Daily Gratitude: This can seem pretty scary and make someone immediately want to scroll away.

It’s like when you were learning to swim and you had to let go of the side, conquering that fear that you were going to drown.

Or maybe when you took the training wheels off your bike wondering if you were going to crash.

I’ll bet you’re thinking “sure but we kids then. Now we’re adults and we know what the dangers really are”.

Ok. Now transport yourself back to 2020 when no one knew if it was going to be the end of humanity. We didn’t know what was going to happen did we?

Many people died yes but so many of us threw away the training wheels and made the most out of it.

We had no choice back then so it was even more frightening.

When you have a choice of whether to hide or step out, think back to those other times when you survived the stepping out process.

It’s not easy but you do have history doing it and that’s what is key in convincing yourself that you can at least try.

Go out and take a chance. You’ll be proud when you discover a new land!

Daily Gratitude: Are you willing to adopt this philosophy for a day or two or maybe a week?

Can you look at everything you do and then evaluate it as you would do a high school experiment perhaps?

What premise did you start with? What did you intend to prove or do? Did you have a plan?
What happened? How did it go?
What went well?
What didn’t go so well?
Do you see where maybe you made a mistake or two?
Is there a way you can change it?
What should you change and do differently?
How would you prefer it turned out ?

Answer these questions and more- even when you think things went pretty well. In most experiments the scientist can find something that can be refined.

Let’s not just do things or say things without weighing the consequences. We need to take responsibility for our actions.

And then we need to change them if they have hurt other people.

Let’s make some changes.

Daily Gratitude: This is so helpful if we can just remember it when a pain pops up in our body.

Pain is a signal. It’s telling us that the body need some sort of attention which could be a simple as taking a rest. It could be more complicated but the important thing to think about is that it’s just that signal, a message.

What happens, though is that we had so many layers to that signal. We add complaining, we add fortune telling, we add drama, and we add both imagination and memory.

With all those layers the messages get lost. The signal now sounds like there’s static on the line or maybe worse yet, it sounds like a party line (for those of you who remember them). It’s distorted and you have hopped on the confusion train.

When we feel a pain we tend to go to the analytical part of our brain to figure out what’s happening. That’s a recipe for disaster in and of itself. Why?

Because our analytical brain is just like an AI engine. It has to have data from which it can draw its conclusions as to the danger. That data is past experience. So if we’ve exacerbated and built on pain in the past we’re liable to do that again.

Our memories also go wild. We think “oh no, here we go again. What if it’s another round of ——— (pick a condition)?”

We add the imaginative process too. “Aunt Sally had pains like that and she was miserable for months.” You may or may not know what her condition was and time gets altered as life goes on. Things in medicine Have probably also changed since Aunt Sally had her “thing”

The fortune telling is the worst because your mind can create the most monstrous situation possible. And when you add Google to it, there’s no stopping Armageddon.

There are, of course, instances when the memory (your own and other family members) is important to consider. If you’ve had heart disease (heart attacks or angina for example) and you have the same pain again, you definitely need to pay attention and get it checked out.

If your doctor has said to come in is this or that happens, do it.

But most of the pains we have can be addressed with a calm mind

Find a sensation and just feel it for about 10 seconds. Notice only the feeling itself. Don’t name it, judge it, or predict it.

Let the body handle the sensation without adding a story.

After the 10 seconds, ask yourself:
Did the discomfort change, or did my reaction change?

Practice on the many sensations we get all the time. Don’t wait for some excruciating pain and then wonder why it didn’t work.

I guess i have to say this. Use common sense and get pains checked out if you’re concerned. This is not a “you don’t need to go to the doctor” post.