I’m not exhausted…. I’m re-energizing!
So, this is the weekend after my very last chemo treatment, and I am feeling a bit rough… but not too bad. Last night as I tried my wide variety of things to help myself overcome the steroids and go to sleep, I listened to one of my favorite relaxing podcasts. Now, when I first got my wonderful pink iPod (love the lovely pink iPod!) I spent some time on iTunes finding podcasts I might be interested in. At the time I was dealing with the fact that I had been diagnosed with cancer, and so I naturally found The Stupid Cancer Show, which at the time I didn’t really “get” but which has definitely grown on me as my journey into CancerLand has progressed. A friend told me about a bunch of craft podcasts, especially CraftCast, which I love and find very inspiring, and which somehow led me to CraftLit, which I absolutely adore, because not only do they talk about crafts…. they also read you a chapter of some classic book which you may not have time to read yourself because you are so busy doing your crafts! (When I first tuned in, they were reading Frankenstein. Now they are reading Little Women.) It reminds me of that scene in Gone with the Wind when the women are sitting up doing their quilting or whatever while Mellie reads Charles Dickens aloud.
But oh yeah, what was I talking about? Last night I was listening to the NLP People Building podcast, which I found because I was looking for guided imagery/hypnosis/meditation type stuff. I love this podcast, and not only because of the charming British accent of the host Gemma Bailey. Every episode has some sharing from the current People Building newsletter, answers to people’s emails, some discussion of some aspect of NLP or hypnosis, and a guided hypnosis exercise. Last night’s discussion was about how we can use powerful words and phrases in our everyday speech to help keep us in a “positive” state of mind. She gave several examples, like instead of saying “this is too hard,” say “this is not easy.” (you would think saying “not” would put you into a “negative” mindset, but she claims that our unconscious doesn’t process the negative, so your mind would focus on “easy” rather than on “not”.) Instead of saying, “I can’t do it,” ask “How can I do it?” Various things like that. One that was the most relevant to me in the moment was, instead of saying “I’m exhausted,” say “I’m re-energizing.” So today I am musing on that. It makes sense to me, and actually seems useful as a reminder to do those things that help me re-energize while avoiding those things that keep me tired. So, as you see, I am not sick. I am healing.