my favour that way. Well, guess who got snow? Yup, us! WooHoo! Rain in the city, snow in the mountains, finally! Only problem is now I wanna get my ass up to the mountain but can’t cause I don’t have the right clothes to go through the trails on my snowshoes without freezing, or coming out drenched lol.
I found a jacket, my size, on sale, and if I signed up for the email list from the company I’d get an additional discount on my purchase aaaand they were having a “spend x amount of money get free shipping” promotion. The sale price and the free shipping were both ending the next day so I felt mildly pressured to buy! buy! buy! Even though I hated the idea of buying a jacket online I hadn’t tried on it seemed this was going to be the only way I could get one so out came the credit card and boom! I increased my debt load. 😛
I was all excited the next day, thinking how I bought a new jacket blah blah blah but the excitement faded when I realized there was no real point in telling anyone about it since I couldn’t actually describe it except for what I read in the description and saw in the pictures. I can’t talk about how good it fits (hopefully it does!) or how I love the colour (it might not look the same in person) or how warm/waterproof/epic it is cause I haven’t actually had a face-to-jacket experience yet. It’s kinda driving me nuts lol
You know where else you have to cope with delayed gratification? Weight loss. Getting in shape. Changing to a healthy lifestyle. Building muscle. Whatever your plan is, whatever your final goal is, whatever you want to call it…they all teach us about delayed gratification cause duuuude, none of that stuff happens overnight, sadly. 😛
You may change to healthy eating habits and follow them religiously, you may start a work out plan and never deviate from it, you may do or change any or all aspects of your life to achieve whatever changes to your body you want to achieve but the changes won’t happen overnight, they won’t even happen within a month, you just have to trust in what you are doing and wait. Wait for the changes to be visible in the mirror, visible to other people, visible to your critical judgement of your body.
That waiting can be hard. That waiting can invite doubt, skepticism, impatience, it can invite all kinds of things that are hard to battle. You may start to think you are doing something wrong, that you are failing because you don’t see changes yet, you may be tempted to go back to your old way of eating, your old way of not exercising, you may think what does it matter when all those changes you made to your lifestyle aren’t creating change to your body.
This is where patience comes in. The same patience I have to attempt to have so I don’t go nuts about the boots and jacket that are en route to me through the postal system is the same patience I have to try to hold on to when looking at my body and being upset I don’t see changes to it despite having made changes to my eating and/or exercising.
I have to attempt to be realistic about the process. I can’t expect the boots or jacket to show up on my doorstop the next day just like I can’t expect my body to be instantly slimmer and toned because I made changes to my diet and exercise regime last month. The changes that have begun are internal, I’m sure my innards are getting healthier even if my outer body isn’t showing much difference.
Something else I have to remember is to stop being so hard on myself when I don’t see those changes right away. I am impatient. I want to wake up tomorrow and look exactly how I want to look even though I know that is impossible, I’m sick of working at it, fighting for it, I want the results to be here already. When I look in the mirror and see the results aren’t here yet I start to call myself names, put myself down, think poorly of myself. I judge myself more harshly then anyone else ever could, I know all the right buttons to push, all the best mean comments to make, all the areas I am most sensitive about to criticize. I am my worst critic. I am my meanest judge. I am my biggest doubter.
And I have to stop that.
I have to trust that I will get there, that one day I will look in a mirror and like what I see, or at least not hate it. Just like I know the boots and jacket will eventually arrive I have to have faith that the changes I am working for will eventually be visible. Otherwise I’ll spend my whole adult life hating my body and that is just a waste of my time. 😛
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 
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