Being well is a set of skills…Some May surprise you…
October 25th, my kitchen table
I know.
Wellness, well being, being well…it’s everywhere.
However, it matters.
Especially when you don’t feel well.
Being well emerges from a set of skills that you practice.
I am sure you are trying.
I know you are doing your best.
But, like all the people I see, you are not getting the results you want.
If you were, you wouldn’t be here.
So, how do you get results?
There is one key ingredient that is often missing.
You know what you want to do, you may be clear on where you are going, but you just don’t know how to get there.
Despite trying your hardest.
The key is the know-how.
Working through the details so you know exactly what to do and how. This is coaching. Specifically Pain Coaching.
These are the basic steps for any exercise or practice:
- Check in: how am I? What are my needs right now?
- Having done that, you can predict what to do and how much. You may or may not reach this goal as you have no control over that. You do have control over your intent, approach, presence and effort. An important insight on success: success is when you practice the best way for you at that time — needs over numbers. If you push through and complete the numbers but then suffer, that is not success.
- Think about what you are going to do.
- Be here now.
- Then practice.
- Acknowledge what you have done, celebrating the success. Feel that because it fuels your motivation.
- Recharge time
Your aim is to have a good experience that you can build on.
What you do now is shaping what will come because prior experiences come to bear on what you are doing now and what it is like.
By choosing what you do and how according to your needs in that moment, you are creating new evidence in the form of sense data to update the experiences your systems expect to generate. This is the process of getting better.
Persistent pain and fatigue are real lived experiences generated by an ensemble of body systems–felt in the body but not generated where you feel it.
All symptoms are about you, the person, and your circumstances, not just about where you feel them.
You experience pain, not the body.
You experience fatigue, not the body.
So, your daily practice (skills, strategies and know-how) is about you building wellness, using the skills of being well.
And the know-how.
Examples of skills:
- Movement
- Focus
- Gratitude
- Compassion
- Diet
- Sleep
- Communication
- Purpose
- Insight
Each can be practiced in different ways because they are skills of being well.
Just like a musical instrument, you learn, practice and get better.
There are ups and downs with learning. And plateaus.
There is still suffering when you practice because life features measures of joy and sorrow.
However, when you do suffer, you are able to identify the causes and then ease your own suffering with skill.
And when you feel joy, well, you feel joy.
You may find this interesting:
Which skills are you going to practice each day?
You may think of others.
Perhaps you are already practicing some.
What measures do you use to decide if they are helping?
Remember this must be over a period of time because learning takes time.
You sow the seeds and then water them.
You don’t know when they will grow, or when you will notice a difference.
But it will come if you are consistent with your practice.
An earlier blog looked at planning your day.
With this in mind you can choose your skills and decide when you will practice.
See you on Monday.
r.s.
Resources:
1:1 Pain Coaching here
Free Daily Newsletter, Understand and Overcome your Chronic Pain here