- Yay, it's Wellness Wednesday!
Hi guys, welcome back.
It's nice to see you.
It's Wednesday, and some
people call that hump day,
but I think it's the most
magical day of the week
because I get to hang out with you,
connect, see how you're
doing, and share some shizzle!
So anyway, I got a great topic this week,
I'm gonna dive right into it because it is
so up for me and it is
self-care accountability.
And this is a perfect time to do it
because we're almost
halfway through the year.
I'm probably getting ambitious, that's not
necessarily true, but as many of you know,
I love journaling.
I journal every single
day, it is a huge part
of my spiritual practice, and in January,
oh my goodness, that is like
the Olympics of journaling.
That is when I clear the
decks, push everything aside,
lay out my beautiful journal,
put out all my gel pens
and start dreaming,
making plans and dreams
and connecting with how
I wanna feel throughout
the course of the year,
what do I wanna experience
both personally and
professionally and so on.
And so, I'm gonna talk
a little bit about that
because I have this huge
aha moment this week
and the aha moment was
there are some places
where I am definitely staying accountable
and there are some
places where I am sagging
and I wanna share those with
you in full transparency
because I need your help.
So I'm gonna put myself
out there and I hope
by the end of our Facebook
Live that you do too,
'cause this is for all of us.
So anyway, as a result of what's going on
with my honey, with my husband Brian,
I mentioned to you guys a few weeks ago
that he's been dealing with some pretty
debilitating tinnitus, and
so many of you have shared
such great recommendations
and we are on the path,
things are looking better and we found
a really great cognitive
behavioral therapist
who is helping him and though, you know,
the symptoms haven't changed, his reaction
to those symptoms have
and that's a huge one
for anybody out there who's been living
with a chronic illness
or something debilitating
like tinnitus, we may not
be able to change everything
but we can change our reaction to it.
So anyway, that's another
Facebook Live for another time,
I'll definitely keep you
posted on the progress there,
but as a result of what
he's been going through,
it's been a time for us to
reevaluate, to check in,
to check back in on
those goals that we set
at the top of the year,
those personal goals
and those professional goals, and to start
to have conversations
about reprioritizing,
like how are we gonna
make changes at work,
how are we gonna make
changes at home, how are we
gonna make changes in our
relationships with other people
and with each other, and so
it's a very fruitful time,
but here's the thing I wanna say:
we don't need to hit rock
bottom in order to rise.
I'll say it again: we don't need to hit
rock bottom in order to rise.
I've hit rock bottom
multiple times in my life
and one of which was
very visible because I've
been writing about it,
I made a movie about it
and that is with my
cancer diagnosis, but also
with other health issues,
and here we are again
and so though I'm really
happy that we're taking
that time to check back in
and really using it as fuel,
I wanna remind myself
and I want to remind you
that the universe
whispers and the whispers
get a little louder, little
stronger, and sometimes
the universe can go from a
whisper to a wrecking ball.
Now what we wanna avoid
are those wrecking balls
so if we can hear it
when it's at a whisper,
I think sometimes we can make
our lives so much simpler.
So if there are some goals that you set
at the top of the year, that
you were really jazzed about,
maybe you have a goal to
try to improve your sleep
or to commit to your fitness
or to whatever it is,
personally and
professionally, but you found
that you've gotten busy
which I'll talk about
in a minute or you know,
other priorities have
usurped that goal, many of
us are such great caregivers,
such wonderful, loving
caregivers and humans
and people pleasers
(chuckles) that it's so easy
to have these dreams
for ourselves and then
to toss them aside because
we're those sort of folks
and there's nothing wrong
with that, but it's also
not moving us forward.
So we wanna make sure
we're evaluating that.
So anyway here's when
this all came together.
Obviously through what's
going on with my husband,
but a couple weeks ago,
we had what we call
our house meeting, and
we do this every week
and I know that many people
out there do this too.
It's a great practice,
and every two weeks,
we sit on Saturday morning
and we open our Google Doc
where we keep all of
our to-dos, and we just
run through them and check in.
Did you call the plumber, are you doing
the grocery shopping today or am I,
or do you wanna go together
and it's just our way
of dividing and conquering
on running the household.
We work together and we have a whole team
to support us at work, but
at home I wanna make sure
we are both supporting
each other and too much
of the task load isn't
going on my shoulders
or Brian's shoulders, and
so this has been working
for us, we've been doing
this for about a year now
and it's actually changed our relationship
in a big way.
And believe it or not, there's
these hidden resentments
that can come up that
you're not even aware of
and for me, they look like one thing,
for him they look like something else
and the house meeting
totally transformed that.
Well we also decided in the house meeting
that we would take some
time to run through
our personal goals and our work goals.
These aren't mountains of goals, guys,
these aren't reams and
reams and pages of goals,
there's like the top five personal,
top five work type thing, and it's a way
for Brian and I to hold
each other accountable
or just check in, say does that intention,
that goal, that dream
still resonate with you?
Maybe it doesn't anymore,
maybe at the top of the year
that seemed like a lot of
fun and now it's like eh,
I don't wanna do that.
So this is a really good
practice and it's something
that I do regularly in my
journal too but it's great
to do it with another person.
So we're having this
meeting and it's taken on
even more importance since
our life changed again,
and I realized that so
many of my work goals
are on track, they may not come right away
but they're on track,
sometimes I gotta be patient
and some of personal
goals around my wellbeing
that were starting to sag
or starting to falter,
which is very easy to have happen again
as people who are caregivers
and people pleasers
and part of my job is helping other people
and sometimes I can go
whoa, when was the last time
you helped you?
As I'm going through
this list and something
really stood out that kind
of upset me a little bit,
to be honest: I have, I'm
behind in making my appointment
to go get my cat scan,
to go see my oncologist.
I totally forgot about it.
Now I go every two years to get scanned
and to check in to see how I'm doing.
It's been 16 years now,
living with stage four cancer,
as you guys know, got a
bunch of tumors in my lungs
and my liver and my time
to go to the hospital
is just to see where everything is,
is it the same size, has something grown,
has something shrunk, where am I?
And it used to totally
freak me out and now
it's just a regular part
of my life, but because
of their system, you cannot
book two years in advance.
Most cancer patients aren't doing that,
so when I leave, I can't
make the appointment,
for yeah, 2021, so I have to
remember to call a year later.
Well I totally forgot
and part of that is good,
I'm not gonna lie, it's
like I'm not thinking
about it all the time,
but part of it is also
not prioritizing my
health and when I realize
that I'm about a couple months behind,
I went oh, geez, I have,
I gotta get on that
and then I looked at my
calendar and the first thing
that I saw was wow,
May is booked, oh, June
just got super hairy
with work, I don't know
that I can do this.
I am too busy to go to
the hospital and meet
my oncologist and get a cat scan.
This is what's coming out
of me, and I shared this
because I need to really pay attention
to the stuff that I teach
'cause I need to learn it too.
So I thought about my friend Louise Hay,
and she would say that what
just came out of my mouth,
I'm too busy to go to the oncologist
is an affirmation, and what I'm affirming
is that I'm not a priority, that my health
is not a priority, that my
safety is not a priority,
that my life is not a priority.
And as soon as I made that connection,
I thought this is the topic
I'm gonna talk about today
because I wanna turn that
around, and by the time
I come back next week, I will
have made that appointment,
I don't know when they'll
be able to fit me in
and that's okay, but I will
have made the appointment.
And so if there's something
that you need to take
action on, if there's an
appointment that you've
been putting off, maybe you found a lump
or you know what, your blood
pressure was really high
and you were asked to
come back but you didn't,
or your vitamin D levels
were low and you never
followed through on it, no judgment.
We get busy and this
happens, but don't affirm
that you're not a priority, don't affirm
that your life isn't
worth that appointment.
And so I say this to you
because maybe this is a sign
for you, I totally
believe in synchronicity
and I have a great synchronicity
story to share with you,
I can actually share it
right now because this,
I'm gonna share right now.
I totally believe in
synchronicity and this is also
a Louise Hay story.
It was back in 2011 maybe, 10 or 11,
and I was thinking about
leaving my publisher
and moving over to Hay
House, and I was out
in San Diego for The Doctors,
the TV show The Doctors
and I'm on the highway which is like
if you live in San Diego,
if you've been to San Diego
it's like a five or
six-lane highway and I'm
freeway, is that a freeway?
I think it's a freeway (chuckles).
I'm telling my husband about
how much I love Hay House
and how much I love
Louise and how I really
respected Louise in so many ways including
the fact that she started
her business later in life
and that it became this
huge inspirational success
and I feel like I got my
shit together later in life
and she's just always been
an inspiration for me.
And I think in some ways I
had already made my decision
but I imagine I was also
looking for a sign, right?
And so as I'm saying this
and telling my husband
this story, he goes honey,
honey, look at that car
driving down the highway.
I was like thinking he's
not listening to my story,
he wants me to look at a
car, I don't pay attention
to cars, he loves cars, I'm
like that's a car, what is it?
And I look and the license
plate says Hay House
and lo and behold, wouldn't you know it,
it's Louise, she's the
car right next to us
on this five or six-lane freeway.
What are the chances?
I live in a tiny-ass town,
that could happen here
and that's not a shock.
It's still a synchronicity, but San Diego
is not a tiny-ass town like where I live.
And I said drive up but
don't freak her out,
I was like can you imagine,
I'm like hi Louise,
and I'm just like stay
cool and I just looked
and I saw her and she's
looking, she's driving,
I've told the story many,
it's like I imagine her
like looking into the rear view going,
I love you Louise, I really love you.
(chuckles)
And if you know Louise's work, you'll know
exactly what I mean, and
I took that as my sign
and my synchronicity, that that was where
I needed to go at that time of my life
and it's the publishing
company I'm still with
and I love them very much.
So my point is, circling
back to this synchronicity,
maybe my story of
forgetting and blowing off
and thinking I don't have
time for my oncologist
and the turnaround that
I just made and shared
is your synchronicity.
What are you blowing
off, not making time for
and you know, all that jazz?
So, I hope that this was useful and I hope
that some light bulbs went off for you.
I want this to be a place
where we have our own
house meetings and this is one of them,
this is one of our house
meetings (chuckles).
Sometimes we talk about
books, sometimes we talk
about doctors' appointments,
but it's a place
for us to hold each other accountable,
and so if there is
something that you're gonna
take action on, maybe
there is an appointment
that you're gonna make
as a result of this,
lemme know in the comments below.
Let me know, let us all
know because we want
to support you and we
want to encourage you
and next week when I come
back, I'm going to share
that this appointment was made, you see?
Post-it note, Dana
Farber Cancer Institute,
gotta get it done, gonna
make the appointment
and I'm gonna check in with you to see
if you have moved the ball forward.
We need to run the play
all the way, you guys.
This is our time.
Okay, so lemme just check in with you
before I say bye-bye!
So many wonderful people.
Hi Kate!
Kate, I love seeing you in
CSY and I love seeing you
here, honey, hi Danielle.
Hi Louis, hi Lisa.
Hmm, Lisa says yes, I
will book my appointment.
Valeria says I love signs, Nancy says
very useful and timely, thank you.
I'm so happy.
Kate says thank you.
More thank yous.
Sandra says Louise
saved my life, love her.
I think Louise has
saved many of our lives.
Thank you, that's amazing.
(laughs)
Amir, how can you not pay
attention to cars, wink.
(laughs)
You're the best, Amir.
I wish my husband was here right now
'cause he would say see,
just like Amir said,
how can you not pay attention?
Stephanie said such a
great story, hey Steph.
Dawn, love the synchronicity.
Hello from Ireland, Daniela, hi honey.
Love Louise, love you,
and I love you right back.
Aww, so many great people,
please take care of yourself.
Thank you, you're important to us.
Well thank you Sue, I am
gonna take care of myself
and I don't expect this
to be a difficult scan,
like I've said, I've done
this for a lot of years now
and I have a lot of
mental management tools
around how to prepare
myself for those situations,
but I do need to get it done, and so
thank you Sue.
All right you guys, I love you so much.
Please let me know
again, let me just cruise
right down here, such joy.
I live in MRI, did your
MS in Lyme, or Corinne,
I'm sorry that you have
to do that all the time.
I'm sorry but I'm glad you're
taking care of yourself.
Heather says I needed to hear this.
Sandra, thanks from Sweden.
Becky says when you come to Dana Farber,
let's get together, let's do that!
That would be so fun!
Becky's on my team and I would
love to spend time with her
and you know what, when you
have to do difficult things,
when you have to have difficult
appointments like that,
make a date out of it.
Make it special.
One of the things that I do
when I go to the hospital
is I make it believe
it or not, a date night
with my husband, we stay at a nice hotel
and we go out, have a really great dinner,
regardless of what the results are.
So far they've all been
good, and here's another
little thing, I usually
buy myself a trinket,
just saying, sister likes bracelet.
So I usually give myself that (exhales)
you got through that, time to shop!
Just a little something,
and now I'm gonna hang out
with my friend Becky.
So anyway, I hope you guys
have a wonderful week,
I hope this was good food for thought,
I will check in with you next time,
I hope you will check
in with me next time,
and I will see you next week, bye!
