Pay Attention to Instructions

We were having company for Easter dinner.  Our small living room, which includes a couch that is claimed by Lady (our Australian Shepherd baby), doesn’t lend itself very well to a group.

So I re-arranged it.  Lady didn’t like it.  Farrell just decided he was going to go with it.  But I was totally out of my comfort zone.  My lamp was on the wrong side of my chair.  My Bible was on the wrong side and hard to get to.  And if I put my tv tray up, it was just totally in the way.

It did make the room feel and look more comfortable and welcoming for company.  But after Easter, I still wasn’t adjusting. 

I decided to get two very narrow tables to set near myself and near my husband, so we could at least drink our morning coffee comfortably.  And if that didn’t help me to adjust, I’d just have to move everything back.

I ordered the tables.  Uh oh.  They have to be put together.  Farrell knows all the ins and outs about cattle—he’s been raised with cattle from a tiny tot.  But he’s not a fix-it person around the house, so I decided I’d give it a try.

I sorted everything out of the box.  Yep.  Everything’s there.  Directions next.  I had to laugh reading the first words:  Please pay attention to these instructions.  Did they add those in there just for me?

Amazingly, I was able to follow those directions (with illustrations), and finally the first one was an actual perfect little table!

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My mind kept the thought of Please pay attention to these instructions.  I thought of how those are great words to apply to our lives.

We get instructions from every direction.  How to live; what to eat; how to think; who to trust; how to exercise; all kinds of instructions for all parts of our lives.  And most of the time it’s hard to know what directions to even trust to know what we need.

For the main part of living our lives, we have the Bible to go by.  The best source we could have—examples in the Bible. 

Of course, my mind goes to Health next.  There are so many instructions out there about how to be healthy, and lots of them are polar opposites from each other.  How in the world should people know who and what to trust concerning our health?

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Let’s look at some clues.  Clues built on common sense.

If we begin with the premise that our body is ONE thing, with all its systems and parts working together, that gives us a grounding to start our thinking.

Next, it helps if we understand that our body is made to heal itself.  That’s what it wants to do.

We have all sorts of hindrances to that healing: junk food; sitting for long periods of time; our brain trying to keep up with too many things at once; our work pressure giving us no time to rest and refresh; no time to “just be” outside; lack of peaceful, sound sleep; lack of good solid, deep relationships.

Those are to just name a few things.

But HOW do we change those things??  Our lives are so busy!!

Realize this: if the above paragraph describes your life, your very life depends on you changing it.

If you have diabetes, pre-diabetes, hypoglycemia, blood pressure issues, arthritis, or any number of other ailments, do you realize if you can change the above habits, those ailments you have could decrease… even go away?

But HOW could you get there?

1.     You would need to believe it’s possible—enough to determine to make some changes.

2.     You would need to trust your body to know what it needs.

3.     Then, Pay Attention.  Pay attention to what your body is trying to tell you.

You usually don’t have to take a whole bunch of supplements and herbs.  Sometimes they help, but they are usually for support for your health— not to actually change your health (which gets changed when you change your habits).

You usually don’t have to eat unusual food.  Sometimes you do.  But Pay Attention to your body, and go by that.  Don’t go just by what someone online tells you will “fix that problem”.

Eating… it really doesn’t have to be that complicated.  Eat as close to the source of the food as you possibly can.  Organic is next best.  Eat real food, not fake food or pre-packaged processed food if at all possible. 

You’ll miss a lot of poison into your body if you can do this.  If you can’t, just do the very best you can.

If you can find a place that has grassfed/wild caught/free range meat, if you can afford it, buy it.  Not only are the poisons of big-farm-raised meat absent, you’ll probably taste the difference too.

You don’t have to do this type exercise or that type.  Just get some exercise.  Then increase it a little more.  And change it up a little on certain days.  Lift heavy things a couple or three times a week.  And don’t sit for long periods of time.  Give yourself an “excuse” to “Get Up”.

Get some sunshine.  Early morning is best, but sunshine is wonderful.  It helps work with your circadian rhythm to help you sleep at night.  It helps your skin.  Helps all sorts of things. 

If you  plan to be out in the sun for a long time, work up to it gradually over the days ahead— it’s so much better than putting on the poisons in sunscreen on your body.  They are so easily absorbed into your body through your skin.

For better sleep, do away with your screens, including t.v., at least an hour or two before bed.  Have your room dark and cool.  And have your bedroom feeling comfortable and inviting for yourself. 

Eat a couple of hours before bed so your body won’t be working so hard when you go to bed, to digest your food.  Instead, it can be doing its job: cleaning out the gunk from the day, and getting your body ready for the trials and turmoils of the next day.

It would be very helpful for your stress level if you would set aside a certain time each day, maybe early morning—or whenever works best for you, to be quiet.  And to be thankful.  Sounds pretty simple.  The benefits are abundant.

Give yourself breaks between different parts of your work during the day.  You may think you can’t.  But if you believe that you must for the sake of your health, you can figure this out.  Your body needs breaks. 

I don’t know of anything that runs full-speed full-time.  I’d suggest it’s a good way to cause a breakdown in your health if you continue doing this.

One more thing, our bodies work much better if we have good relationships with the people around us.  Sometimes that’s hard too. 

If you have continuous toxic relationships in your life, you’re taking in the toxins whether you want to or not.  Hopefully you can figure out some way to relieve this. 

Our imaginations are wonderful things, and can amaze us at times if we have the faith in ourselves that we can come up with a way, especially if it can be a “win” for everyone.

There are other, and more detailed ways to build our health, including “how-to” and how it all works together.  But this is just a simple skeleton of an outline that can put you in the right direction.  And you can’t make all the changes at once.  Just try to change one little thing at a time.

Mainly, our bodies need our respect.  They need our help.  They need for us to believe that they know what’s best.  And they need for us to Pay Attention to its instructions to us.

Also, if you’d like extra help with making any changes, let me know what you need.  Tell me your thoughts, and let’s see how you can go forward.  My goal is for you to have good health.

Thank you for reading.

Sharon

P.S.

Contact me if you would like a list of Functional Medicine doctors who have good presence online, and whom I believe can lead you in the right direction.