I had to be rescued by my other half last week.
I ran out of petrol.
Just before a roundabout on a dual carriageway.
On a weekday.
At 7:30am,
Not my finest moment!
Talk about causing chaos…
…for me, by adding an hour of wasted time to my already-packed day.
…for my husband, who had to abandon what he was doing to rush out and bring me petrol.
…and of course, to all the other road users!!
And for what?
For being ‘too busy’ to stop at the garage the day before to fill up, when the petrol light came on.
It’s not as if I didn’t get a warning was it?
The petrol light went red when my car registered 30 miles of petrol left.
And then, when it went down to zero, it gave me four horizontal lines to tell me it really was well-and-truly empty!
But no, I ignored both of these signs and kept on driving…to my detriment of course.
Has this ever happened to you?
Or do you sensibly fill up the second your petrol gauge tells you you’re getting low?
Happily, while I’m shockingly bad with my car, I’m a lot less complacent about my body!
I found a lump in my right armpit only a month or so ago and made an appointment with my doctor the same morning.
I had an ultrasound booked within a couple of weeks and received the all clear (was just a lymph node) virtually immediately.
There’s no taking any risks with my body like I do with my car…thankfully!
Sadly, so many ladies we work with have ignored their body dashboards for years:
Expanding waistlines;
Clothes getting tighter;
Breathlessness as they climb stairs;
Pain in their knees/back…or both;
Feeling tired all of the time;
Not sleeping well;
Increasing moods of depression, anxiety or irritability;
Weight creeping up an up…a couple of pounds one month, a couple more the next;
A slightly elevated blood pressure reading from the last doc appt;
A borderline thyroid result from a recent blood test;
or blood sugar that’s starting to approach pre-diabetic levels.
These (and more) are all signs that our body isn’t happy and in the majority of cases, we’re the cause!!
What we’re doing (or not doing) day in, day out, is causing our body stress…and these symptoms are the red lights on OUR dashboard.
Ignoring them does us no favours.
We know that eating well, moving our butts daily and managing stress can put out nearly all of our red lights yet we ‘don’t have the time’.
Just like I ‘didn’t have the time’ to fill up my car.
Then my car ‘broke’ and I was forced to spend the time. A great deal more time than the 5 minutes it would have taken me to fill up with petrol.
If we ignore our health, our bodies WILL break.
And fixing them is a damn sight harder, more time-consuming and traumatic for us.
And is a huge burden on those around us who have to drop everything to help.
Think about it: type-2 diabetes; heart disease; a stroke; chronic arthritis; severe immobility; cancer.
These don’t have 5-minute fixes: these are life-changing, life-consuming conditions that we often have the power to prevent in the first place.
Yet we play the ‘don’t have time’ card to excuse us from looking after ourselves.
I’ve said it before but every single person on this planet has 24 hours at their disposal EVERY SINGLE DAY.
What we do with those 24 hours is ultimately our choice…our decision.
And ultimately, it’s OUR health and OUR bodies we’re looking after.
When you see or feel something on your health dashboard that spells danger, for goodness sake MAKE the time to deal with it.
Prioritise YOU.
No-one else will, I promise you that.
For the sake of you.
For the sake of your loved ones.
And for the sake of everyone who’ll have to help if you don’t take action and need rescuing.
Red light spells danger…please don’t ignore yours.
