So glad that you have found the Steemit platform and community, Ted. Thank you for sharing your personal journey; while it is not beneficial to compare one's life experiences to another, it is healthy to allow others to inspire us. And your story of personal growth and dedication is inspiring to me and certainly others. I have external and quite a few self-inflicted pains in my past and used those to justify to myself that I wasn't deserving of happiness. Reminding myself of the staggering odds of me not existing, and understanding just how small I am in our known universe and the like...I was finally starting to let go of that evil thought. I stopped sabotaging my body and used a community similar to this one to help me learn how to start taking my life back via nutrition and exercise and I am working to create the career I love. Congratulations on how much progress you made, but it's clear that you are still rising, looking forward to learning from you!

You make the great argument for starting commitment today and it is so important. The only difference from the first day and the 500th day of a habit is that we kept saying "this is a priority, I'm going to say yes"...once we build our habit, it's our default mode and it becomes more strange to not participate.