FEB 16 No More!

Hello Journal & Friends,

That's IT! No more. 

I heard myself yesterday, and it was awful. I was whining and complaining and moaning and groaning... and realized that playing the victim was getting me NOwhere fast!

My low back is trying to go out again, and the pain in my tailbone area is getting worse... go to bed in pain, wake in the night in pain, wake in the morning in pain... and the tears were more from frustration and self-pity than the awful pain. As I was whining to Jim to please rub my back, I finally heard myself. Yuck!!

Then I remembered some stuff I'd been reading, and decided that's IT. No more victim. I'm going to DO something. And before ya'll nice people tell me to see a doctor... I did. And they chalked it up to the usual: Hey, you're fat. Well, put nicer than that, but it's the same thing. "It will improve as you lose weight".

Thing is... it's getting worse. Unbearable levels. Sleep-ruining levels. Don't wanna move or exercise levels. Grumpy levels. Oh poor me levels. 

So... I decided I've got NOTHING to lose by being Proactive. I wrote out a list of exercises that I hope will help, and started, that very day.

Yesterday I dusted off my Gymboss timer and my pink dumbbells!

If you missed my post about my Gymboss timer, it's great for timing interval workouts. Here's a link, and about halfway down the page, that explains the benefits of Tabata type timing in exercise. 

I also did PUSH UPS... well, wall push ups, hee hee. I saw a very large man on the tv show Heavy doing them, and thought "I could do that!" Also some stretching and leg lifts and other muscle building squeezes... you know, the glutes, where you SIT, ha ha. I'm hoping to build muscle to replace the missing cushion of fat, and ease the pain on my cracked tailbone. (Has anyone done this? Any experiences or advice about that??)

Here is part of what I read that inspired me and put my "suffering" into perspective, from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey... it was about the story of Viktor Frankl:

Frankl was a determinist raised in the tradition of Freudian psychology, which postulates that whatever happens to you as a child shapes your character and personality and basically governs your whole life. The limits and parameters of your life are set, and, basically, you can't do much about it.

Frankl was also a Jew. He was imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany, where he experienced things that were so repugnant to our sense of decency that we shudder to even repeat them.

His parents, his brother, and his wife died in the camps or were sent to the gas ovens. Except for his sister, his entire family perished. Frankl himself suffered torture and innumerable indignities, never knowing from one moment to the next if his path would lead to the ovens or if he would be among the "saved" who would remove the bodies or shovel out the ashes of those so fated.

One day, naked and alone in a small room, he began to become aware of what he later called "the last of the human freedoms" -- the freedom his Nazi captors could not take away. They could control his entire environment, they could do what they wanted to his body, but Viktor Frankl himself was a self-aware being who could look as an observer at his very involvement. His basic identity was intact. He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect him. Between what happened to him, or the stimulus, and his response to it, was his freedom or power to choose that response.

Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.

Frankl... began to devolop the first and most basic habit of a highly effective person in any environment, the habit of proactivity.

It means that... we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions... We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.

Viktor Frankl suggests that there are three central values in life --the experiential, or that which happens to us; the creative, or that which we bring into existence; and the attitudinal, or our response in difficult circumstances...

My own experience with people confirms the point Frankl makes -- that the highest of the three values is attitudinal... in other words, what matters most is how we respond to what we experience in life. (end quote)

Well, there was more, but that's long enough! Time to be proactive... time to DO!

Edited later to add: I had an Angel call me. She had her own experience with a fractured coccyx, and suggested 4 different types of physical therapies I could try at home. I am so grateful I could almost cry! Only out of relief and hope, this time. Thank you SO much, You-Know-Who-You-Are!!

From Dr Phil's book: "Get off your duff and get moving."

My verse for today: "Be merciful to me O Lord, for I am in distress."

My quote for today: "Sitting around on your big fat gluteus maximus talking about the good old days... The good old days are right this second. You've got to exercise VIG-OR-OUSLY! Life is tough. Life is a challenge. Life is a battlefield... Life is an athletic event, and you must train for it."  --Jack LaLanne, at age 91

Enjoy the Journey,

Loretta

=^..^=

DAY 551