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perspective
On my break at work the other day, it occurred to me that I had never really covered the phrase that is good things in the content of this blog. I encourage you to share your own thoughts in the comments section, I would love to hear them!
As irony would have it, it took me months to realize that I walk in to work every single day and this is the first thing I see [I am being all Ramona Quimby, Age 8 about it, sort of]. Good Things . . . happen to people who try. It is honestly the best reminder to see frequently eleven months a year.
It is a complete coincidence that Good Things is a thing that Jay and a friend of his came up with to encourage others. I mean, it is the simplest phrase, and that is why it is so golden. To quote an e-mail from New Year’s Day in a discussion we were having about this phrase:
The interesting thing about “good things” is I see it like this …. all emails, messages, texts, and conversations involve a lot of content and affect … a lot of emotion… yet through it all regardless of what has transpired … regardless of how tired you might be … uncertain… scared… proud… hopeful …. things are still good … that does not mean they are easy….yet if you step back you realize things can still be good.Jay Greenfeld
I send dozens of e-mails a week. And [dependent on the level of formality, of course] I attach a “good things!” to the end as often as possible [usually a “thank you, and good things”, but regardless] as inspired by Jay’s e-mails, with hopes to inspire this thought process in others as he did in me . . . through a simple thing.
Simple things are what make the difference. The choice to make this realization that “things can still be good” regardless of circumstance.
Simple things that prompt a reflection on what is good, what continues to be good, and what will be good in the future–to keep everything in perspective.
Simple things that encourage me to make the right choice, in whichever decisions I encounter in a given moment/day/week/month/year. Because each choice acted on may chase another recklessly into a new chapter of the journey towards further good . . . and you just don’t know until it unfolds.
Simple things . . . like a roll of painter’s tape and a purple wall in my bedroom above my bed:
. . . To remind me to always recognize the good things. In my life, myself, those around me, and the circumstances around me, amongst the entire picture.
. . . To remind me of this every day I wake up, with hopes that I will not stay in exactly the same place. That I will grow intentionally. That I will trust but recognize the process. And that I will encounter everything I am meant to. All the good things.
The simple things that are good things.
And the good things that are here . . . and yet to come.
I know I’ve been quiet lately (busy busy!) and I promise to have an update up soon!
In the mean time, Karla at SoundAsthma invited me to guest post on their blog–I’d love to hear your feedback on the topics of being an Asthma Warrior, Randy Pausch, or how positive perspective ties into your own asthma [or other chronic disease] management!
When I finished tutoring at the end of Winter term, I said to the student i was working with “You know this stuff now. Implement it — make it happen”. The guy I was tutoring had a lot of really good, creative reflections on the course content of Issues in Health. He knew the content. He knew how to implement the content. Now it was beyond ‘course content’ and had become ‘choice’, and was in his hands.
I am the first to admit that knowing it is the easy part. Doing it, on the other hand, is another story. Some more than others, but we all are aware, to some degree, of which activities/behaviours promote our health, and which behaviours are detrimental to our health. I’ve said it before, that I spend all day (and sometimes night) long some semesters learning about health and wellness. Today, for example, though not the most wellness-promoting, I wrote an anatomy exam, wrote a lab quiz, then came home and ate Sweet Chili Heat Doritos while on Skype for hours. Still, I am in the same environment as I was the past two terms, but the content around me has changed and thus my behaviour has changed. February and March, for example, I spent tons of afternoons in the gym for class, plus regular exercise outside of class. Last May I was in a physical-activity oriented class. Each hill and valley in the below graph I have either an understanding of why I was successful, or an excuse for why my numbers [kilometers] are lower:
I think often that my last year seems to have been in two parts: Before Promotion and Adherence and After Promotion and Adherence, with a transition period in between when the course was occurring. The transition period was like my intervention. I was surrounded by Good Things two days a week, by words and motivation and people who were fighting the same battles as I was: the balance of school, work and maintaining a specific level of physical activity. Some also with the additional mixer of unpredictable chronic disease affecting their routines.
This said, my environment on the whole did not change. I was still surrounded by the same people with the same goals [or a different array of the same people with the same priorities] but it wasn’t freely discussed. We weren’t bouncing ideas off each other all the time, like the discussions about reading textbooks on the stationary bike, or having accountability partners, or eating five bowls of cereal a night [that happened. Not to me, but to people in my class. So good.]
It is not about that that class is done. it is not about my asthma sidelining me for over two weeks. It is not about the anatomy midterm sucking the proverbial life out of me.
It’s about me. It’s about my choices. It’s about me finding ways to continue that process that started nine months ago and do what i am capable of, and then some.
It’s about getting back into it.
I know it. I know what I should be doing and I know how to do it. Now I just have to implement it.
Make it happen.
note: there is some crazy thing going on with my tags. i’ve got tech support and my friend Mike on it :].
I think why I health blog is too mangled and twisted and big of a story, one that is better suited for a Starbucks with iced white mochas in hand. Regardless, let’s try it here, without the ambience and white mochas. Even though Starbucks would be much more fun.
The time my actual blogging started was probably over five years ago. Since then I’ve had countless blogs with varying focuses, and finally, ended up here, with a .com address to my [user]name (which was thought up by my amazing friend Danielle on a joint blog we had together at one point). So the original reason I started blogging is a mystery, maybe it is because that is what all the cool kids were doing? [Lies, actually. I’ve always been immersed in social media, and few of my real-life friends could care less about blogging].
Health blogging, and becoming a health blogger, started quite by accident. Asthma was my initial focus in health blogging, because getting thrown a chronic disease at almost-seventeen is, you know, crazy. One day I could breathe, the next day I was at my old school for a choir event and the whole breathing thing was not so easy. And then it took months to actually BE diagnosed because I didn’t have a doctor.
Almost-seventeen year olds typically think they are invincible, and to suddenly realize you’re not is hard.
I always say though, if I didn’t get asthma, I probably would still be sitting on my ass. And not doing this. This blogging thing. This kinesiology thing. This:
So why do I blog about my health?
Because one in ten Canadians has asthma, but nobody talks about it. A tenth of the population has an incurable lung disease, but it’s been passed off as so common, so normal, for so long that people think it doesn’t matter.
Seven words: It’s not normal to have trouble breathing. And to think anything less is absolute bullshit. No matter how common asthma is.
And at the same time, just because it’s normal to society, it’s not usable in the excuses that people try to make. My friends Natasha and Elisheva? They ran a 10K last weekend, inhalers in hand, to support an Israeli asthma organization. My friend Steve has walked three Boston Marathons with 34% of his lungs because his past and this stupid disease has destroyed them. One by one, we are changing the standard of thinking around physical activity and asthma. Because perspective and physical activity . . . even if you’ve got a chronic disease . . . are choices.
This is why I make the choice to health blog. To reinforce to myself the choices that I make on a personal level, and hope that others who read this realize that life is about choice, even with chronic disease in the mix. Choice to do Good Things, whether that is for my body or my feelings or my mind or my heart . . . or my community.
Asthma may be a speedbump, but it is never a roadblock. I may have to choose a different route to get where I’m going. I may have to take some time off training for an exacerbation. I may have to modify how I do something . . . but can’t isn’t an option.
That message, and the next, which I’ve used in a #hawmc post already, are why I health blog. I health blog because
Perspective is crucial, positivity is essential, and ignorance is a curable disease.