Personal note
This week I am working from my California office, which has allowed me to spend a special birthday celebration with my sister. Our birthdays are one week apart, and the whole family gathered for one of those noisy, exhausting, but joyous celebrations. There was much laughter, a great deal of hugging, and a table laden with treats – those gooey, sticky, sweet, sometimes salty, and always fatty things that we use to mark special occasions.
I ate some of each of them, feeling so full emotionally that I didn’t need to splurge on any of it.
And I recalled the period leading up to my heart attack, when part of my stress management techniques included over- indulging in lethal “comfort foods” just “for the duration” of the stress. How satisfying it feels to be able to enjoy these treats, and then quit when I’ve had enough. It took a long time to develop the mindset that a “treat” is just that: a rare, celebratory event, not a daily habit. Today’s article is my attempt to understand, and help others understand, that what we do today- or don’t do – has impact sooner than we think.
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Are you:
- wondering why you feel as if you’re sitting on the sidelines of life?
- tired of being asked if you’re “shy” when you simply enjoy listening?
- fed up with the sensation that life is one long competition for attention?
Then you definitely want to be there for The Confident Introvert 3-part FREE teleseminar!
On Wednesday, April 24, at 8 p.m. I’ll cover “Questions you always wanted to ask about introversion, but didn’t know who to ask.”
And if you missed the first two sessions, “Throw Off Your Cloak of Invisibility” and Baffled by Bluffers & Blusterers? Discover how to handle these challenges to introverts you can still sign up and listen to the replays!
Sign up now at http://creativelifechanges.
Don’t Forget: Wednesday, April 24, at 8 p.m.
Links to hear Lynette:
Hear more about The Confident Introvert book and programs in this interview with Mary O’Keefe, of Wellness Within:
http://webtalkradio.net/
Interview with Lori Campbell, Visionary Gerontologist, in whose book, Awaken Your Age Potential, I have a chapter:
http://www.agepotential.com/
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
What if your life was like a bar of chocolate?
We hear it so much – each day you walk will add 1 hour to your life, while not eating your vegetables will shave minutes, even days, off your life, sleep deprivation can eventually be deadly – and we think, “That’s a long way away. I’ll worry about it later.” We do this because we picture the loss of the time to occur at the end of our lives, and it does indeed seem a long way away.
But “later” always comes sooner than we think, and everyone seems somehow surprised when disease appears, seemingly swiftly and out of nowhere.
If we only focus on longevity, I think we are not understanding the reality of taking care of ourselves, so here is an analogy I have come up with that will help motivate us all to pay attention to our health every day.
What if, every day of your life, you were given a big, luscious chocolate bar of the very best quality. Every day it appears the moment you open your eyes, and it’s yours to enjoy all day long!
But what if, every time you fell off the back of the health wagon, by neglecting to exercise or eat your vegetables or get enough sleep, the next day’s chocolate bar was shaved down just slightly in size. And bit by bit, over time, you got a smaller and smaller bar of that luscious chocolate as your daily allotment, until it was just a sliver of the generous serving you were getting initially.
At first, the reduction isn’t apparent, but over time, it’s obvious there has been a big change taking place.
This is more like what happens to our lives when we get so busy with what we think are critical life events that we neglect to be our own caretakers. We are given a fully-functioning body and, as children, we wake up with more energy than we can use in a day. We are thoughtless about that wonderful body.
Over the years, we get busy. We tell ourselves we’ll take care of ourselves later, perhaps tomorrow, or next week. Our allotment of well-being diminishes, bit by bit. Then we stiffen up, slow down, develop aches and pains, suffer malfunctions in our digestive systems, and in numerous ways find we are getting the equivalent a smaller and smaller luscious chocolate bar each day.
It doesn’t have to be that way. The slowing down and deterioration that many people experience, and think of as “normal” is often the malfunctioning of a body deprived of the many things it needs to live fully and vibrantly. Good health habits help you to feel so good that you can look around the world, notice everything that is special and wonderful, and feel ready to participate in it with joy.
Having come through that dark period and learned this the hard way, I hope that my experience can motivate and guide people to make the happy choices every day.
The Confident Introvert
“What are they afraid of?” my department manager used to ask after meetings in which a number of department members sat, silent and resentful, while he was unaware that his habit of springing surprise agenda items and asking for an immediate decision was very upsetting to these talented, educated introverts. Understanding, appreciating and utilizing the skills of introversion are foreign ideas to some – even to introverts. Now you can read about it in
The Confident Introvert.
Order now at http://www.ConfidentIntrovert.
