It’s tough to adopt a new lifestyle if you can’t at least hold it in your imagination.

Unless something very unusual happened this year, a good number of us reiterated resolutions having to do with “eating better.”  Would you like to end this year having actually taken significant steps toward a lifestyle of wholesome eating?  Then commit to use your imagination more.  Here’s the thinking behind this improbable connection:

1.  If something is fun, we have no trouble doing it, right?  Think about the things you have no problem doing on a regular basis.  Going to lunch with friends.  Watching TV.  Hiking.  Spending time with the kids.  Ordering pizza on Friday nights.  Notice something about all these activities?  They’re fun.  And because they’re fun, they make their way into our lives pretty easily.

2.  So if good eating were fun, we’d have no trouble doing it regularly, right?  Reaching that conclusion doesn’t take a very big leap of logic, but it may well test our version of reality.  How many people really believe that good eating can be fun?

For example, a recent Wall Street Journal article about online calorie trackers began this way:  “Eating healthy can often feel like a chore.”  The article writer cited no authority or study for that opening line.  Presumably the chore-like nature of healthy eating is such common knowledge that it no longer requires substantiation.  Hence the need for imagination.

We have been conditioned to believe that healthy eating is the opposite of fun–not to mention boring, tasteless and overwhelmingly difficult.  Under these circumstances, it’s hard to believe that healthful eating can be a natural, easeful and enjoyable part of the day.  But can you at least imagine it!

Can you imagine, right now, that the world of wholesome, healthful eating is a world ripe with luscious foods, creative engagement, fun and friends?

Imagining doesn’t require any radical or frightful belief changes.  Just a playful opening of your mind and heart to a new way that could open so many doors for you.

So resolve this year to imagine–and see if reality begins to follow!

“Your understanding will drop in as deeply as your mind is open to it.”

–Byron Katie  in Ode, December 2011