Patience and perseverance
Big things happen when you’re not noticing.
I started crocheting again at the beginning of the pandemic. I find it really useful to have something to do with my hands if I am just sat in front of the TV or watching a movie with the kids. It keeps my hands busy and distracts me from the temptation to reach for the snacks.
I also love just sitting and crocheting for a bit, it’s very mindful just to sit and focus on the yarn and hook.
Often, I don’t have any particular aims when I’m crocheting, I kind of make it up as I go along. I don’t want to over-complicate it and try and make anything fancy that would take too much effort – blankets and scarves only here!
Just a few stitches at a time.
Every time I pick up my ball of wool I might only do a little bit, sometimes only just a couple of stitches. I might do a row or two. But I pick up my wool almost everyday because it is easy and gives me 5minutes of quiet time. Over time all these little bits add up – and now have ended up as a giant blanket that wraps round my 9year old twice.
Small changes add up if you keep going…
This is remarkably similar to what happens with healthy living and lifestyle changes. Making something really big happen, such a change from being unhealthy to significantly improving your health (for example, if you wanted to reverse your type 2 diabetes) is like trying to knit a giant blanket – you can’t just do it in one go. In fact trying to do it all at once would be counterproductive. If I set out to try and make this blanket all in one go I’d be exhausted from trying to keep going, I’d get bored, I’d make mistakes because I’d lose concentration, and I’d probably give up before I even got halfway. But by doing small manageable chunks consistently over time, each little bit adds up to makes something bigger and better than I thought it would be at the start.
…and be patient with yourself
Lifestyle change and healthy living is exactly the same. There is no one ‘big change’ to do to live healthily. It is lots of little everyday changes, that become healthy habits, done repeatedly over time. Perseverance is everything. And at the same time take bags of patience and some more to spare – be kind to yourself along the way – so often the gains are so small that they are barely noticeable, it’s only as they add up over time that you realise how far you’ve come from where you started.
