@BillHaslam 1 out of 3 Tennesseans is obese. Why? Let’s dig deeper.

Anyone who has ever gardened knows you can’t pick at the leaves of a dandelion and expect results; you dig to the base and remove its entirety.

From his desk Seamus watched his father digging, just as his father’s father. One clump after another flew from the spade. Seamus hadn’t joined his father since he was a boy. The act of digging felt antiquated somehow. His international contemporaries were moving forward, spreading out. In Ireland, they kept digging down.

Habits are not keepsakes you stow in a box and take out when needed. When people say they want to make or break a habit, what they really want is a change of lifestyle. But instead of digging to that lifestyle change, they pick at the habit and what they don’t want grows back over time.

Habits anchor themselves in lifestyle choices that - once threaded together - form our day-to-day. To change the discreet decisions in our lives we have to dig deeper, understand how the particular habit attaches itself to other parts of our life, and make a conscious decision to change our lifestyle based on positive reinforcement.

Why will starting the habit change things?

Why do you need this change?

And why is that?

Why?

Dig.