Did your Mom repeat this to you over & over again throughout your life? Enough TV, enough video games, enough time on the phone…’everything in moderation’.

Was there a lot of eye-rolling involved after she’d said it?

But, isn’t it funny how wise you think your Mom has been, years after heeding that wisdom would have been most prudent?!

Ok, so, now it’s my turn to impart those words of wisdom…

i think the important word to focus on in that sentence is EVERYTHING.

I think it would be hard to say that anything at all, done in excess, is a good thing.

Of course there have to be exceptions… the one that comes to mind for me is loving and kissing and hugging, showing affection for someone you love.  But I suppose that too could become too much if not done in moderation.  Perhaps you could turn that person off if you showed too much love…is that possible?!

But for everything else, it seems as though there are support groups for those of us out there that have a hard time putting a lid on it, whatever ‘it’ that may be.

There are support groups for people who have a hard time putting a limit to how much they drink, eat, gamble, diet, exercise, spend money, have intimate relations, work, etc…

There is a lot of merit in the statement and it is like having a little angel on your right shoulder whispering in your ear not to eat that third piece of cake.  And I think it does save you from becoming overly zealous, i.e. fanatical, about one particular thing…

For instance, in my community, my husband and I have noticed that there seems to be a pattern amongst mothers who have children from 0-10 years of age…most have become hard-core exercisers.  Something happens to them after childbirth and they seem to need to make exercise their focus.  Only it becomes almost obsessive, with mothers running every 5k in the area and pushing aside other responsibilities to fit in their yoga session.

And I believe that this is the point of this particular, annoyingly true, cliché:  to frequently stop and do a little reality check on your life.  Has anything become an obsession for you?  A thing?  A philosophy?  An ideology?  Have your days, thoughts, conversations, motivations become focused around this?

Whether or not this is the case, ‘everything in moderation’ should be the mantra in your head.

You’re about to add more butter to your baked potato,  buy another dish towel at HomeGoods, have one more Margarita at the restaurant…

but you don’t, because your conscience sounds like a broken record and you can’t help but hear it, loud and clear…