Hello, and welcome to The Own Your Health Podcast.
I'm Cyndi Lynne, and I can't wait to
help you step into your health power.
Now, that may sound very strange coming
from someone who sounds like I do.
And normally I would not record a podcast with my
voice sounding like this and needing to sip tea on
a regular basis, but I did think it was a
really important time to check in, because one of the
things that I've talked about, touched on a number of
times, is the opposite or the counterpart,
I shouldn't say opposite, the counterpart, the other
side of the coin to owning your health,
and that is owning your illness.
Now, this might feel threatening to some people,
it might feel like blame,
it might feel there's a lot of thoughts
that this stirs up, and it used to
stir these thoughts up with me as well.
So when I was growing up, there was always
an excuse for why I would get sick.
And the excuse usually had something to
do with not listening to my mother.
So very quickly, it became the
sense that illness was a punishment.
You didn't do what you were supposed to,
you didn't wear your hat, you didn't wear
your mittens, and see, you got sick.
So there were consequences to
not listening to your mother.
This didn't in any way teach
about being aware of our body.
It didn't teach about trying to stay healthy.
It just taught kind of the blame game.
And I think there's a lot of people that still
have this feeling that in some way, illness is punishment.
And I'll take something like smoking.
Very often you hear when someone is diagnosed with lung
cancer, well, they were a smoker for 40 years.
Now, I in no way advocate for smoking, but you
can also point to a lot of people who've smoked
for 40 years or more who never get lung cancer.
So there is always another piece to the puzzle.
And when you decide to own your health, when
you decide to own your illness, you get to
take a look at what those pieces are.
And when you figure those pieces out, you can decide
maybe what you want to do differently next time.
And so I'm coming here today sounding like this.
And if you're looking at the video looking like this because
I wanted to share how I got to where I did
with this illness. Keeping in mind that last week I was
very much focused on not saying I was stressed out, not
getting myself stressed out, not falling into that trap.
And then things changed.
And when things on the outside, things in my
environment changed, and I wasn't intentional about my response
to them, stress got the better of me.
And when I didn't start making changes based
on feeling that, okay, stress is getting better
of me, I'm feeling a little bit off,
you know that feeling you have when
something's trying to come over you.
I just kept pushing through because it's
late November, we're heading into December, there's
stuff we have to do.
And you know what?
That's not really true.
So let me give you a little bit of my story.
How I'm owning it, how I'm thinking about it
so I can make better choices next time, and
even how I own my health in the throes
of being pretty sick for the last two days.
So I was traveling this weekend, my husband was traveling
somewhere else this weekend, having great family time, lots of
talking and laughing and not going to bed.
I don't know if you get together with relatives and start
catching up or friends and start catching up and you just
don't seem to know enough to go to bed.
So I got very little sleep.
And then I had a family member who was also under
the weather, who I was helping to take care of.
And then the rush was on to get home
on Monday, worked Tuesday and Wednesday, had to squeeze
that whole week into two days, right?
And then Thursday was Thanksgiving, and I always
host Thanksgiving, so I needed to do that.
Thanksgiving was fairly early, so we started at 02:00.
Pretty much everything was done and cleaned up by nine.
And I was feeling pretty proud
of myself, but pretty exhausted.
I went to bed about 10:00 on Thursday
night and I woke up Friday morning feeling
like I had been hit by a train.
I had a fever of 102 and change.
I had body aches.
I think there was not a hair anywhere that
didn't hurt, like every piece of my skin hurt.
And in spite of the fact that the Friday after
Thanksgiving, I always decorate the house, I always start some
baking, I always start some shopping, I said no.
I quickly looked back, realized the perfect
storm that I had created for myself.
Bundled up with a lot more clothes,
took some firesider and some other supplements,
and got back in the bed, okay.
And with the exception of sauna, hot baths and sitting up
for a little while, just while the sheets were being changed
and the laundry being done and fresh pajamas were in the
works, I was in bed for two days.
And that is something in my past
life, my life before owning my own
health, I would have thought was impossible.
There's just no way.
This feeling that the world obviously
can't go on without me.
Now, as silly as that statement sounds, I know
how that feels when we get busy and we
have obligations and we have commitments, but guess what?
The world can go on without you.
And if you get even sicker, it's going
to have to go on without you.
So I invested two days in me and my
health, in calming practices, in meditations, and in rest.
Now, I woke up this morning, I
still have a little bit residual laryngitis.
That seems to be what hangs
with me for the longest time.
No favor today, and yet I've decided to take it slow.
The Christmas tree is up.
Perhaps it'll get decorated, perhaps not.
I showered, washed my hair, got dressed, and
that was really about enough work for today.
But I'm here at the end of
the evening, and I feel still good.
I don't feel like I'm run down again.
I don't feel like I've taken any backward steps.
And I've taken time to learn from this.
I've also taken time to sit quietly and
plan what my next few weeks are going
to look like going into the holiday.
Do I really want to do all
of the things I've committed to?
When I'm in a place bursting with
energy, I can very easily overcommit myself.
And whether it's baking, whether it's cooking, whether it's
entertaining, it's often better to sit quietly at a
time where you don't have your maximum energy and
say, okay, what are my priorities?
If I couldn't do all of these things, if I
had to take a day out or two days out,
which ones are still really important to me?
How can I be more efficient at getting the tasks done?
What can I delegate?
And you might be surprised at the answers that
come to you when you're not in Superman or
Superwoman mode, because this kind of stress, culminating in
illness, very often hits me right after Christmas, and
it's a pattern that I've been trying to break.
But you know what?
This year I got hit with a few things,
few curveballs, kind of out of the blue.
Now,
my purpose now is to become
more resilient for those things.
To know enough to go to bed even when the
conversation is good and everyone is having a good time.
To know enough to eat the way my body wants to eat.
Not to get way out of whack with my
foods and eating times and eating late at night.
It's so much fun to join in.
But I know that I paid a price for it.
And this is all something that you
figure out when you own your illness.
Because if I had simply attributed this to the fact
that, oh, my husband came home with a cold or
it got super cold outside, or I was around a
lot of people, I would continue to blame others.
Now, if my body's healthy and if
I'm resilient, it doesn't really matter what's
going on with others around me.
And that's very often the position
I'm in as the caretaker.
As long as I take care of myself, I'm
pretty resilient against most everything that comes traveling by.
And that's owning your own health.
That's owning your health through sometimes
having to own your illness.
So if you find yourself in the throes of illness, I
encourage you as you're coming out the other side and have
a little bit more of a clear mind, to look back
and say, okay, what could I have done differently?
Not for them, not for the people up there,
not for the crowds, not for the airports, not
for all of the rest of that.
But what could I have done
differently to make myself more resilient?
And if you're looking for a way to manage stress
as part of becoming more resilient, I encourage you to
check out my special offer for the holidays.
For only $27, you actually get a module from
my year long program, and it will help you
figure out how stress can actually work for you
and how you can best spend time with family
and friends and really have joy rather than stress.
So check out the link for less stress, more joy.
Only $27.
It's an absolute no brainer.
And I will see you next time,
hopefully with a lot better voice.
Thanks for joining me. See you next week.
