This is lucky episode # 7, where I’ll be sharing not 7 but 8 lucky moments of sudden insight that I’ve had during my life. Think of these as times when a lightbulb went on, inside my head, and forever changed my thinking and behavior, for the better. Some people call these “ah ha” moments. Others call them “lightning bolt” realizations. But however you like to think of them, that’s what we’re talking about today. A handful of life-altering, flash insights that I’ve experienced, which helped me forever live a happier, healthier, or more fulfilled life.
As always, if you have questions or stories to share, send them to podcast@getyourselftogetherchica.com. And you can visit the show notes for links to any of the resources I mention in this episode at www.getyourselftogetherchica.com/podcast.
But first, I want to share what’s bringing me joy right now. Over the past year, I’ve built a pretty extensive backyard bird feeding setup, and after some trial and error, made it squirrel-proof. These days, we are attracting all different kinds of birds, and when people come to my back porch, they just stop and go, “Wow.”
By the time they’ve sat and watched all the action for a few minutes, they’re thinking about setting up their own bird feeding station, when they get home.
I’ll put links in the Show Notes to the specific things I have, out back, which have worked well for me. But of course, if you can get those from a local retailer, rather than Amazon, so much the better. And don’t be overwhelmed by my setup! You can always start with just a few items, and build yours out, over time.
Let’s jump in and talk about some of those flash insights.
Okay. The first is: #1 If you don’t have it, you can’t eat it. This was one of my earliest lightbulb moments, and it came many years ago, from my friend Leslie, who was a Weight Watchers leader. She was listening to one group member beat themselves up about her quote-unquote “lack of self control” when it came to some kind of hyper-palatable junk food that kept luring her back into the kitchen. And then Leslie made this point, which I’ve never forgotten: You know… If you don’t have it, you can’t eat it.
In other words, if there’s a food that you struggle to control your consumption of… whether that’s Oreo cookies or beer… then it’s probably best not to keep it in your house. If you don’t have it, it’s unlikely that you’re going to make the effort to leave home and buy that food… at least, not very often.
If you don’t have it, you can’t eat it… is also true when it comes to easy, yummy, healthful foods. If your goal is to eat more fruits and vegetables, it’s pretty hard to meet that goal, if you don’t have those in your home at all times!
This is related to what the author Gretchen Rubin calls “The Strategy of Convenience,” in her book about habits. As humans, we’re more likely to do something if it’s convenient. And we’re less likely to do something, if it’s inconvenient. I’ll link to a great video about this, in the Show Notes, and also Gretchen’s book, Better Than Before.
For me, this was a lightbulb moment, and from that time forward, I started putting much more thought into what kinds of foods I brought into my home.
Another astute observation that I got from Leslie is that It’s easier to make a good decision once, than to make it repeatedly.
In other words, it’s a lot easier to make the decision once, not to put that item into your grocery cart, than to bring it home into your kitchen and have to make the decision daily or hourly not to eat or drink too much of it.
My second “lightning bolt” discovery happened a few years later. #2 Buy only clothes that you love: Color, Fit, & Comfort. This is one that’s become such second nature to me, that I’d all but forgotten about it, except recently a friend remarked, “Wow, you really know what clothes you like, and what colors look good on you.”
I realized that’s because in my late 20s, I decided to invest what was, at the time, a lot of money to me… I think it was at least a few hundred dollars… into paying for a style consultant. She spent several hours with me, looking through my closet, asking me questions about what pieces I loved and why, and which things I hated, and why.
Ultimately, we identified that my style was comfortable, contemporary, and whimsical. Comfortable because I like my clothes to feel good against my skin. I’m very sensitive to anything feeling scratchy or tight, or even being a little too hot or too cold. I don’t have the patience to wear anything like a high heel or even a wool sweater. So if it’s not comfortable, I don’t buy it.
Contemporary, meaning that I like to feel reasonably in-style, although I prefer classic styles. I avoid anything too trendy, stuff that isn’t going to stick around for very long. If I buy something, I want to feel confident that I can wear it for years. And while I like vintage pieces, they have to blend well with modern stuff, or I feel like I’m wearing a costume.
And finally, I like a little hint of whimsy. That could be an enamel pin, or a little charm necklace with a fortune cookie, or a bright colored blazer, or an unexpected combination like ripped jeans worn with dressy shoes.
She also showed me examples of other styles, like romantic or tailored or power professional, that really, really don’t resonate with me. Now, when I see something that looks like those types, I know better than to even take it off the rack.
The same style consultant also looked at my skin, and hair, and eyes, and identified what colors and shades make me look my best… and which ones fall flat.
She gave me permission to stop buying clothes in black and beige, or even in colors I like, such as mustard yellow, because those colors just don’t do anything for me. She showed me that almost any shade of blue or green makes me look great, as does peach and some shades of pink, plus colors I’d rarely worn before, like brown or charcoal or a dusty red.
She also validated some suspicions I had, about what cuts of clothing looked better or worse on me. While I love the style of the roaring 20s, you’ll never catch me wearing a drop-waisted dress, because it just doesn’t do anything for me.
So although I will probably never love to shop for clothes, when I do, 99% of the time, whatever I buy, I love it and I wear it.
Okay, lightbulb moment #3 When you’re feeling tired or like you might be getting sick… UNPLUG & REST.
Everyone knows that, right? But it wasn’t until I worked myself to the bone, and gave myself a case of shingles, that I realized it.
Our bodies send us signals, all the time, that we need some rest. Especially that feeling of “I think I might be coming down with something.” But most of the time, we try to power through it.
Often we think, No! I can’t get sick now! I’d better push myself to get even more done, because if I am getting a cold or the flu, I’ll get so far behind! That’s certainly what I always used to do, and I got sick multiple times each year, so it just seemed like I had no other choice, anyway.
When I got shingles, though, I kept noticing that each time I started feeling well enough to work again… I’d start working, and then see the symptoms flare back up! That was particularly scary, because I had shingles in my right eye, and there’s a risk that you can lose your sight, if you don’t rest and let your body heal. So it forced me to pay attention, and see the link between rest and healing.
From that time on, when I start to feel even the slightest hint of “I think I might be coming down with something,” I immediately unplug from work and anything stressful, and I rest.
I lay on the couch, and watch silly TV, and drink smoothies, and eat healthy comforting foods… and sure enough, the next day, I almost always bounce back to full health… even while people around me seem to be falling ill.
It used to be hard to make myself do that, when I was well enough to keep going. But now, I almost never get sick, beyond that initial twinge of “Am I coming down with something?” Even when I’m in close proximity to others who have a cold or the flu or COVID. It’s been years since I came down with anything. And I credit a lot of that to unplugging and resting, at any signal that my body is trying to fight something off. Plus just, in general, respecting my body’s need for sleep.
And speaking of illness, my big insight #4 What happens in the mind, can create pain or sickness in the body. Now, on some level, we all know this. If you’ve ever experienced sweaty palms or an upset stomach, right before you had to have a difficult conversation… you’ve experienced a very mild version of what’s called Somatization. Somatization, or somatic illnesses, are the unpleasant physical (or bodily) expression of stress, trauma, or emotions. These are created through the mind-body connection.
It’s not the same thing as being a “hypochondriac,” because the pain and symptoms are real: they can hook you up to all kinds of machines and do all kinds of tests that will confirm, yes, you actually are feeling pain in your body, right now. There are physical things happening in your body, cascades of events that we’d expect to cause pain. It’s just that the root cause, the trigger, is what’s happening inside your mind.
This one goes way back to childhood for me.
Every year, at the start of summer and right before Christmas, I had to do something that was very stressful for me. And every year, right on schedule, I would come down with some kind of kid illness, right then. Usually there was a fever, along with either a stomach bug or the flu.
Those two annual illnesses continued to strike, every single year, well into my teen years.
Now, I was sick a lot as a kid, so I never made the connection. But my dad did. And he pointed out to me, when I was older, “Have you noticed that you’ve always gotten sick, twice a year, right around the time when you used to have to [do that stressful thing]?”
Immediately, I saw the truth in what he was saying. In fact, I had continued to have those two annual illness bouts, Christmas and summer, for almost a decade after I no longer had to do the stressful thing anymore.
And what was even more striking was this: From the moment he made that observation, the pattern ended. It was almost like my mind had been triggering very real illnesses in my body, and once I’d caught on to the trick, my mind lost the power to do that.
But. Over the next few years, I started having a series of mysterious illnesses. First stomachaches. Then headaches. Then dizzy spells, Then wrist pain. Then back pain.
Again, these were quote-unqoute “real” illnesses. Doctors could show me, with x-rays and other tests, that there were physically documented symptoms. It wasn’t “all in my head,” like people often say.
However, each time we’d come to the end of the illness exploration process, where they’d rule out serious stuff and ultimately prescribe things like Advil, rest, exercise, and managing stress… I’d realize, this is exactly where this conversation ended before, with a different illness. And not too long afterward, whatever ailment was bothering me, would usually just mysteriously go away… only to be replaced by a new medical mystery, to try and sort out.
Finally, my doctor said, Rebecca. Every time you come in here, you seem super stressed at work. And it seems like you went through some fairly traumatic stuff in your childhood, although you don’t seem to see it that way. (The loss of a sibling, some sexual abuse, volatile situations where you felt like you were walking on eggshells...) And my doctor said, so I can’t help but point out that there is one common denominator to all of the very real illnesses you’ve come to me with: Study after study links these conditions to stress, anxiety, or trauma.
She explained that when we experience hard things, and we don’t have the tools to cope with those things, we often just shove it aside and move forward with life. But our bodies start objecting, in strange ways. I was so fortunate to have a doctor who was willing to look at the bigger picture. One who was brave enough to have that conversation with me, instead of just writing me another prescription or referral to another specialist.
Ultimately, I went to see a psychologist who specializes in biofeedback therapy. What happens in biofeedback, is they hook you up to several different machines, one that measures your heart rate, another your skin temperature, and another your brain waves.
So on day one, he hooked me up to all these machines, and he asked how I was feeling. I shrugged and said, I dunno, pretty normal, I guess? He said, ok… your skin temperature is 72.
I asked, What does that mean? And he said, well it seems like you’re under a lot of stress right now. I asked what a normal skin temperature was, and he sort of paused and said, Well, normal would be about 98.6.
He explained that looking at my skin temperature, and my heart rate and my brain wave patterns, he would expect that I was currently feeling extremely anxious and stressed right now.
In biofeedback therapy, they talk with you about your life, from ordinary to stressful topics. And they teach you, essentially, how to breathe in a way that lowers your stress response. (Basically it’s kind of a medicalized form of meditation).
All of those machines they have, the ones that go ping, they play music for you. If you’re breathing in a way that calms your stress levels, then the music gets… well, sort of happier? And if your stress levels start to go up, the music tones change, or as I discovered, when he asked me how a project was going at work, the music will also just go dead silent.
After a few months of practice, my baseline numbers reached normal. And to my surprise, I realized that when I get very upset or anxious, I feel terrible! Physically. My hands feel like ice, my heart starts pounding, my stomach starts churning.
But the thing is, I had lived with chronic stress and anxiety for so many years, I didn’t realize it wasn’t normal to feel that way all the time! Biofeedback therapy helped me to make the connection between my mind and my body, and it finally ended that cycle of getting stress-related illnesses.
These days, I’ve actually identified that the one physical illness I do have occasional bouts of (diverticulitis, an extremely painful inflammatory stomach condition that I’ll talk more about later on)... guess what the #1 most likely trigger for a flare-up is? Yep. A very stressful situation or high-anxiety experience.
So now, I know that when I start feeling any mild, physical stress symptoms, I need to press pause on whatever I’m doing, and go breathe and/or otherwise manage what’s going on in my head. Before it goes after my body.
There’s so much more I could say about biofeedback therapy, like how it taught me how to get rid of a tension headache, in the moment! But that’s probably enough on that topic for today. I’ll link to a helpful article in the Show Notes, about somatization, because if you just Google it, you’ll mostly pull up orders about severe psychiatric disorders, rather than the more common, everyday forms.
Before we get to the rest of the list, I wanted to tell you what I’ve been reading lately. It’s a book by Matt Bell called, Refuse to be done: How to write and rewrite a novel in 3 drafts.
I spotted this on a side table at my best pal’s place, when we were having our Thursday morning coffee. And, dear friend that she is, she loaned it to me to read, before she’s even had a chance to crack the spine.
It has reinvigorated my novel editing, and brought new inspiration to my writing. So if you’re a would-be novelist, I highly recommend picking up a copy. I’ll link to it in the Show Notes.
Okay, time to share my lightning bolt insight #5 Eating mostly whole food, plant-based foods yields a longer, healthier life. How’s that for a controversial statement? Actually, it’s a lot less controversial than it used to be, now that there’s been so much research and attention into Blue Zones in the world, where folks have remarkable health and longevity.
But my introduction to the idea that the more whole, plant foods you eat, the better your health tends to be… came from my best friend, who has been a vegetarian slash sort-of-vegan for many years.
On her recommendation, I read the book How Not To Die by Michael Greger. I found his arguments generally fairly convincing, and I decided to try eating whole, plant-based foods for 30 days.
Well. I saw a huge difference in my health and energy. Even my skin looked better. But most striking was tht, for the first time ever, I realized that I had been living with mild nausea and stomach pain, my entire life. And since it was always there, I’d never entirely noticed it… unless it flared up during a stressful event.
(I had experimented with eliminating lactose from my diet before, but it seems that dairy in general is a pretty big trigger of stomach issues, even without the milk sugar, lactose.)
A lot of my pain was caused by diverticulitis, which if you’ve never experienced, is basically when little pockets called diverticula have formed inside your intestines, and then they get inflamed and infected, which feels like someone is stabbing you repeatedly with a knife. It’s unfortunately becoming more and more common in younger adults, and it’s linked to our poor diets in the Western world, specifically to diets that are low in fiber and high in animal foods.
I’d had a miserable time with it for years. But after 30 days on a whole food, plant-based diet, my symptoms resolved entirely. I felt so great, after those 30 days, that I kept going and never looked back.
And in fact, my partner joined me not too long after that, because his cholesterol numbers dropped by about 20 points in less than a year, just by eating more plant-based meals when we were together!
Now, five plus years later, the only time I struggle with a diverticulitis flare-up seems to be when I have two things happen at the same time. (1) A very stressful, emotionally charged situation of some sort, and (2) having recently indulged in too many foods that are neither whole foods, nor plant-based. I’ve learned the hard way to keep a close eye out for myself, so that I can avoid both of those factors colliding at the same time.
As I grow older, I’m starting to see an ever-widening difference in health and energy and vitality, between people in my life who consistently eat more whole, plant-based foods, and those who haven’t made that a priority. Especially as folks move into and through middle age, it seems to make a big difference.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m not militant about this topic. I treat myself to the occasional egg or some fresh seafood, now and again, especially when we’re traveling. But my day-to-day diet is primarily whole foods, plant-based, and I suspect that it probably always will be.
This brings me to insight #6 You’ll either be a young 50 or an old 50.
I’m not sure when I first noticed this one, but it’s something that I’ve heard others remark upon, too. Sometimes people focus on age 40, or 45, or 55, or 60, but somewhere into mid-life, we all seem to notice that folks diverge rapidly. Either you remain full of energy and in good health, or things start going downhill, really fast.
Now, none of us can control this entirely. If you lose a child, or you go through some other incredibly difficult experience around these ages, it always seems to take its toll on your body. (No one is shocked when a super stressful event turns someone’s hair suddenly grayer, right?)
But there’s a lot we can do, in our 20s and especially our 30s and 40s, to care for our bodies and sustain that good health that’s so easy to take for granted. There comes a point, and for most of us it seems to be in your late 30s or early 40s, where your body very clearly doesn’t bounce back quite as fast as it once did.
For example, think of how many days a hangover lasts in your 20s vs. your 40s! Or how as a teenager or 20-something, you could probably jump right back in, after you missed a few weeks or months of workouts. Give it another few decades, though, and that gets harder and harder to do without injuring yourself.
So for me, somewhere around age 35, I started really committing to my health, and cultivating and sustaining a way of living that I could carry forward, into my future.
That brings us to my “ah ha” moment of last year, #7 It’s just money. You can always make more of it. If whatever you’re doing for a living is stressing you out, making you miserable, or taking its toll on your health… do something different.
When you find yourself wearing golden handcuffs, staying in a job or a life situation that’s not right for you, because you don’t want to walk away from the money… it helps to ask yourself, what is all the money for?
You’re trading your life’s energy for money. We all do. But there are an infinite number of ways that a person can make a living. There’s no reason to stick with one that makes you miserable. And if you’re telling yourself that you’re doing this to sustain the lifestyle your kids or partner loves… well.
My question for you would be: Do your kids or your partner actually want you to be this miserable? Probably not.
Okay, my final “ah ha” realization is for those moments when I feel stuck, unsure, and afraid to move forward. #8 Clarity comes when you’re in motion.
A body in motion stays in motion. But when you start walking, the path becomes clear.
So if you’re unhappy with your job, or some aspect of your life, don’t just sit there and wait it out. Don’t tell yourself, I’ll act when I know what to do. Don’t spin your wheels, keeping yourself busy with activities and distractions that dig you deeper into where you are.
Instead, take small, experimental actions. This is what will bring you insights and wisdom and opportunities. Clarity comes when we are in motion. So start moving.
Well, on a related note, it’s time to share what blew my mind this week. Sometimes, when I’m eating breakfast, I like to listen to a podcast or a talk about something related to my day. This week, I found a great talk by Cara Bradley, called “Start Before You Are Ready.”
It was all about how, whatever it is you want to create or change or achieve, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to start before you feel ready. I’ve thought of this talk, several times, in the past few days, so I wanted to share it with you.
