Elementary day

How good Tuesdays translate to a good life

I think a person is the product of their elementary day, and that their elementary day is their identity, quantified into actions, thoughts, and beliefs which occur within a twenty-four-hour period that repeats over and over. The term ‘elementary day’ seeks to ask that, on a "regular" or "normal" day in their life, what does a person do, think, and believe? Days are not the same, yes, and life-changing events take place on some days while other times weeks can go by with nothing substantial happening, yes, but the purpose of identifying one's elementary day is not exactly to determine the median unit of their existence, but to find what are the—again—actions, thoughts, and beliefs that they default to. I think learning this can be very powerful for anyone who wants to create positive change in themselves.

When determining what ‘identity’ means and how it forms, different people tend to bring different ideas. “Identity is a collection of one’s past experiences, along with a small level of genetic influence.” “Identity is the qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance, and/or expressions that characterise a person.” “Identity is made up of a sense of continuity, a perception of uniqueness of self, and commitment and response to choices.” Et cetera. I don't like these answers because, while perhaps all true, they are not fundamental. Past experiences, for example, lead to what? Appearance and choices lead to what? What leads to one's qualities, traits, perception of uniqueness of self, or commitment? I see identity as a collection of beliefs (beliefs lead to the other two—thoughts and actions) which are, indeed, formed by past experiences. I fell off my bike on the beach, perhaps now I hold the belief that biking on beaches leads to injury. I got betrayed by my male best friend, perhaps now I hold the belief that men cannot be trusted. I went to Switzerland and did not like it ("it" being the three restaurants I ate in and the seven people I interacted with in all of Switzerland), now I hold the belief that Switzerland is boring. My beliefs are not right or wrong, they just are, but perhaps some of them serve me well while others do not. It works in exactly the same way with beliefs about the self as well. Things happened to you in your past, and those things lead to your current beliefs—"I am a fat person," "I am a lazy person," "I am a person who procrastinates," "I am a person who always screws up relationships," "I am a person who people do not want to talk to"—and these beliefs, when put together, is your identity.

Let us first reframe the above beliefs to understand how they would work within the idea of the elementary day:

"My elementary day comprises of consuming a lot of junk food and doing minimal physical activity." "My elementary day comprises of minimal action taken towards productive pursuits of my choice." "My elementary day comprises of unproductive and unfruitful activities that take away time and brainpower from what I should be doing, which I instead just constantly delay." "My elementary day comprises of poor communication, a lack of empathy, poor judgement of character, little investment and effort into my interpersonal relationships, a lack of education on how to a better romantic partner." "My elementary day comprises of very little or no meaningful interactions with other people."

Now to understand how we can put the concept into practice, let us take one of these, "I am a fat person," that is, "My elementary day comprises of consuming a lot of junk food and doing minimal physical activity," and see how one would go about changing this.

The common approach is the notion of what I call "ticking boxes". I am a fat person, and to not be a fat person anymore, I need to tick these boxes—exercise hard daily for three months, and eat 1,600kcal per day instead of my usual 3,000+ for three months—and then I will not be fat anymore. First of all, this approach very often makes any change incredibly unsustainable by making it too difficult, which is what many people do because they are just ticking boxes within a limited time-frame. This is why so many people fail to lose weight. Second, even if they do succeed at ticking the boxes, what happens after the boxes have been ticked, and they have "won"? They return to their previous ways and wither back to exactly how they were when they started. This is why so many people who do lose weight gain it back immediately after. My approach, that is, the approach of changing one's elementary day, is an infinite game. There is no ticking anything. There is no winning. It is a permanent and fundamental change of one's lifestyle and self-perception. Let's see how to implement this.

Let us understand this two-way relationship to start. The belief of "I am a fat person" is caused by an unhealthy elementary day, and said unhealthy elementary day is in turn caused by the belief that "I am a fat person." It works like, "I am a fat person, I have the identity of the fat person, what does a fat person do? They eat junk food and they do not exercise. Therefore, I am going to eat junk food and not do exercise." If you want to change this elementary day through adding or removing things you do in a day, you cannot—because you only tried to change your actions, not your beliefs or your thoughts. This is, again, why so many people fail to lose weight or gain it back later. Changing your elementary day includes changing your beliefs, thoughts, and actions, in this order, progressively, into the elementary day of the individual you want to be.

Thus, to change your elementary day to that of a lean person, you must do, think, and believe what a lean person does, instead of doing, thinking, and believing what you did. A person who thinks "I am fat" cannot stick to an exercise routine because that is essentially going against their belief that they are fat, because if they do stick to exercising daily, then they will become lean, and that does not match their belief, which is that they are fat. If they instead force a belief like "I like exercise," and then slowly "My days feel incomplete without exercise," then eventually "I am an athlete," the aforesaid conflict no longer exists. Their thoughts change from "I don't feel like going running today, which is okay because I am a fat person," to "I don't feel like going on a run today, but I will go anyway because I am an athlete and running is something that athletes do." And, gradually, their actions change to consuming healthier foods, not overeating, going running daily, and sleeping well. They have finally arrived at "My elementary day comprises of eating healthy and exercising," with thoughts and beliefs to match. This change must, obviously, be gradual and progressively overloaded.

If you are fat, change your elementary day to that of a lean person, and you will slowly become lean. If you are a procrastinator, change your elementary day to that of a productive and successful person. If you are lonely and you struggle with social connection, change your elementary day to that of a person who doesn't. Understand that your identity and your beliefs are plastic. Take advantage of that, and never hold beliefs that do not serve you. You must create your own positive feedback loop to become who you want to be.