This post is part of the Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge hosted by WEGO Health. I will be writing a post a day for all 30 days. You can learn more about it here:http://info.wegohealth.com/HAWMC2012.
Today’s topic:
Learned the Hard Way. What’s a lesson you learned the hard way? Write about it for 15 today.
One of the questions that I get quite a lot since I switched over to this blog address (and title!) is “What is up with the ‘mostly’ in your title??” (Or some variation thereof.) Today’s HAWMC topic opens it up for me to write a post about it, and I think it’s been put off because a lot of people might take offense. So let me just say that I am just being honest and speaking only for myself.
One of the lessons that I’ve learned the hard way is that I need to stop when I suspect that I need to stop. By that I mean that I often push myself beyond my limits – knowingly. And that is really want I’m talking about. It’s not the accidental overstepping, but the knowingly disregarding my limits.
There are times when I refuse to accept that I can’t do something that I want to do. So I go ahead and do it anyway. So I push myself to keep going even though I’m in a world of pain or I’m practically holding my eyelids open. I know that this is a bad idea.
This is why I say “mostly” blameless. We certainly aren’t to blame for the illnesses that we have, but I do think that I am sometimes to blame for how terrible I feel one day if I really pushed too hard the day before. I’m well aware when I’ve reached my limits, after all. I just don’t always know where that limit is going to be until I hit it.
But this is part of living with a chronic illness. Sometimes you push too hard because you want to attend an event or complete a project or go on a trip. It’s unreasonable to believe, at least in my life, that it’s possible to go through life skipping ALL those things that I want to be a part of. So sometimes I suck it up and go. And I pay for it. But, to me, it’s worth it.
My illness takes a lot from me, but there are some times when I’m just not willing to compromise. On those occasions, it’s my own fault that I’m feeling to downright nasty the next day. It’s a choice I make willingly, and I am the only one to blame for that.
Hmm.. on second thought, perhaps this is a bad example of a lesson learned, since I clearly haven’t quite learned it….
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