Understanding Reality

There's a very real difference between expectation and reality. Sometimes they match, but most times they don't.

For example, the horn on your car:

Most people use the horn with the expectation that it makes other people comply with their wishes. Most people honk the horn to make people go faster, honk the horn to tell people they're driving wrong, honk the horn to express anger or insist on right of way. They honk the horn with the expectation that honking the horn will immediately and effectively convey what they want from the other drivers. However, that's not the reality.

What does honking the horn actually do? It makes people stop, and look at you. That's it. Honk the horn and the other person hits their brakes and looks in your direction. The horn conveys one and only one thing effectively: LOOK!

This means that the only appropriate way to use your horn is when danger is imminent if the other person does not immediately cease movement and look in your direction.

I know what you're thinking: What does honking my horn have to do with my health, Laura?

The answer is: Everything! If you look at it in terms of understanding the reality as it compares to the expectations.

In health, we all have certain expectations. These expectations may come from our parents, from the TV that we watch or the previous experiences we've had, these expectations may even come from your doctor. However, that doesn't mean that these expectations are always true. For example, many Americans believe that you'll get ulcers from eating spicy foods. The truth is that ulcers are caused by a certain type of bacteria and are only worsened by spicy foods.

What sort of health expectations do you have that aren't realistic? Do you think that "exercise just doesn't work for me" or "I can't lose weight"? Do you believe that you're perfectly healthy when your lifestyle bears markers of poor health like a complete lack of exercise or an excess of freezer-isle food?

This happens in more than just your physical health. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and financially, it gets really easy to start honking that horn without ever accomplishing what needs to be accomplished. Where in your life are you using the wrong method or tool, or believing the wrong things? More importantly, what can you do to start using your tools more effectively?

What Kind of Life?

After a long hiatus, I'm back again. I'm in learning and researching mode for a while but there's something personal that's been on my mind recently and I wanted to share my thoughts with you. 

There's one question that's been...not quite haunting me, but definitely sticking around. Every now and then it just pops back into my head again, and each time I get a little closer to a definitive answer. The question: What kind of life do I want to live?

 

This question is about more than weight loss, it's about more than money, it's everything. All of it, wrapped together. Physical, mental, spiritual, financial, and emotional all together. Unsurprisingly, my current answer is still mired in the way that I want to relate to food. 

Food has been a big deal for me, pretty much my entire life. Every event, every significant memory, is earmarked or categorized by the food that was present at the time. My whole identity for a really long time has been wrapped up in my relationship with food. That's why it's not surprising that my answer to this question is stuck in this category for now. 

So, how do I want to relate to food? It's a tricky question for me. Unlike my health coach and the real food mom blogs I follow, I don't want to cut out every food that doesn't strictly comply with all of the recommended standards. I don't want to go to parties and avoid the cake because I "can't" or "don't" eat cake. I don't want to crave pizza and never ever satisfy that craving, sticking instead to substitutes that only half do the job but are what I'm left with when I look into the 'healthy foods' category. 

What I do want is for food to be just a piece of my life instead of the whole thing, I don't want my world to revolve around the next meal. I don't want my whole existence to feel hinged on what I'm going to eat next - and that includes the worry and 'what if' that comes with trying to make sure I only ever eat in certain guidelines. 

If I want a piece of cake, I want the ability to eat that piece of cake without feeling any guilt over it. If mealtime is swiftly approaching and I'm on the road, I want to allow myself to choose a salad, or sometimes a cheeseburger and fries, 

And y'know what? I want the same thing for you. 

Bondage is bondage. Whether you're a slave to a master who takes care of you or to a master who abuses you makes no difference, at the end of the day you're still a slave. Junk food is a cruel master, but being enslaved by vegetables isn't actually any better. What kind of a life do I want to live? I want to be free. And I want you to be free too. That's what this journey is really about for me. 

What kind of life do you want to live?

As Unto the Lord

"Clean like Jesus is coming over!"

As a child, that was the battle cry of Saturday afternoon. In a house of six kids and two working parents, Saturday was the only time the real cleaning could happen and my mom had a plan. Like a well-trained general she handed out assignments and then sent us to our tasks with the reminder that cutting corners (or not vacuuming them) wouldn't fly. Do your best, she was telling us. "Do it perfectly" is what I heard. After all, if Jesus was coming over he'd be offended by the lack of organization in my bedroom. Right?

Clearly, I didn't get what Jesus is really all about. I carried this misunderstanding with me into adulthood, often choosing to ignore the mess rather than cleaning it because the idea of cleaning like Jesus was coming over intimidated me. Jesus is perfect, so imperfection would bother him. At least, that's what I thought. This misunderstanding wasn't just applied to cleaning, either. Anything and everything in my life was under scrutiny. I was treating God like a distant and disapproving parent. In my mind he was sitting up in the throne room of heaven, clicking his tongue in disappointment over my lack of self discipline. The image sent me into a spiral of striving for perfection, failing, running away from God in shame over my failure, then striving for perfection again as a way to earn my way back into his good graces. 

Sounds awful, doesn't it? Everything in my life became a train wreck of self pity and guilt, pulling farther and farther away from God because I didn't want him to see me in an imperfect state. "Jesus loves me," I thought, "but he doesn't like me and he wouldn't approve of me." What a sad and alone place to be in! 

The truth is that God loves us just the way we are right this moment. He wants us to become better because he loves us and that love for us gives him a desire to see us at our best. But that love for us also gives him a desire to be with us as we are right now. 

If Jesus was coming over, he wouldn't really care if there were dishes in the sink, or if I'd forgotten to vacuum the floor. My basket of unfolded laundry in the bedroom wouldn't bother him. If Jesus was coming over today, he'd be coming over to hang out with me. He wouldn't be here to judge whether I'm a good wife or whether I'm good at cleaning. He'd sit on the couch with me, maybe even drink some tea, and we'd just talk like old friends do. Because that's how Jesus is. Of all the names the Bible gives to God, the ones that Jesus claimed for himself most often are friend, brother, and companion. This is how his disciples knew him, and it's how he wants us to know him, too. 

Today, take some time to connect with Jesus as a friend. This doesn't have to be ritualistic. You don't have to confess your sins first. Just be who you are, and think of Jesus as your best friend. I think you'll find it's a very relaxing experience. 

You Choose

Choice is one of the most powerful forces on our earth. As humans we are gifted with the ability to choose our path with the millions of little choices we make day-to-day. I think that's a beautiful thing.

We've talked about choice before. I talked about my experience with the little choice to not have a piece of cheesecake and how our habits make up our life. I encouraged you to change the choices you make on a daily basis, to bring them into alignment with your goals.

Today I'd like to talk about why it's important that *you* choose to make the changes in your life. It can be easy to succumb to peer pressure and in some cases that pressure can be positive. But if you don't make those positive choices for yourself, you won't stick with the new behaviors and thought processes. That's just the truth of human nature.

It all comes back to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. We've talked about that before, briefly. Extrinsic motivation is when there's something outside yourself that is pushing you to make your choices. This may be a spouse or doctor who is concerned about your health, it may be a parent or a friend, it may be that you're not happy with the person you are right now, or it could even be that you saw something inspiring on TV. All of these things are external - they're outside yourself, putting pressure on you. These are great for getting you started, but once the pressure is released there has to be something that holds you to your decisions so you keep making the choices to become who you want to be.

That's where intrinsic motivation comes in. If you have a reason that is all your own, that comes from inside yourself, then your intrinsic motivation will keep you going on the path you chose. The key there is that it has to be a path you chose. You have to be the one to make the decision for yourself and for your own reasons.

Today, take some time to examine the choices you make on a regular basis. What big decisions are driving those little decisions? Have you chosen your own path, or have you allowed someone else to choose for you? It's never too late to change the direction your life is taking. You only have to choose.

Healing Like a Sequoia

When a redwood survives a fire - and they almost always survive - it heals giant slabs of wood over the scorched portion of the tree. Redwoods are strengthened by the tragedies they encounter and in fact need otherwise devastating forces like fires in order to survive as a species. Fires thin out the weaker trees that would take needed resources away from the redwoods, and the seeds of this giant tree race can only open up when subjected to the extreme heat of a forest fire.

When our hearts go through the fires of life we can choose to deal with them poorly, wrapping ourselves in darkness and defensive bandaging, never exposing the wound to the light of day. This will cause the wound to fester and create bitterness in your heart, as we discussed with yesterday's HURTS acrostic from Paul Tsika's book, "Sequoia-Size Success."

Today, let's look at how to handle those hurts properly so we - like the trees - can heal stronger than ever before, using another paraphrased Tsika acrostic: FORGIVE

F - Face up to your responsibility. Stop accusing other people for their part in the hurts you've sustained and instead take responsibility for your part in the hurt. Perhaps you could have reacted differently or perceived something differently, or perhaps you have locked yourself into the role of victim or mere survivor of your hurts. Whatever the case, admit your responsibility in the situation.

O - Open the unhealed wound and expose it to the light. Bring your pain, openly and honestly, to God and ask for healing and - where applicable - forgiveness.

R - Release total forgiveness toward those who have hurt you. Keeping someone "on the hook" actually keeps you hooked into the pain. It's natural to want the people who hurt you to meet justice, but the only way to really heal is to let go. You have to relinquish your desire to make them pay.

G - Guard what you receive. Remember when we talked about being careful with your association? This becomes especially important in terms of healing your hurts. You have to make sure to reject ideas like your right to revenge, and only accept the ideas that coincide with your goal of forgiveness and healing.

I - Invite God to love you through your pain and use you to extend that love to others. God wants to heal you, and only his perfect love can heal you perfectly. When you've experienced that kind of healing, you are then better equipped to reach out to others with the same kind of love and healing. Invite God to start this process in you.

V - View yourself the way God views you, not as the person your pain wants you to become. Pain wants to convince you that you are unloved, alone, and unique in your pain. If you let your pain dictate your response to situations, you will end up isolated. Instead, remind yourself that you are loved, wanted, and protected by God. You have been given great grace, freely and lovingly, and there is no reason to reject that grace.

E - Embrace your life as a healed person, a cracked pot through which God's light can shine. There's a practice in some Asian cultures of filling in the cracks in pottery with gold. This makes the otherwise useless pottery into something beautiful and more valuable than it could have been before the brokenness occurred. In the same way, God wants to fill the empty spaces left by your pain. Pain happens, fire happens, hurt is a part of life, but God wants to take that and make it into something truly beautiful and more valuable than ever before.

Healing is possible. Whatever pain you've been through, however long you've held on to it, healing is possible for you. It's a process, and sometimes a painful one, but the result is truly beautiful.

Fire, Forgiveness, and the California Redwood

The mighty Sequoia, also known around here as the California Redwood, is a plant that can endure anything. Nobody knows how long they can live or how tall they can grow because they keep growing until tragedy strikes and they are cut or knocked down. These trees grow around, through, and because of the trials they face. Most impressively, the redwoods survive - and even thrive on - fire.

Fire is a devastating force to a normal forest. But to a Redwood, fire is just an opportunity. The first branches of the redwood tree grow high above the highest flames of a forest fire. The tree's thick, sappy bark is fire resistant. When fire does damage the trunk of one of these magnificent giants, the tree immediately sets to work growing a slab of wood even thicker than the rest of its protective bark. Each time a sequoia survives a fire it becomes even stronger than before.

What can we learn from this?

Have you ever been through fire in your life? Maybe you were burned by job loss, or maybe someone you really trusted turned out to be untrustworthy. There are a million ways that we humans go through the proverbial fire in life. Fire hurts. It creates large, open, blistered wounds. It makes us afraid of situations similar to the one that hurt us. Like the redwood we must learn to grow stronger and stand taller as a result of the fires in our lives, instead of allowing them to consume and devastate us.

How?

Right now I'm reading a book by Paul Tsika titled "Sequoia-Size Success." In it, Tsika explains several principles of success in life that we can see demonstrated in the gargantuan trees that have lived hundreds of years. One of these principles is that you must learn to heal deep wounds. I'd like to share an acrostic from Tsika's lesson today - with the explanations paraphrased.

If you react to the fires of life and the pain they cause in an unhealthy way, these "heart burns" lead to lifelong spiritual and emotional bondage. Using the acrostic "HURTS" we discover:


H - Horrible experiences combined with
U - Unbiblical perception creates a wrong pattern of thinking that is mired in self-centeredness and self-pity. This leads you to
R - Raise up a stronghold to shield yourself from further pain. You cut yourself off from everyone, insisting that no one can understand you because you are the exception, that no one should come near you because you are the exception, and that it's perfectly healthy for you to be living like this because you are the exception. As you perceive yourself as the one exception in the world, you also start judging people more harshly. This creates a situation where
T - Troubles are wrapped up in darkness where light and love cannot reach in to heal the hurts. Because of this, the pain only grows deeper. Heart burns become
S - Soul Burns that are then perpetuated through the generations as you pass on your bitterness toward a person or group by constantly rehashing the pain you experienced.

Mistreated or poorly dealt with "heart burns" affect all of your relationships.

With God, we become closed off and tormented, unwilling and unable to accept the love and grace he has to offer.

With ourselves, we become hateful and angry, creating self-sabotaging habits and self-depreciating thought patterns.

With others, we become locked in a state of emotional immaturity, making us needy, suspicious, and fearful.

The good news is that we, like the Redwood, can heal from these terrible wounds if we will only learn to forgive.

Overuse Injuries Part Two

Yesterday we talked about how to avoid an overuse injury (don't be stupid), but sometimes that's easier said than done. How can you tell when you've injured yourself, and when you're just sore?

The number one differentiation between an injury and regular soreness is that injuries greatly limit movement. Sometimes there will be swelling, sometimes the area will look injured (redness, bruising, disfiguration), but sometimes there's no way you can just look at it and see that you're actually hurt. However, injuries limit movement more than soreness does. Regular exercise related soreness will make movement a little more uncomfortable, injury will make it darn near impossible.

If you have a regular stretching routine that you use for cool-down at the end of a workout - as you should, if you're being healthy about your exercise - this is probably when you will discover your injury. Stretches that would normally be difficult because of your soreness will bring you sharp pain and your body won't want to comply with the movement you're trying to accomplish.

For example: my traumatic tendinitis of the hip. One part of my stretches on distance days involves laying flat on my back (on my living room floor) with my heels on the ground, then lifting my legs up and pulling my knees into my chest to stretch my lower back and hips. On Sunday, because I had injured myself, one of my legs simply would not lift off the ground and I felt like someone was stabbing me right where my leg bone connects to my hip.

Once you've identified your injury, it's easy to know how to treat it. With the exception of major fractures or breaks, most overuse injuries call for the same treatment as a sprained ankle: Ice, elevation, and rest. Knowing this you can determine whether your injury requires a trip to the doctor, or just an ice pack and a pillow.