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So, What Would You Do In This Situation?

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Terrie’s Tip – Take a look at Ziva meditation described quite well in Emily Fletcher’s book “Stress Less, Accomplish More”. There is also an online version of it but that is way too expensive for me and she describes what to do in her book (audiobook is what I listened to).

Why am I promoting this? Because I’ve been following the plan (two 15 minute episodes a day in what she calls “the lazy man’s meditation” and surprisingly yesterday I found that it must be working some.

So let’s see. I will probably be too graphic but please forgive my “doctorness” coming through. I was supposed to have an abdominal ultrasound. When I called to schedule it, the prep I was given didn’t sound like what others had been in the past but the tech said yes that was it.

Fast forward from scheduling day to yesterday:
A) The doctor ordered the wrong test. But I’m not really sure who ordered it wrong. At any rate the radiology department decided that he said he wanted to look at the ovaries that was the test they would do. ONLY looking at the ovaries. Not the uterus or bladder. hmmmm

B) When I asked why they weren’t going to look at my uterus, they replied “because you don’t have one”. Well, that was news to me. I never have had a hysterectomy but because apparently the doctor had put “post hysterectomy” on previous requests for CT scans etc.. So that meant, of course, that the piece of paper (or nowadays it’s electrons) knew better than the person who was pretty sure she still had a uterus (which, by the way, was eventually confirmed – once again proving that talking to a patient is much more reliable than just reading documents)

C) I had to have a very invasive (for this old woman) procedure in order for the test to be useful. So, finally, due to the persistence, gentle nature and experience of the tech we got where we needed to be but not without pain. Sigh

D) Then I drive home and get a flat tire on the interstate.

E) And I had to wait (of course) for help and as such knew I was going to miss two other appointments.

Flashback a year ago and I would have been in a tizzy (I’m sure many of you know what a tizzy is – it’s a medical term of course..lol) with issue A above. And it would have just gotten worse. But yesterday it was like “oh ok, what can i do to correct this? and “how can i get through the pain of this to get the procedure done?” “She was very nice and helpful, I need to write and compliment her”. Then with the tire “Oh, I’m so glad i got off the interstate”. “I hope I can find someone to help me” (yes i do have AAA but didn’t want to wait 4 hours), and “I’ll just email and change the other appointments”. Then while waiting I sent emails or messages to people I’d been meaning to connect with anyway.

Anyone who knows me will wonder when the aliens abducted the Terrie they know because that is not me. This change, even though it’s only been a couple of weeks, to me is simply due to practicing the ziva meditation twice a day, every day. Who knows. We’ll see what happens. Hopefully I won’t have to test it anymore though..lol

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The Flat Tire

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Terrie’s Tip – Keep your tires inflated and in good repair but don’t neglect care of the inside of your vehicle (your body).

So I’m sure those of you who saw my deflated tire yesterday expected a post on flat tires…and since I would hate to disappoint, here ya go!

Let’s look at the tire, ok? Well, maybe not…first we should look at the vehicle. There are plenty of uses for tires off of vehicles but their primary use is to help make a vehicle move smoothly. The wheel shape and the material used to make it all are part of it. But would we need tires without a vehicle? Probably not, Then it would just be called a wheel. We use vehicles to take us from place to place. Just as we use our bodies to take us from place to place. Do most of us go out every time we’re going to run to the store (or did before the pandemic anyway) and kick the tires and check the air pressure and alignment, etc.? I would venture to say no, most of us don’t. Often times we don’t even think anything of our tires until our vehicle (our bodies) start to act up.

  • We shimmy
  • We hear noises that didn’t use to be there
  • We don’t stop as quickly and safely as we used to

But even then we often ignore the signs until it’s too late. Yet, we will stop and take our car to the car wash to get it to look pretty again. But that’s generally the outside. Maybe we’ll clean the inside when we have time but….

Many of us want to look nice on the outside so we worry about our weight, our muscles or lack thereof, our clothes, our hair (well I need to get up to speed on that one with my covid hair) and anything else that we think others might judge us by. No one ever thinks that they will be judged by how horrible their body may look on the inside.After all – who’s going to judge us? We tend not to think of the importance of the operation of these internal organs – the engine.

When our tires deflate we have to (or should) stop. This is our body telling us to stop and take a look at what’s going on in our lives (bodies). It’s a fitting metaphor that the air goes out of the tire and it deflates. Our ability to move around and go at the speed we want is suddenly deflated. We need to be getting the message here.

If we’re going at a very fast speed, that deflation may cause further damage and we really get the message. That is telling us we are moving through life way too fast and not paying attention to anything other the external factors.

If we’re not going so fast, we may have time to get to the side of the road and stop to repair your tire.

I’ll stop here even though i could go on and on with this but I think you get the point.

Check your tires.

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You Are Like a Train

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Terrie’s Tip – Remember that you are like a train. Your mind is the engineer controlling the whole process and your body is the boxcars carrying the valuable cargo (as valuable as you make it, that is)

Yesterday I trudged on trying to build my endurance for the July race – a seemingly impossible process. But it was a different experience. Previously my legs had been really hard to move – “dead legs” as they say. But thanks to great advice by Marie Boyd, my legs actually felt pretty good. It was the rest of me that didn’t seem to have any energy. It felt like drudgery to keep moving. Of course, this is creating consternation about whether or not I should even bother going to the race.

I realized that there is this disconnect which I think we experience so often in life. Our minds are the control car, the engineer, the lead car, whatever you call it. And behind it are the cars that carry everything around with us. All that cargo may be valuable or may be junk. How often do we stop and try to reassess it.

Are the cars filled with valuable and precious organs which we have taken such good care of, or have we neglected those organs and just exposed them to stress and other factors that decrease their value?

Are there hobos (people’s influences) on the cars, taking up space, talking to us and giving us messages that probably aren’t very accurate but they are their opinions and we’ve just carried them along with us?

Is there graffiti – mean things that we have experienced that we have absorbed as part of us?

What are we carrying around with us? Do the wheels and rails need greasing? Are the parts rusted? Are they telling us “no way, i don’t want to go that way, it’s too hard.”? or perhaps “Let’s just sit here and maybe someone will push us along so we don’t have to work much.”

Our mind is that control car. It has all the necessary switches and buttons. It can simply engage the cars and they will be locked in sync and move as a unit. So why doesn’t this happen all the time? Because we let the engineer in our mind go on vacation too often and there’s no one to really run the train. If the engineer is new or inexperienced it can be misled or not know how to throw the switches. or even know which switches do what. This can happen especially if the train gets upgraded with technology but the engineer doesn’t keep up.

What is the engineer in your mind doing to help you move your train, to keep it clean and shiny, to keep the cargo safe and sound? it all starts with that engineer and all we need to do is evaluate how things are going and then change our thoughts and then our actions. Start with analyzing what you’re pulling along in the cargo cars and then what you think needs to be changed. Let your mind (your thoughts) get engaged and change what’s necessary to change. Change is good and will help your keep your train (your body) running smoothly. Discard the old baggage and clean off the graffiti. You should not be controlled by them. And you don’t have to be as long as you make your engineer in charge.