What's your body telling you?

So, this happened…

I’ve had perfect vision—no, I’ve had better than perfect vision my entire life. I even joked with Leah after her corrective eye surgery about still having better vision than her 😬

And then, 6 months ago something started happening. 

• I’d have to change the angle of something I was reading slightly.

• Then I would sometimes have to increase the font size from 10 to 12.

• And sometimes it felt like I was looking through watery eyes as I tried focusing.

• Lately, I’ve had to refocus my eyes while reading to make sure I didn’t lose my place.

For months, my body has been telling me something was wrong.

I’ve done everything I possibly could to ignore it and work around the problem.

And then I was asked to read something out loud and everything almost fell apart. 

I finally went in to see the optometrist. 

“It’s ok - this happens as people get older.”

Zing.

Meanwhile, several nights ago, I couldn’t even really function.

I felt like I was talking slow, thinking slow, and then I crashed—10 hours later I woke up. I think my body just shut down.

These recent events prompted this week’s question:

“What’s your body telling you?”

“You need to listen to your body because your body is listening to you.”

(Phil McGraw)

There’s a book called, “The Body Keeps Score,” which is about the impact of trauma on our lives but also highlights a broader concept—your body knows everything.

Your body keeps track of everything.

Sleep. Nutrition. Exercise. Posture. Hygiene. Age. Stress. Leisure.

Like the world’s first and most advanced fitness tracker it monitors and uses millions of data points to produce the most up to date and vital report you could ever hope for.

Many of us will pay hundreds of dollars for fancy trackers and subscriptions but will miss or ignore the data coming straight from the source.

Why?

Because we’re not paying attention.

Worse, we only pay attention when our body decides to do something drastic to get our attention.

This week, try something different. Check in with your body throughout the day.

When you finish eating, do you feel energized or sluggish?

How do you feel when you finish exercising?

How about when you wake up?

You can’t do this all the time but periodically checking in and remembering that your body is telling you everything you need to know can mean the difference between making small iterative corrections and large life-changing ones.

What’s your body telling you?

Keep Asking,

Kyle