Archive for the 'A Pick Me Up' Category
-image-The Point of No Return
In January I started to see a Naturopath. I’d noticed over the holidays that I was starting to be really bothered with sudden exhaustion and a few other symptoms; I knew something was getting worse in my system and I knew (from earlier experience) that my doctor wouldn’t be any help.
A Naturopath seemed like the right way to go. Plus, it meant I could choose who treated me (technically in Canada you are free to choose your doctor, but there is such a shortage of them you are normally stuck with whoever can take new patients rather than being able to choose); I could say I wanted to be treated by a woman, and one who specialized in hormone issues (hormones are one of the things that respond really well to naturopathic methods, by the way).
At my first appointment, Lindy confirmed what I already suspected: the annoying symptoms were from Hypoglycemia. She started me on a round of supplements (and acupuncture which is very cool) to treat my PCOS (see how helpful I am with the links this post!), and on a diet to treat the hypoglycemia.
Well, to be honest, because the hormones and the insulin are both issues related to PCOS the supplements truly help with the hypoglycemia and the diet does effect the PCOS, but anyway.
The diet was very simple (to understand, not so simple to follow through on): Don’t eat carbs. (I’m already well aware that controlling my carb intake drastically affects my weight.) Now, don’t get all worked up; it’s not an unhealthy diet. I’m not supposed to eat any refined carbs, I can eat all the vegetables I like, and fruit too (but the amount of fruit in a day is controlled). The plan was (notice my tense) 8 weeks without bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, or sugar; then slowly begin to reintroduce the foods in small rates. The goal is of course to let my body reboot how it deals with sugar and hopefully reset my insulin system.
Well, things went well till about week 7. Lindy had assured me that one “cheat day” a week was perfectly acceptable, but in week seven one cheat day turned into two, turned into three… until within a ten day span I’d had five cheat days and finally just gave up. (The problem being, that eating carb free is something that requires time and planning - it’s anything but convenience food. So the busier I got the harder it became to stick to it.)
I also ran out of a key supplement right about that time and found watching the return of my symptoms so discouraging that I started to let other things slip. I was also so busy with the store that I kept having to cancel my appointments, so that it was a month before I was back in my naturopath’s office and by then I was almost all the way back to square one (not totally though, the food reboot had worked and I wasn’t having hypoglycemia symptoms anymore).
When I was there Lindy talked to me about “The Point of No Return”, she said if I didn’t go back to the diet plan I would eventually undo the changes the diet had created in my system and be pushed totally back to the way I was. I can understand that concept. I’ve experienced the exact same thing in my own personal growth, and in coaching others.
It’s hard to make changes. The reason so many people believe that change is impossible - that people don’t change - is because it’s so easy to slip back into old patterns, so easy to hit that Point of No Return where everything you’ve done unravels and you give in completely to the old way you were.
It’s easy to interpret that to mean that people simple can’t change. Really, I think we just need to be more aware that there is a Point of No Return. Change is difficult; you can’t undo ingrained habits over night, therefore change is not only difficult, it takes time.
And yes, we are going to find ourselves slipping back into what seems easiest, what seems comfortable, or what we do automatically without thought. The question is, can we pull ourselves back out of that rut before we hit the edge of the cliff and find ourselves back in the hole we started from?
Of course, you can still come back from that point (despite it being the Point of “No Return”), it simply means that we need to start the climb all over from the very beginning once more. Which, to say the least, is very discouraging for most of us, and often leads to our downfall when we get caught up in the guilt and discouragement that go along with the slide to the bottom.
Even though not every slip means we need to start back at the very beginning again, most of us don’t realize that. We don’t know that it’s only allowing ourselves to think that, or to slide beyond the Point of No Return, that forces us to do it all over again. We’d do so much better if we knew that most of the time we can just dust off and move on from our last right action.
I think if we all knew that this point existed, if we all knew that everyone slips back - that, in fact, change is impossible without a few slips and slides - then we wouldn’t allow guilt to take such a foothold in us. (Often, I find that guilt is the thing that pushes us beyond No Return because it makes us too afraid to try to go forward again until we simply give up - which is a terrible thing to ever do.) If we knew this kind of thing was bound to happen, and is actually a part of the process of change, well then, we’d just shrug our shoulders and go on with our trek upwards and outwards.
There is, in fact, an equal and opposing point on the other side of the climb. It’s called the Tipping Point which we reach when all the forward motion momentum we’ve built up (even the momentum of getting back up from a backwards slip) finally builds to a point where change becomes inevitable and we finally fall beyond our old ways of acting and thinking and are dropped into the whole new world we were aiming for.
So, I’m back on my supplements. Back on my diet. Back to the naturopath’s (I have an appointment in an hour actually), and swiftly stepping away from the Point of No Return. I know which Point I want to hit next, and it’s not the one that lies behind me.
Tipping Point, here I come!
Posted by Megan @
10:50 am |
-image-Good Morning Day!
I’m not sure if I mentioned to you before that my house is a mini-zoo in and of itself. My son and I love animals and so we’ve got a little collection going. There’s three birds (two cockatiels in one cage and a lovebird in another), two degus, a chinchilla, a guinea pig, a bearded dragon (definitely the Kung-Fu Master’s pet), and two dogs.
Yep… it’s a lot of animals.
I tend to think of the dogs as medium size dogs; to me a mastiff or a great dane is a BIG dog, what I have is medium compared to them. But, most people react as if my dogs are big dogs. I suppose it’s all about perspective when it comes to size.
We bought our first dog as a puppy. Her mother was part german shepherd part huskie, and her father was part lab part huskie. We just say she’s half shepherd and half huskie - I suppose there must be a bit of lab genes in her, but you couldn’t tell from looking at her. We named her Katrin because we thought it would be funny to have a dog named Cat.
One day, Katrin escaped and spent a whole day wandering our little town only return well and truly pregnant. That’s where Samson came from. Now, Samson doesn’t look (at least at first glance) anything like his mother. In fact, he looks exactly like a golden retriever; unless of course you compare him to a pure golden, then his differences stand out. Needless to say, we’re pretty sure that his dad was a pure breed golden retriever, and I suppose his mom’s lab genes must of found an outlet in him too.
The dogs generally sleep in the Kung Fu Master’s room. The practice started when our house was too small to set up crates for both dogs. If we left them out over night they were Very Bad Dogs, so a solution needed to be found. Wakizashi and I didn’t like the dogs sleeping with us - they were bed hogs - so that left the little Master (well, he was little at the time). He had tons of bed space, the dogs kept him warm, and he liked their company. Years later they still share his room (although they now fight over the bed space and blankets).
Each morning when the Kung Fu Master gets out of bed, he opens his door and the dogs come bounding up from the basement. Their first concern, of course, is going outside. Once bck inside though they do a quick sweep of the house to find any other people who might be home.
Once they find me they begin to hop around and run back and forth and get generally over excited. They lick me and want me to pet them, but then have a hard time sitting still long enough to get said pettings. Every morning is the same thing (unless Wakizashi is home in which case they are even more excited). It’s like, even though they saw me last night before they went to bed, and even though I’ve been here every other morning in the history of their lives, they are still overjoyed - and slightly surprised - to find me in the house.
This has baffled me for years. Don’t you think they would eventually get used to my presence? Through out the day they behave normally, as if I’m just a piece of the furniture (which talks and feeds them, and if they are lucky takes them for walks). But every morning, without fail, I again become the most wonderful discovery.
The other day I was pondering this odd behaviour, and it finally occured to me. What if there’s nothing at all wrong with the dogs. What if the problem is in the way that I look at life?
Maybe it’s not that the dogs are so dumb they are surprised to find that their owner still lives with them each and every morning. Maybe it’s that we have started to take each wonderful new morning for granted. We take each new day, each new breath, and the fact that we get to spend one more day with the people we love for granted.
Maybe my dogs have it right. Maybe each morning should be greeted with overwhelming joy and energy. Maybe we should start each morning with a small (so as not to wake the neighbors) “Yahoo” and jump around for a bit. Maybe, we should act a little more shocked, and pleased, that we get the pleasure of waking up next to our spouse and hugging our children yet again.
You see, it’s finally occurred to me that what the dogs are doing is taking a few minutes to greet the day. They wake up each morning, go pee, and then begin their ritual of saying, “Good Morning Day” just as loudly and happily as they know how. Hmm.. That’s something worth thinking about!
Wow, it turns out that those “Everything I Need to Know I Learned From My Dog” posters were right!
Posted by Megan @
10:31 am |
-image-Holding or Moving
I stood on the scale this morning; no surprises there. It’s been reading within the same five pound range for months on end now. For some reason though, today a truth occurred to me.
I’m in a holding pattern.
My weight is only a picture, an analogy, a snap shot of my whole internal life. Months ago, just after we first moved in, I lost ten pounds. 10 pounds. That’s an accomplishment. Then, things happened and I stopped losing the weight. The interesting thing is that, even though I’m not losing any more weight, I’m also not gaining it back. (That in itself is nothing to sneeze at; five months maintaining a loss - even if it is only ten pounds - is an accomplishment.) I’m just holding at this steady weight.
Some days vary a bit; there’s water retention, a bag of chips eaten, or exercise done, but it all just springs back into place (give or take a pound). I’m holding here.
It’s true of the rest of my life too, true of my internal life. I’m just hovering around the same area. It’s not a bad place to be and maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I just told myself (in fact, I know I have told myself this) that this place was good, it was happy and peaceful and I could stay here; I wouldn’t mind staying here. Staying means not having to face the risk of moving forward (and for me the next move is pretty darn scary).
I don’t remember actually giving myself permission to plant myself, but that is exactly what’s happened. Of course, we aren’t meant to stay in one place. Eventually, if you camp out in the same area too long and refuse to move forward you start to slip backwards. This place used to be happy and peaceful, now it just feels like a cage, like I’m trying to resuscitate something, some feeling, that just can’t come back in this place.
But, I haven’t fallen too far behind either. Whenever I feel myself really slipping backwards I’ve taken action. I’ve done what I needed to do to regain my footing. A little bit of forward motion, action taken on some step or project. Oddly enough, it’s never enough action to propel me forward, just enough to get me back to this place.
I’m not aware of making these choices, but it seems that I’ve perfected just the right balance to hold me in stasis. I’ve created a holding pattern for myself. It’s not nurturing me, it’s not keeping me happy, it’s not keeping me well, but still I’m maintaining it.
I’m well and truly stuck.
Now that I see the pattern I have no choice, I have to choose. Move forward or refuse to move forward (I know that refusing doesn’t mean to stay in some happy bubble, refusing means to choose to walk away from myself and my integrity.) Today’s been a different day so far. It smelt different, felt different. I know I’m choosing moving forward. It was the perfect day to finally see (and leave behind) the months long holding pattern for what it really was.
Today’s a new day.
Posted by Megan @
12:41 pm |
-image-I Tell You…
Nothing drives me crazy like driving does.
No, wait, I should amend that; nothing drives me crazy like inconsiderateness does. It just so happens that nothing reveals people’s inconsiderateness and selfishness like driving does (except of course shopping, which is really a lot like driving - carts and aisle and all that - anyway).
Really. I become a different person when I drive. Not because I’m a bad driver, but merely out of sheer frustration at the rudeness that happens around (and to) me.
I ask you, is it really worth your life and mine for you to get thirty seconds ahead of me? Which is even more frustrating when you are just planning on turning at the next freaking corner anyway!
Oh, oh, and even more than I dislike people who jump stop signs, or pull over to let people out in the right turning lane of a primary (i.e. very busy) intersection, even more than the people who tailgate and scream at you, I truly loathe the people who are breaking the law and then have the nerve to be mad at me because (while following the rules of the road) I got in their way and held them up.
Really. If you are driving in the parking spots, and I’m driving in the road you have to wait for me because, frankly, I’m the only one actually following the rules. So, no, I won’t stop driving straight so you can cut in front of me and not have to wait ten seconds. Not even if you wouldn’t have had to wait if you had taken the road instead of the parking spots.
Can you see what this does to me?
The Kung Fu Master has told me he doesn’t want me swearing at people when I’m driving with him; it’s not polite and swearing is (apparently) never appropriate. That’s how bad I am.
I’m so bad that I’ve caught myself looking for, and getting frustrated by, other people’s choices, even when they don’t affect me. Case in point, last night I stopped at Starbucks while waiting for the Master to get out of Kung Fu class (normally I’d wait at home but we are having plumbing issues and I had time to kill). Lo and behold, there’s a shiny, silver Audi parked at the curb.
I don’t mean stopped while they wait for someone to come out (which is truly annoying, but somewhat understandable); no, I mean parked right in the lane (where are the parking police, I ask you!). I assumed it was someone in getting a drink, but when I left I saw the boys (20 somethings) who’d been on the patio for the last hour start to pile into it.
Nope, not in a hurry getting a drink, they just couldn’t be bothered parking in any of the three parking spots I could readily see within 15 feet of their car. It makes me so frustrated I could scream.
This is a problem; because I’ve noticed myself lately slipping into some of the same driving habits that make me frustrated in the first place. Like, when I’m in a lane that doesn’t end and a guy pulls up next to me in a lane that ends past the intersection, I find myself thinking, “Who does he think he is. He’s not going to get ahead by forcing me to slow down?”
So of course, I go fast enough so that he is the one who has to wait, not me. Which is one of the things I hate when I accidentally get caught in an ending lane; and how do I know he didn’t know that lane would end till he was stuck there anyway?
So, I’ve been thinking about this. Really, I need to find a way to not letting driving get me so frustrated. After all, me getting all upset and worked up isn’t decreasing the instances of inconsiderateness happening on the road, so where’s the value in it? And it’s not like getting frustrated with the world around me is doing me any good.
I’ve been thinking about this for the last few days (as I’ve been driving back and forth on various errands), and yesterday I coincidentally (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) came across this quote in a book I’m reading :
When we are driving, we tend to think of arriving and we sacrifice the journey for the sake of the arrival. But life is to be found in the present moment, not the future… It’s useless to fight. If you sit back and smile to yourself, you will enjoy the present moment and make everyone in the car happy.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
Which I think is a lesson that was meant just for me at this moment.
My own conclusion was that I need to combat not only my own tendency to get frustrated and aggresive (driving is not, after all, an act of war), but the very thing about driving that is getting me upset in the first place: inconsiderateness and selfishness.
This little helpful voice that lives in my head (God, my conscience, whatever you like to call it) - by the way, I’m starting to understand where the stereotypical image of the devil and the angel on your shoulder comes from, but that’s neither here nor there - suggested that maybe I should start doing conscious acts of considerateness while driving.
That is to say, slow down and let the person in - even if it’s my right of way; help someone who’s stuck get past the traffic; let someone cross in front of me.
I should combat the overall feeling on the road of getting everything that’s ours and not letting other people push in on my space, by not just following the rules of the road, but by even going above and beyond with my space and my right of way. Hey, if it doesn’t change the world (or the general atmosphere on the road), it will at least change the mood in my car. Which is definitely a good thing.
Posted by Megan @
11:17 am |
-image-Who is That Woman?
I have a terrible memory for names. I can remember faces, even how people talk and how they move, but for the life of me I can’t seem to remember names.
For example, once when I was about 12 I was in the mall with my friend and this very good-looking older man (i.e. 18) started talking to me. I knew that I knew him. Not only that, I knew that it was expected that I would know him, that to hint at forgetting his name would be a very big insult.
So, here I am having this long conversation, while my friend is drooling, and the whole time I’m racking my brain trying to figure out who the heck he is. Suddenly, something he says near the end of our conversation does it and I remember, he’s my cousin.
“Rafe!”
My brain is so excited by this discovery that I actually declare it out loud… and then realize that he didn’t know I didn’t know who he was and now I have to explain this declaration.
Ok, you may think it’s not such a big deal to forget your cousin’s name, but if you only knew. You see, I’d actually lived with this cousin for a year or so; yep, he’d been like my brother, and I forgot who he was. I tell you, it’s a problem.
I say all this to say, last night I was in Starbucks and while I was in line I noticed a women at the bar waiting for her drink. Her face seemed vaguely familiar. It was when she said something really loudly that I realized I knew her. I could remember that voice - the way she spoke. The way she stood and held her head, all those little things, were sending off signals in my brain that I should know this woman.
I didn’t recognize her friend, no help there. So I just kept staring at her trying to figure out who she was. The more I watched her the more I recognized her (and yet the best I can remember is that I met her in some professional capacity). It was really her mannerisms that stood out to me; that unspoken “aura” that we put off was so familiar I could almost taste it.
You know what I mean? I’m not talking about auras as in a spiritual phenomenon (although, maybe I am and just don’t know it), I mean something closer to a kind of projection of personality.
You know how they say that confident people are more attractive to people because of their confidence? Well, this woman radiated lack of confidence; even from across the room I could feel that she wasn’t comfortable with who she was. I did notice that with her friends she was a little more confident, or maybe comfortable, than I remembered her, but still, her unconscious habits were screaming at me: I have no faith in myself. I don’t know who I am. In fact, they were so pronounced that this is what kept nagging at my mind that I knew her.
Even more than her face, her persona (maybe that’s the word I’m looking for) was full of memory triggers for me. (Interesting what your mind records about people isn’t it?)
Which makes me wonder, what is my “aura” screaming at other people? Most of us aren’t even aware that we put out this kind of subconscious signal. But, if you think about a time when you met a person and you instantly disliked them, if someone asked you what you didn’t like about them it would be hard to pinpoint it, so you just say, “I don’t know. There’s just something about them.” You’ll know the phenomenon that I’m talking about.
The interesting thing is, we aren’t really projecting what’s true about us (it’s not some kind of Personality Core radar) it only portrays what we believe to be true about ourselves.
In reality, it’s not so much an aura as really a culmination of signals. The way we speak (for example, less confident people tend to talk in questions - raising their voice at the end of a statement), the way we carry ourselves - body language - and our little ticks and habits. All these things come out of, and combine with, what we think of ourselves and serve to project our presence into the world around us.
It just occured to me that really great actors are great because they understand how to imitate this kind of projection, how to create a new presona for themselves.
Which is good news really, because it means that we can choose how we want to portray ourselves in the world. Which brings me back to my earlier question: How am I portraying myself to the people around me? Better yet, how do I want people to read me?
Yep, these are the kinds of things I find myself thinking about at any given moment. And no, I still haven’t figured out who she is!
Posted by Megan @
2:49 pm |
