Monday 2 August 2010

Do You Look After Your Self?

I was suffering from Man Flu last week.  Men are always the last to know that they have it.  Luckily wifey was able to point it out to me.  It is when a man has a slight cold but they think it is the end of the world!!

Now I am not a believer in "Soldiering On".  I believe that when my body is ill I need to rest and let it get better.  Consequently I cancelled several business and social appointments.  Now I could have gone along but was just not worth it.  There was a slight chance I could have infected the person I was meeting (and depending on their air conditioning system, half of the people on their floor too!), I would have been foggy headed and not had my wits about me for the meeting and most importantly, my body would be straining to "Soldier On" and not simply recover.

So I stayed home, taking my hippy pills (horseradish, garlic and vitamin C) and let my body rest. Three days later and I was feeling fabulous.  Compare that to many who Soldier On and "just can't seem to shake it".

When you get ill, do you look after yourself?  Not just when you have a cold (or Man Flu) but also when you are grieving, distressed, or just need a doona day.  I am not saying we should all have a sick day. What I am saying is you HAVE to look after yourself and do what it takes to maintain a healthy body, mind and spirit.

How well do you look after yourself? 





Image: www.justonemore.info

1 comment:

Rod Sherwin said...

Funny, I'm having a bit of that man flu too in the last week and received an interesting comment from someone at an office I work at. The comment was "People like you frustrate me; when you sick you take pain killers and get on with it."

My reply was that when you are sick you body is trying to get something out of your system whether it is via fever, sniffles, coughs or otherwise and taking stuff to suppress these symptoms will only have them show up elsewhere and prolong the pain. -- It was a little challenging to explain 20 years of studying health and well-being in one reply.

Pain killers can be useful when you really need them, like after major surgery. But soldiering on? Only if you life depends on it - which is very rarely.