@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.