After getting off to a flying start to 2014 with my blog in January, this month has been a relatively dismal failure. As this is the last day of February, I got up this morning and decided that I must at least post once for the month which in turn got me thinking about why I have dropped the ball so badly.
February in Melbourne seems to me to be consistently the hottest month of our year. Just as the kids return to school following the long summer holidays, you can pretty much rely on the temperature gauge to rise sharply. True to form, we had a series of over 40° days complimented by a number of other days of high humidity. The combination of these conditions are some of the worst for people who live with multiple sclerosis to endure. Exposure to high heat and even more so humidity, frequently leaves people with MS significantly (if temporarily) more debilitated than the general effects of the condition. This certainly is the case for me.
Even so, surely I live in circumstances that are supportive to tolerating any potential ill effects of the summer heat? I feel I was certainly well prepared for the conditions - planned outings had been rescheduled, the cooling arrangements in our home were well thought out and serviced and I know from experience how to structure my day so as to best tolerate the conditions. As you know from some of my previous posts, I am a big fan of planning and subscribe to the view that through good planning and preparation you can achieve almost anything despite the prevailing circumstances.
So if I had planned so carefully on this occasion, why then had I stumbled, deviated from my plan and failed to achieve the objectives that I had set myself in the short term?
Following some reflection I have concluded that it has more to do with resilience than planning. Dictionary.com defines "resilience" in part as "the power or ability to return to the original form, recover readily or spring back". So perhaps what I have failed to do, once the more oppressive days had subsided, was to revisit my plan and get quickly back to those things that were important for me to achieve.
If so, why was this the case?
Is it because I lack discipline and commitment even to things that are important to me?
Is it because I had become distracted and turned my attention to other things that were both less important and less rewarding for me?
Or perhaps I became overwhelmed by the backlog that had accumulated while I was evading both the heat and my commitments.
More reflection… my conclusion is that I am actually quite resilient. Despite the challenges that have confronted me as a result of living with MS for over 21 years, after struggling for a short time with the realities of relapses or other aspects of the condition, I have consistently been able to refocus, take hold of my plan and priorities and get back to life the best way I can and work hard at achieving my objectives.
Recently on a visit to my nuerologist he observed "you've lost weight… is that intentional?". When I replied in the affirmative he asked me how I had gone about it and once I had explained and expressed that it had not been all that difficult he said "ah yes, but you have to have the will". I think that this small example does demonstrate that I am quite determined and have a capacity to overcome challenges that might potentially stop me from achieving my goals.
And so on this occasion what I think I failed to do once the heat and humidity had passed was to consciously regroup, revisit my plan and draw on my resilience to move seamlessly on with my efforts to achieve what I had set out to do. The positive of these circumstances and my blog is that it has given me the opportunity to learn from the experience and hopefully to ensure that next time I am presented with some distractions or hurdles to achieving my plan that I will recognise them for what they are and quickly resume those activities that are most likely to get me to where I planned to be.
I wonder if you have had similar experiences that you can share? It is through mutual sharing that we can learn and build our resilience, enabling us to achieve our goals and aspirations.
Please visit me on Twitter as I share my daily experiences (MS365) this year. You can find me at andy_melb.
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