Make lots of honey, lemon & ginger drinks and hope that it makes you feel better!
As you will all know by now, I like a plan! In fact, I like to plan for my plans, I feel much happier when I have a plan and when the plan doesn’t happen, it can make me feel quite anxious!
I am very used to my husband going away for work, he’s always done it but when the trips are slightly longer as this one is, I try to make sure I plan to use the time wisely. Not only is it an opportunity to catch up with people, I plan to get lots of things done whilst he’s away so that when he does come home we can enjoy the time together, so I made a plan. I had decided it was 5 weeks of healthy eating, limited glasses of wine, catching up with friends, getting organised for Christmas and even a theatre trip thrown into the mix. Having some things to concentrate on helps the time go quicker but also feels productive.
Good plan!
But no, it wasn’t meant to be. For the last 4 weeks I have had viral vertigo, a horrible virus that leaves you very wobbly, unable to drive, at times unable to look at a keyboard let alone do a zoom call and generally leaves you feeling totally out of sorts and to be honest with you a little bit grumpy.
Obviously, not the easiest thing to manage when you are “home alone” – there have been lots of things I haven’t dared do for fear of literally falling over. My poor dog has had shorter and somewhat hysterical walks (thank god for doggy day care) and my lovely clients have needed to be flexible on the days where everything was truly swimming in front of me!
This post however, is not about “poor me” – it will go eventually of it’s own accord and there are people who are coping with far worse BUT what it has shown me is that sometimes plans, however good they may be can fall completely by the wayside and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it!
It has been a real lesson to me – I have struggled with letting go of the plan, sometimes pushing myself to get stuff done even though I’ve felt absolutely dreadful but my fear of letting go of the plan was greater than feeling ill because of it – how ridiculous is that? What’s more ridiculous is that I often speak with clients about having to “give in” to being poorly sometimes, to letting go of stuff so that they are able to get better quicker and even talk about “what’s the worst that can happen if you don’t follow the plan?” for which the answer is never that bad!
So I gave myself a good talking to this weekend and gave myself permission to give up the master plan. The truth of the matter is, I have eaten healthily – maybe not every single day when I haven’t been able to see straight but on the whole, it’s been very healthy and I certainly haven’t fancied a glass of wine. The stuff I was going to do around the house before Christmas, well, it can wait, it’s not urgent and I am on top of Christmas stuff anyway because that was part of a previous plan! The cancellation of social occasions have been the harder things to accept especially after the last 2 years we’ve had BUT if it means that I head towards Christmas feeling better than I do now, so be it, it’s not the end of the world that’s for sure.
So if like me you’re a planner and if you are having various curved balls thrown at you right now that are disrupting your plans, try hard to sit back and take a moment, ask yourself “what are the priorities right now? What can I put off until after Christmas?” and you have to be really honest with yourself at this point and then change the plan. There is absolutely no point at all in making yourself ill in order to see a plan through, make another kinder plan, a more achievable and realistic plan – if you’re really brave, don’t make any plan at all and see what happens then………….(maybe not)
