77 - The Language We Tend to Ignore
The Language We Tend to Ignore
TL;DR:
We tend to think of language only as the words from our mouths, our pens, and our keyboards. But we’re surrounded by other languages that want our attention.
Our bodies send us signals - subtle and not so subtle. It’s a good idea to listen to them.
I wasn’t going to share this yet but as I was working over articles in my brain for this week, it’s the story I kept coming back to. So, I decided that perhaps one of you needed me to give you a nudge as well.
Life in Many Languages
I am well versed in the languages of mathematics and music. My dad has, on many occasions, called Kona “an extremely talkative dog”. And, I’ve long been fascinated by the lingo and jargon associated with different professions. Sadly, I’ve created my own mental block where it comes to learning languages like Spanish or Italian - no matter how hard I try.
This past week though, I got a lesson in what happens when you ignore the many ways in which your body talks to you. Before I dive into the story, let’s talk a little about the language of our bodies. I’ve done a lot of reflecting on how my body talks to me this week. Beyond the obvious thing of aches and pains you have:
how you’re breathing
how weak or strong you feel
how you heal from the little things like a paper cut or a dog scratch
the quantitative things like blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol, O2 levels, etc.
how your clothes feel on you
how you feel in social situations
And much, much more. Our bodies talk to us in a million ways but we rarely take the time to listen to them or to think about what a particular message might mean.
My body has been sending me little messages for a while now that something was not right and that we needed to seek medical advice. But, my body was not insistent. It just sent a note and then assumed I’d take action. My body went back to acting mostly normal and the worst of the signs it sent me stopped … for a bit.
Until last Wednesday morning when my body sent me a very, very clear message and it was off to the ER we went. So, now I’ve got more appointments and probably more procedures in my future to both diagnose and treat my body.
As for the fall risk bracelet, I had really hoped to avoid one of those until I was at least in my 70s. Ugh. But, as Gayle and I joked many times that morning, I probably need to wear it permanently. (See Other Things You Might Find Interesting for why my apple watch helps with my overall lack of balance.)
I’m thankful that this is happening now when I control my time and it isn’t controlled by an organizational leader who urged me to tamp down those messages and to ignore them. My health was not as important as the job in that leader’s opinion. Now though, I have been surrounded by the love my clients have had when I’ve shared that my schedule may fluctuate a bit in the coming weeks and that I’d keep them informed and we’d keep the work going.
So, I wonder, what signs or symptoms is your body sending you that you are tamping down? Who is telling you that your health doesn’t matter? I can guarantee you that you matter and if you need someone to talk to about this, I’m here to listen to you.
This has also reminded me of the importance of my Facts of Life Book. I’ve got a whole new set of entries just tracking all of the appointments, medications, and conditions that I’m dealing with at the moment. If you’re not familiar with the Facts of Life Book, it’s a course I teach where we organize all of life’s most important information for life’s most urgent moments. And, it will be available in my Circle Community when I relaunch it in the near future. Just remember, your free access to the community must be claimed by September 30. I may be back next week with a more updated plan of attack for how I’ll be launching the community since it may not make my planned end of October deadline.
REMINDER - Expires September 30! Circle Community Launch
Time is running out to take advantage of the free discount for my community!
I’m moving from my current online course host (Podia) to a new host (Circle). The full move won’t be done until the end of August the end of October, but the community is open to newsletter subscribers! As a newsletter subscriber and one of the earliest supporters of my work, I want to extend a lifetime of FREE access to you if you’d like it.
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Last Call - Would You Be Interested?
Two of the workshops I’d like to launch are AI For Educators and Password Management Made Simple. These would be a little different than my typical online class. They would be 1 or 2 hour live seminars where we go hands on and practice using both of these tools. If you’re interested in one or both of these, please respond in the community or just hit reply and let me know.
Some Things You Might Find Interesting
Fall Detection on Apple Watch: Since migrating to the Apple ecosystem in January, I wear my Apple watch pretty religiously. One reason, especially when I’m out walking Kona, is the fall detection that it has built in. I don’t think it’s as reliable as one of those life alert bracelet/necklace things but it’s reassuring to know I have it - and thankfully I’ve not yet conducted my own test of it.
Call Emergency Services on iPhone: You get a bonus health and wellbeing related one this week. If you have iPhone 8 or later: Press and hold the side button and one of the volume buttons until the Emergency SOS slider appears.
Drag the Emergency Call slider to call emergency services. If you continue to hold down the side button and volume button, instead of dragging the slider, a countdown begins, and an alert sounds. If you hold down the buttons until the countdown ends, your iPhone automatically calls emergency services.
CloudConvert: Over the years I’ve needed to do things like convert a word document to a PDF (back before that was easy), or go the other way and make a PDF into a word document. Or someone needs a PNG image and I have a JPG. The tool I’ve come to rely on for these and nearly any other type of conversions is CloudConvert. It’s definitely worth bookmarking because there are no super annoying ads when you want to convert and I’ve found all the converted files to be free of malware and other hazards in some of the other online file converters.
Need a Calculator for pretty much anything: Kona has a condition that causes us to monitor his water intake. I wanted to know how much water I should be aiming for him to have each day. That led me to OmniCalculator - a compendium of more than 3000 different calculators - one of which is water intake. Some of them are just fun and I haven’t dug into the scientific or other accuracy of each calculator but if you’re constantly looking for different calculators, you might want to bookmark this site.
Will Trent: We started binge watching Will Trent this weekend. If you’re not into crime dramas but want rich characters with interesting back stories and don’t mind a little crime solving happening around you, this one is an interesting option.
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