Affirmations

I have used affirmations in the past to help me become something I wanted to be. I used affirmations about being a good student and ended up receiving the Distinguished Student of the Year award when I graduated with my Bachelor's Degree for the College of Health Sciences at the university I attended. I used affirmations to lose 15% body fat and get to a svelte 14% body fat in 12 weeks. Why is it that I find something that works... and then stop doing it?

Affirmations and visualization go together and are powerful tools in our brains. Think of the advertisements you know for Coca Cola, Toyota or Taco Bell. I can come up with slogans for all of these and I haven't had cable or local television stations for over three years. Advertising is powerful. Repetition works.

I am guilty of allowing other people to advertise in my brain and not intentionally putting things in that would help me or those around me. Listening to the radio on the way to work may seem like an innocent pass time, but it really is not. I am allowing someone else to put thoughts in my head. Rather than allowing this, I will go on a 30 day morning media break. During this time, I will learn a language or play the affirmations I have recorded.

Affirmation 1 "I am a strong, flexible, healthy woman and love to work out. I love the way my body feels when it is strong. I love the sense of flow I get from working out every day."

Affirmation 2 "I am intentionally adding things to my life that make it deeper and richer. I also intentionally free myself from things that could shrink my life by creating fear or protectiveness. I give all I can to others and find that my joy is full."

These may change a bit over time as I find the things I need help motivating myself to do. I will try to update them in real time. I will use my affirmations twice a day along with visualizing the thing I am trying to create. Do you use affirmations? If you do, what has been your experience?

Intention and FLOW

In the last few weeks, I've been going on about my goals and how I want my health and future to go. But, sometimes things are not under our control. Like getting sick. It was certainly not in my plan, nor my intention to get sick this week. You would think in health care, that I would be sick a lot. But, the opposite is actually true. After the first year of getting everything every patient brings in, you tend to get sick a pretty average amount. This is the first on my back sickness in about 4 years other than headaches.

When you are sick, you can't remember what it was like not to be sick. This week has been horrible for goals and for all things health related. I did not get anything done on my goal list. It makes me grateful for my health. I realize that I may have a stroke at any moment, but it is easier to deal with than being sick in the here and now. I also realize, upon review, that every time I have improved my health, it has followed an illness. What does this say about me?

Perhaps like anyone, I have to have something tangible to remind me that I could, indeed, feel worse than I normally do. This year is going to be about INTENTION. I want to do things that improve my life intentionally. I want to be well intentionally. I want to create a space here to gather and disseminate knowledge that will help people with great intention.

Health is about more than the absence of disease. Health is about living my best life, in the best way I can. Not only about being the best for myself, but about giving away the best of me. Helping others to become better helps me.

In order to become the best I can, I have to confess a huge source of anger. I am angry at the Affordable Care Act. I think it has been a dismal failure. It has horribly increased costs for many hard working people including me. I don't want to be angry. I can't be angry every day as patients come and tell me of the failure of this law, but I have been. It exhausts me to reach out with compassion and not have any answers for them. I would like to channel the anger to something more helpful. Creativity and helping to show the way toward healthier people. We can no longer afford to be sick. So, let's decide to be well. Starting with our focus.

Happiness. The entire country of Bhutan is striving to increase the gross domestic happiness, rather than the gross domestic product. How great is that? (From the documentary Happy) In the same documentary, the research showed people who experience FLOW, that state of being immersed in an activity, feeling energized and clear, the most often are the happiest. I think that is why I write, I find FLOW in the action. I remember feeling FLOW with running, which is why it calls me. Once upon a time, I felt FLOW in my job. Before the ACA. I will work to find a place I can experience FLOW in my work again. I am going to strive to be intentional about the activities I engage in this year to increase how often I feel FLOW. Flow will help me to be a happier person, and increase the reserves of energy and creativity I have and can use to better the world.

So, the plan for this week is to come up with some recipes and a shopping list for the next 1-2 weeks. I will write out my affirmations and find a space and time to meditate.

Long term thinking and Visualization

Well, it has been quite the week! I did finally get some exercise, but not before being called on my lazy butt-itude by Ron. Thanks, Ron. 

I cleaned the house on Saturday morning in preparation for the homecoming of my wonderful child, who has been gone for 2 years. I love that kid. He has truly grown into a man and I am overwhelmed at the intelligence and amazing maturity he is showing every day. He constantly amazes me and I am grateful to have him around. I will be sad to see him off to college when he has to go. In the meantime, I will hoarde every moment I can with him. Short term, I hate that I can't spend every minute with him, but long term, that would not be so good. We are, after all, in the business of raising adults. He is wonderful despite environmental screw ups, for we all damage our children in our own unique fashion. Hopefully, he knows how much he is loved. Said house-cleaning left me quite sore. Legs especially, arms from all the scrubbing and oh, my feet! I am so out of shape, it is probably criminal. Today, we went shopping and walked extensively around Best Buy and Costco, which I am totally counting. So, two out of three days down, and I just have to get on the treadmill tomorrow to make the movement goal for the weekend! Small steps to lead to toned body parts and greater physical stamina. 

Next on the list was planning the meals. That will be a difficult one this week due to the kid being here and Christmas, but I am going to take a shot at it tomorrow evening. I am fortunate to be off work until the day after Christmas, which is great, I think my brain needed a break. I had a blind spot again this morning. Stupid head and headaches. That's the second one this week. I need to go back to Mayo clinic and see Dr. Meyer, the Neurosurgeon who did my sister's bypass surgery. She has a quarter sized hole in the side of her skull because they used a scalp artery to feed into the middle cerebral artery in her brain so that she did not have any more strokes after the two she suffered. It worked, so far so good. He discussed doing this with me if a different type of brain scan was not showing good blood flow to my brain. Short term, it is a scary thought, but long term, it could prevent serious damage. I wonder if getting active again and eating right will reverse the narrowing. I don't know, and it would probably be a miracle if it did, but a girl can hope.

I was thinking of working a bit, but I don't think I will until after Christmas. I am on call Christmas Day and my wonderful colleagues have split the week up with me so that I can spend some quality time with the kid. I can't tell you how amazing it is to work in a place that has such an optimistic and team-work-inspiring atmosphere. I have spoken to so many people who struggle every day with politics and difficulties with colleagues. Mine are wonderful to work with. Maybe I am the difficult one? Oh, I hope not. Short term, I remember how difficult school was, I have struggled at times with staffing and with difficult challenges in my work, but I would not change a thing. I love the shape the clinic is taking. I love the teamwork and camaraderie that is building. We have worked hard and it is paying dividends.

So, short term struggles and long term successes. I guess it comes down to what Dori said in Finding Nemo, "Just keep swimming." So much of taking care of my own health comes down to being able to see the long view. It will pay off. It is like sowing a field, though. It can't be done overnight. Slowly, day by day, I have to make the choices that lead me to the place I need to be in one year, in five years, in ten years. It is like a course correction in an airplane. One tiny little difference, ten minutes on the treadmill, not drinking fake sugar (headache trigger), eating more vegetables, make a huge difference when you add it up over ten years of days upon days. 

So, I am actively looking into the future to see what it looks like. Since I am not actually clairvoyant, I will create a vision for what I want it to be and then create the habits I want to get there. Will you come with me? What habits must you create to get to where you want to be in a month? A year? How about ten years? VISUALIZE what you will look like. Create a real experience. What will it look like, sound like, taste like. How real can you make it? See it? VISUALIZE twice a day. Professional athletes do it before a match, a contest, a race. There must be something to it.

No Plan, No Gain and finding your WHY

I haven't done something this week and it has stopped me from being successful. I have a need to obsess a little. I know, that is an oxymoron (a little obsession?). But, if I am going to get in shape, I have to plan my meals and workouts every day. Every time I have done a transformation, I have had a plan.

So, I have to take this week to start thinking about how I want this planning to go. Shall I add it to the journal I use for everything else, writing, drawing, complaining, rejoicing? Will I hate later that I have to see boring lists of food and workout plans? Or is it a good idea because it will keep the goal in front of my face? I am thinking this week that I may plan in my regular journal. There is plenty of room. I bought a beautiful Italian made journal with slightly heavier paper that I can write in with ink, paint with watercolor if I'm careful, and even glue things into without getting the paper too wrinkly. It does wrinkle, but I like a little wrinkling. It makes me feel like the journal is truly mine. My old journal was about 144 pages. This one has over 400 pages. Lots of room to plan workouts and food.

During my last successful health transformation, I had a monthly calendar that I marked every day. One part of the x was for exercise, the other part for food and the third, a straight line through the middle, was for affirmations. All three were imperative to keep me going.

Many times in my life the concept of finding my why has come up. The thinking is if you find a big enough why, the rest is easy. I think that is right. The why is the big motivator. Why do I want to be healthy? Why do I want to eat better? But it isn't quite enough when it comes to getting the healthiest you can be. You have to sort through the piles of information and misinformation and then through some trial and error find out what works for your body.

So, this week is about finding the why. Getting it front and center whether that is in a journal like it will be for me, or maybe a goal poster would work better for you. That is a powerful way to give messages to your brain about where you are trying to go. Put pictures of what you want on the poster and then put it where you will see it often. Advertise in your own brain. Heavens knows everyone else is there often enough!

Thanks for coming on this journey with me. It has been a week without the gains I wanted. But, I tried to start in the middle and I know better. This week I will obsess a little, I will PLAN and I will write my WHY so it is clear and motivating.

Coping and finding a reason to live healthy

We went to a party on Friday, and I asked my husband what Mike's wife's name was.

"What's my microwave's name?" asks my deaf husband. "Sharp, I think." He also answers. With a straight face.

Oh boy.

So, this week is not a great one. I had bad news. The Neurosurgeon I saw at Mayo last summer looked at the recent MRI of my head and decided the narrowed vessel was worse and I need to go back to Mayo. For some people this would not be a big deal, but I live in Montana and Mayo clinic is in Minnesota, about a 1300 mile trip. It's 20 hours of driving. Boo.

The good news is that my husband does not have a hernia, so no expensive operation for him. Yay! And, I am finding that writing and the movie Despicable Me 2 are both good distractions from the troubles of bad health. Weirdly, it is not the health I am worried about, it's the damn money. The insurance is much worse in 2014 than it was this year, so it will be much more expensive. How will we do it?

How? I will write and write and write... to take my mind off of what I can't change. I will go to the doctor and let him do bypass surgery in my brain if that is what he wants to do so that I don't have a stroke... at forty two. And I will write. I will write to cope, I will write to live and I will write so that I don't disappear from the earth... at forty two.

So, it may be expensive, but it's better than waiting around to have a stroke. What I don't understand is why I went so long without having any trouble and suddenly I have more narrowing and more trouble. So, my goals this year are to eat better, move more, get back to being the in shape girl I was before I went to college and learned to sit around and think for a living, and learn to have less stress. 

I know that I did better while journalling, which habit I have kept and continue. So, I will start keeping a food journal and planning my exercise in it. It worked in the past. That which I obsess over, I succeed in doing. Strange but true.

If you want to come with me on this journey, I'll be checking in a couple of times a week. Come get healthy with me! Find your why. Mine is easy. I get healthy or I have a stroke. What is yours?

What do you want?

I hear so many people say they just want to be rich. Really? Think about this for a moment. It takes a lot of training, learning and worry to be rich. You have to learn how to make the money, then how to protect it. Then you have to worry about how to store it. You can't put more than $250,000 in a bank because if the bank fails, that is all that will be insured by FDIC. And understanding how and when you will get it back is another story.

The stress that would follow "a lot" of money would be, well, not small. You have to know enough about how to read a profit and loss to know if your bookkeeper is taking some off the top. You have to trust people who understand money. And on, and on. You can see where this could get pretty sticky.

I heard a story once and I am making up my own version because it is so powerful:

A couple of American capitalists went to an island in a warm climate and were vacationing on the beach. They watched a man emerge from a small hut close to the shore one day on a beautiful warm morning and get in a medium sized boat and row away. They were enjoying their time on the beach and frittered the morning away relaxing and discussing world politics as the capitalists are wont to do.

A few hours later one of the men noticed the man from the morning returning in his boat with some fish. He watched the man tie the boat up, take the fish, walk down the beach and disappear. A few hours later the man reappeared and his family came out of the hut. They frolicked on the beach, spent time playing music and dancing and went in when the darkness fell.

For the next few days the men watched him as he had basically the same routine. Saturday came and he followed the same routine even on the weekend. They couldn't believe it. He was such a slave to the fishing he had to do every day! One of the capitalist men thought that he would help the fisherman before he went home. He walked over to the fisherman when he came in from the vast sea the next day, Sunday, and asked if he could have a word with the man. The fisherman grinned widely and nodded.

They sat on an old log and the capitalist asked the fisherman why he did not buy another boat and hire some others to work for him so that he would not have to work so hard. The fisherman looked at the man for a moment and smiled. He said, "I do not work hard, sir. I go out in the morning and commune with the fish, I catch a few. I come back to the shore and sell a few of my fish to my friends. Then my family and I spend the rest of the day together. Why do I need more?"

"But sir, don't you see, you could have lots of money." The capitalist plead with him to open his eyes and see that he was missing out on the good life.

"What would I spend it on?" the fisherman asked him.

"More boats. So that you could have more employees and have to work even less than you do now. You could have lots of money and a big house."

"But sir, someone would have to make sure those employees were working. They might not like to fish the way I like to fish. They might be lazy. Then I have to work harder than I do now. And a big house would mean that my children would not play with me the way they do now. They would want video games and television."

The capitalist looked at the fisherman and realizing that he would never be able to convince him of the power of capitalism, went back to join his friends. He shook his head and told them the incredible story of the man who didn't understand capitalism and didn't want to have money.

Meanwhile, the fisherman went home after selling his fish to his friends. He told his family about the man he had met. The one who didn't want to be happy. The one who didn't know what it meant to understand yourself. He shook his head and was sad for the man.

I LOVE this story. The fisherman had everything he wanted. Maybe you are close to retirement age. Maybe retirement to you is spending time with your grandchildren. If they are close to you, great. If not, could it mean that you move closer to them? Maybe that doesn't take a lot of money. Maybe that takes courage. And planning. Design your life. What do you want? Then... how do I get there from here?

A little disclaimer. I think capitalism is grand. I really do. It built America. A lot of people really enjoy the challenge, the thrill and the chase of capitalism. But sometimes we get so caught up in "making money" that we forget the purpose. We forget to decide what we want. That money is just a means to an end. Design your life. Decide what you want. Don't get to the end having made money but having had no life. Having never enjoyed any of it except the two weeks every year that you got to spend backpacking when you had some time off work.

I want to write a novel. I have about 4 first drafts and am still working on more. I want to feel like I contribute and my job allows me to do that. I have had to learn not to let my job take up too much of my life. But I am slowly designing the life I want. My challenge to you is to design the life you want. Start today.

The Reason I Wanted to Get Healthy

So, back in February things changed a little at work. I got some help, we got in a groove, things changed for the better. It was wonderful. I was able to get some of the stuff that I was struggling with trying to get done because, well, because I'm only one person. I had stopped waiting for the ability to clone myself about a year ago. So, after this horrendous year of stress and barely hanging on, I could breathe again.

Being able to reflect once again, I realized I was tired of feeling like I had no energy. Tired of having my brain and body protest every time I looked in the mirror and wondered who that fat girl was and where the fit girl I had always prided myself on being had gone. I was tired of secretly hoping that every patient with an appointment after three o'clock EVERY day would just not show up because my brain did not have anything left. I was tired of being behind all the time even though there were others helping to share the load, and I should have felt the burden lighten.

I have been married for about three and a half years to a guy who knows how to make potatoes, steak, lasagna, fried anything, and pretty much any bachelor food known to man...and known to make woman gain weight... he he. He cooks every day. I know, I am the luckiest... and I admit it. But, aside from the stress at work, I also had to find a way to discover the healthy girl that I used to be and do it in a way that would work for my husband, too. So, I couldn't eat salad every meal, or eat 2 teaspoons of food at each meal, or not eat. None of these would fly with my hiker, hearty-eating, feeding-me-because-it's-his-way-of-taking-care-of-me husband. And, I couldn't work out for three hours a day. No possible way. Even though my stress level is lower, I still leave at 7 am and get home around 7 pm daily. Twenty MINUTE workouts are hard to fit in that schedule.

As a health care provider I know I need to manage my stress. Check. I need to move every day. Check (mostly). And I know that I need to eat healthy. How would I go about doing this?

Six years of college dedicated to health care with another two in business and I still had only vague ideas about where to start. I knew that I was eating too much and that I was definitely eating poorly. So, first change was to eat less. Starting there, ten pounds came off in about three months. Starting at thirty pounds over where I have lived most of my life, that ten pounds wasn't as miserable as I'd feared it might be. Unfortunately, I still didn't feel much better. Still having headaches regularly and still looking at an unhealthy girl in the mirror. Aaargh.

Lots of patients have come to me with the same complaints and I have given them the same advice. Move more, eat less, more veggies, avoid the 5 whites (bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, and pastries-anything sugary). These are great starting strategies but they aren't the whole banana. And I wanted more.