Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
The Timeline of Healing: How Perspective Shapes Health
Time isn't just a dimension we move through—it's a multifaceted tool for transformation and healing. While navigating my cancer journey with a tumor growing on my neck, I've discovered that the popular advice to "just stay present" barely scratches the surface of what we need for true wellbeing.
The past isn't simply a place of regrets to avoid. It offers rich opportunities for closure, forgiveness, and recognizing our growth. When we carefully revisit our history, we can heal emotional wounds, acknowledge responsibility for our actions, and learn valuable lessons that shape our current choices. As my energy becomes increasingly precious during treatment, I've realized how unresolved past relationships and experiences quietly drain our vitality—sometimes without our awareness.
Present moment awareness remains powerful, creating the foundation for reduced anxiety, improved focus, and better communication. I share how this perspective once helped me endure incarceration by viewing difficult circumstances as "just a moment in time." The present gives us the opportunity to accept reality as it is rather than as we wish it to be, which paradoxically creates space for positive change. This acceptance has been crucial in my relationship with family members who've been absent during my health struggle.
Looking to the future provides something essential that's often overlooked in wellness conversations: hope. By setting health goals, visualizing desired outcomes, and embracing change, we create motivation that pulls us forward through difficult times. During painful treatments, glimpsing a future without suffering gives me psychological relief and determination. The future perspective also helps us appreciate the long-term effects of our actions—like the trees I planted thirty years ago that now provide shade and beauty.
The most powerful approach comes from moving fluidly between these perspectives, using each one as needed for different aspects of healing. By breaking free from rigid time frameworks, we access a more nuanced toolkit for health transformation. What time perspective serves your wellbeing right now? Join us for subscriber-only episodes to explore these concepts more deeply, and share this episode with someone who might benefit from a fresh perspective on their health journey.
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Hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and today we're going to talk about perspective and health. And I think that, as I'm looking for answers and looking for truths, these simple, simplistic looking for truths, these simplistic approaches are less and less valuable. And I remember there was an old saying that I can I don't know if it was on a t-shirt or a coffee mug or something and it said you can't change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying about the future. And I think the lesson of that was, you know, to be present and mindful and all of that. And in thinking about it and as I've been studying the routes to the truth and approaches and thoughts and, at the same time, dealing with this pending encroaching tumor on my neck and thinking about things like, wow, am I going to have a voice in a week? Am I going to be able to breathe in a week? All of these things, you know, the future comes up a little bit and, even though I believe, for the most part, being present is very, very important, I want to talk about what the past and the present and the future really offer as tools to find your health and find your truth. And you know, looking at the past, I think there's a lot of value that comes from reflection and learning from experiences.
Speaker 1:Spending time, you know, meditating, doing energy, work and things like that often put you in touch with your past and maybe things that you've forgotten, maybe grief or emotional closure, forgiving yourself or acknowledging that you did a thing or didn't do a thing. You know, we bury so much in our past so that we don't have to be plagued by it, and you know it's definitely a coping mechanism. But at the same time, there's a place where protecting yourself from a trauma and keeping yourself from growing come together. And you know, as you become focused more on growth, um, you end up having to tear some of these old scabs off, and the only way you can do that is by looking at the past. And another thing is you know you can create closure sometimes by going back, and you don't necessarily realize it, but you leave a place open, sometimes for a relationship when it's already passed. Maybe the person has passed on or maybe just both parties have moved on with their lives, but yet there's still this placeholder and, believe it or not, every placeholder takes energy. As I'm learning, as my energy is being taxed and tapped and you realize where it's coming from. Even these words that I'm speaking are taking energy, and that's why I'm being careful and not telling my story over and over again. And as we start to acknowledge the truth about things, well, all of a sudden, where we spend our time becomes more important.
Speaker 1:Recognizing growth is another value to the past. You know, a lot of times when we stay so mindful and present I know I'm guilty of this is I'm very hard on myself and I want to do better. So I just always focused on okay, a little more, a little more, a little more. You know whether it's pushing myself mentally, physically, spiritually, whatever it is. You know, wherever I am, it's always well. You know you need to go more, you need to go more, but once in a while, if you take a step back, you can say, wow, look, how far I've come, and so there's most definitely some value to that Forgiveness and acceptance. You know that's a place that you have to go, to the past. If you're ever going to come to that present moment of forgiveness and acceptance. You have to be able to sit with your memory. You have to be able to sit with your actions and and truly accept, acknowledge the responsibility of your actions and then switch over to the present and say you know, I know this is who I was, I know this is what I did, but here's who I am now. And I really think that there's a tremendous value in being able to step back into the past for moments and maybe finally uh, you know learning lessons and setting goals. You know all the past. You think about mistakes and you think about, you know, errors and things that I did wrong, but really what comes of it is what are you doing about it? Did you learn from it? These are really the place where your growth can come from and Sorry about that, I think that really, the lessons of the past, they translate right away into the present, but they only can come from spending the time in the past. Then we get into the present and it's pretty apparent a lot of the things by staying in the present. Mindfulness is a very important word of today and being present. Being mindful, it's more than just not daydreaming. It's more than you know keeping your eye on the moment, it's engaging, it's focusing your attention, and we've talked about attention as the thing that matters the most. It's funny.
Speaker 1:I received a text message from one of my sisters and I know I've maybe mentioned that you know of all the people that have been supportive in my life, especially as I'm going through this cancer right now. I haven't heard a goddang word from my immediate family, and it's okay. You know, I've had to accept the fact that we don't have a relationship, we don't know each other, and there's a place where you have to own that, and whether it's good or bad or why it happened really isn't the issue. What is the issue is that it is, and I haven't talked to this sister in more than 10 years, I think Maybe I talked to her when my dad passed, I think almost eight years ago. But you know, you think about somebody you haven't talked to in that long of time and, frankly, you don't know them anymore.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting because the way that she reached out to me was like I don't go on social media very often, but I saw something your wife posted and I heard you're battling cancer and, you know, just want to send you love and light, and that was what she had to say and I didn't even answer. I I sent her a little heart because of course I love her, but I don't know her, I don't have a relationship with her and I'm not gonna spend any words and time trying to build something that isn't right now, and not to say there isn't a place for it. I don't have any ill will or negativity. I just don't have energy to put into a relationship that isn't.
Speaker 1:And I think that's where living in the present and being aware of the past and being honest about it, being honest about it, so being mindful, definitely, you know, manages anxiety. You know, if you're not tripping on the past, you're in the now. That's where the zone comes from. You know. They say you get yourself in the zone. Well, it's just being present and you're not thinking about where you were coming from or where you're headed. You're just here, right now and you can have the most dramatic performance if you can get and keep yourself in that place and, of course, all the things that come from managing anxiety, you know you get a better mood, you can lose depression, your blood pressure can get better. I mean it. Just it goes on and on. You know your focus increases and then you create a positive cascade, just like you know bad habits can create a negative cascade you can really get yourself into a positive cascade of one action, opens up a door for another action to be more likely and you know you can really move forward.
Speaker 1:Maybe one of the really important things is your concentration improves as you stay in the present and I think you lose sight of procrastination. I think we procrastinate because we're busy thinking about the future. We don't just get into well, just get up and do it. It's like well, tomorrow, this and that. So easy to stay doing the nothing that you're doing and put off the thing that you should be doing. But when you're living in the now, all of a sudden that's not so appealing. You're like well, I need this right now, or I can't have this other thing, or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:I think your communication improves Because you're not spaced out. How many of us have a conversation with somebody and then you realize at one point this person isn't even fucking listening to me. They didn't even hear you. Can you say that again? You know you're like are you kidding me? I really, and this is people that you know and love, um, all the time it happens. And or, or you know you'll go through and explain a whole thing and they'll come out of it and ask you a question that tells you they didn't hear a thing. And so you know your communication skills can improve dramatically and even the quality of your time. As you're living in the moment, your time passes in a relative way and generally passes pretty quickly, but you're not stuck. You know wishing, wondering, and you're not anxious about what's going to happen. So I think it's really your quality of time improves and maybe accepting the truth, accepting a situation, you know, I know with my day-to-day experience, if I was to put myself into the future, it'd be difficult, because you know I balance between the reality of what I'm feeling and experiencing and you know what I see is my future and experiencing, and you know what I see is my future. But living in a place that hasn't happened yet is really difficult in the sense of you know you're feeling one thing and you're seeing another, and I think that there's definitely a value in just living in the now.
Speaker 1:I know, when I was locked up because I provided medicine for sick people, I remember being in a horrible place where I just was like, wow, I can't believe I'm here and I can't get out of here. I can't leave. If I wanted to. I can't eat what I want, I can't do anything I want. And then I thought to myself you know what, you're just in this moment of time. And then I thought to myself you know what you're just in this moment of time, and at one point you'll be through it and it won't be here anymore. And that was the thing that helped me to get through that. And I just kept saying you know, just, this is a moment in time. Just keep walking, and before you know it it'll be tomorrow, and before you know it it'll be tomorrow and before I know it you'll be out of here. Don't know where we're going, we don't have directions.
Speaker 1:So setting goals and this has to do with health, you know, I know when I started my health journey, I started, you know, by losing weight and I had to look to the future as my future. If I didn't change, this was going to be just like my dad's and I was going to be probably dead before I was 70. And you know, here I am 58. And, aside from this cancer, I'm super healthy and I know when I get through this, I'm going to go back to a very healthy life and it'll be because of looking to the future at that time, and so, most definitely, there's value to that. Your life satisfaction improves.
Speaker 1:I think when you look to the future, you have something to look forward to, you have something that gives you hope, something that you hope for is powerful. I know, in my day-to-day living right now, you know I've got a tremendous amount of pain and discomfort all the time and I just look forward to that moment where that's gone and I can feel it for moments, and even just getting a glimpse of a retreat, which happens from time to time, it's like aha, yeah, it's. It's an amazing experience to to just have a little bit of of insight to what the future can bring. Um, insight into long-term effects of things. That's another, another important element of the future. So when you're looking to the future as to what you're doing, um, you know your actions today.
Speaker 1:You know planting trees, like on my garden, the gardens of hope. 30 years ago I had the insight to just plant trees and at the time you, I, you're never going to see the the value of that, but I knew if I just planted them in time, they would give me what I needed. And now we walk through the garden and you know there's 30, 40 year old trees that would not have been there had we not put them in at that time And're realizing um, you know, we are the future right now. From from those experiences, I think really a big place where the future can come into place is by visualizing what you want to see, so you can put in your mind the thought and the vision of what your future is going to be. And I think not think I know that if you can do that well enough and then you're willing to take the actions that are required, you can bring those things to life. And you know these are proven techniques and all of that.
Speaker 1:And I really think that, including strategic thinking, but to be able to take your thought and your goal, your wishes, and then turn it into a vision that's happening, that's operating in a future place but bringing it to the present, that's some real powerful actions that you can do if you spend some time learning on it and then embracing change.
Speaker 1:I think you know human beings are programmed to avoid change when we can, and yet change is where all positive growth comes from.
Speaker 1:If you stay the same, you know you're getting worse all the time.
Speaker 1:Generally, and in order to find a better place, you have to change, but our nature is to stay doing the thing we did, get in a rut and stay that way, and change is uncomfortable for most of us, and so by looking to the future, we can embrace some of these changes and get to where we're at, and then maybe finally, when you look to the future, you can really connect yourself both to the past and the present and you can learn on it.
Speaker 1:So I know this is we kind of skipped through this kind of quickly and this is more of a bullet point conversation, but I really thought that stepping back sometimes is important and looking at how we see things and, rather than being stuck in one focused way or another, I think to realize the value of all of these can really bring us more truth and ultimately, we can find a better health that way. So I want to thank everybody who supported the show and if you're interested in learning more, there's subscriber only episodes that you can participate and get more dirty details about some of these things, and otherwise, if you think this is an important show, tell somebody about it. That's the thing that will help it to grow and improve its quality and bring more and better guests. And that's happening, folks, so stay tuned. I appreciate all the help. This is Joe Grumbine with the Healthy Living Podcast.
