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Chris Wilkinson column: Acceptance can be dangerous

She and her husband were headed down the path of least resistance with their health
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By Chris Wilkinson

I was in to see the friendly folks at Ingram Dental recently. My hygienist and I were having a good chat about kids, life, health. Well, a good two-way chat for a few minutes, and then I was in listening mode as happens at the dentist.

She was telling me about how she and her husband were headed down the path of least resistance with their health — gaining weight, eating for convenience, losing energy. And that her back was sore. The start of the bad back that is synonymous with aging it seems.

She shared that she had accepted at that time that she would have a stiff back and a bad back for the rest of her life. A thought that is easy to live with. Happens all the time. But then she said she had the aha moment and had realized that she was NOT OK with that. “There must be something I can do,” she thought. So she acted. And fast forward to now, her back is much stronger, feeling much better and she can handle the back-testing work leaning over patients all day long.

This discussion brought up the question: why do we accept things so readily? Why do we just assume that situation is the new normal, when most of the time there is something obvious that can be done to challenge that? To intervene and create a new trajectory. It is true that we get what we accept. We get what we tolerate. And this acceptance is dangerous.

Is it lack of knowledge? Overwhelm? Or that the pain isn’t enough to make us change?

Whatever the reason is, almost always there is a better alternative. And we shouldn’t be looking for the quick-fix home run either. Success is in the consistent application of small steps. Small steps, repeated, lead to the big successes.

Here are a few tips to help:

1. Learn more and research online about the thing you want a better result with.

2. Never quit with the most important things. Never.

3. Find a way to enjoy the steps you know will get you where you want to go.

Let’s use the bad back example. Doing quick Google and YouTube searches on how to manage back pain yields many results. Learn more. That is the start. Then finding a good therapist who can help you manage your back pain is important. Or perhaps it’s getting back to the strategies you know will help, but you’ve stopped doing them. Then find some joy in the small steps.

It’s perhaps that last point that is so fundamentally important. We all do the things we enjoy doing. It’s harder to stick with the things we KNOW in the long term will help us achieve what we REALLY want, but aren’t overly enjoyable day to day. So, finding joy in the journey (small steps) is so fundamentally important. And how to do this? Focus on the little tasks, and while you’re doing them, train your brain. Tell yourself that you’re enjoying it and what the outcome will be if you keep doing it! And this is really important — when you’ve had a small success, celebrate it! Give yourself something positive to reward the good behaviour/outcome. In a few weeks this will become more of a routine or habit, and you’ll be close at that point to keeping up the momentum. It’s literally a skill. And skills are like muscles, you must train them to improve their function.

Take a lesson from the dentist’s chair. For things you don’t like, don’t accept the status quo. Do something about it. Improve them. Not just the outcome will feel better, but of course the journey and the feeling of accomplishment is usually the even better feeling!

Chris Wilkinson is the owner/GM for Nurse Next Door Home Care Services for Cowichan and central Vancouver Island. For more info visit www.NurseNextDoor.com or for questions or a free in-home Caring Consult call 250-748-4357, or email Chris.Wilkinson@NurseNextDoor.com