I wrote this back in January:
“Living with Cushing’s requires a significant amount of acceptance and patience; you don’t have much control over your body and every treatment is followed with a wait and see what happens.”
That’s certainly true. In the almost four years that I’ve been struggling to get my Cushing’s back under control, I’ve had many setbacks, stalls and a general state of ambiguity. You never really know what’s going help and for many of the positive results, you end up sliding right back where you were.
I also wrote this:
“I guess I’d have to say that the most important and perhaps more difficult resolution I need to make is to not get derailed by work, my volunteer commitments, feeling defeated by lack of improvement in my condition and the depression that can follow.”
All of the above = Check! It’s so easy for me to ignore commitments to myself for those that I’ve made to others. Procrastination via productivity 😉
Here I am, six months later and largely in the same early stages with all of my personal goals. Two things have changed though; I’ve put the majority of my volunteer commitments on hold and I’ve learned that my ACTH levels are steadily declining. As I start looking at my list, I realize that I’m now in the situation where my free time is unencumbered and that any changes I make health wise will have tangible results.
Last week I caught this video in my feed that really hit home for me: Ryan Carson’s – Begin with the End in Mind. In it he talks about having a personal priority list to check obligations and/or anything on your to-do list against. I’ve decided to try this for the month of July, with my list being:
- My Health
- Improving Relationships
- Nurturing My Creativity
- Career Ambitions
- Enhancing My Life
Everything I do for the next four weeks will have to fall into one or more of these categories or it won’t be given priority. I must do something every week that contributes positively to these priorities and when a conflict comes up, I can either pick the one that fills more than one category or chose which one has a higher priority. I like to think this is a brutally efficient method of enforcing my own personal life balance.
My goal is to end July with a clear set of life reaffirming daily habits: exercise, meditation, mindfulness, gratitude, time devoted to my loved ones and to my writing and creativity, and growth. A month that I can look back on and think of all the accomplishments and not wonder where all the time went.
Vibrant Thing 