Day 083 – Brink of Healing

Welcome to Day 24!

Meditation has been on my mind today.  Getting that mental headspace and powering through the pile of emails building up.  At work, or anywhere really, the emails on my screen are all that need to be there.  Years ago, went to a training event for time management and the course was about the four Ds and one F, the way I remember it: Do it, Defer it, Delegate it, Dump it, File it.  Specifically, remember “dump it”, during the session as it helped keep the concepts in mind.     

You see, the four Ds of time management were taught to me before while working in Sydney, Australia.  Didn’t move to Brisbane until 1996.  Thought, it was taught during the time when the Keating Government were in office, because the ex-Prime Minister had a “Vision” for Australia.  The vision in metaphor, was teach Australians to “fish”.  From the adage, “[g]ive a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” (Ritchie, 1885).  Basically, teach them to think for themselves.  

The vision’s plan being, if you had a country of smart people it would hold you in good stead in the future; arguing if you can think, you can survive.  The problem is, if you’re in government and have taught a bunch of people to think for themselves.  One of the first things likely to happen is the questioning of the teacher.  The next government tried to take it back to safe and compliant, none of that thinking nonsense for the proles. 

Looks like I misremembered the timing of when the Ds were taught, it turns out the guys who first coined the four D’s of time management were Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Les Hewitt in 2000, with the book The Power of Focus. It should be noted that I have not read the book, just went to the training course.  

Where was that all going? My inbox had been filled with a heap of emails that had been deferred.  It gets frustrating to look at the list and no longer able to delegate, do, or dump them.  Defer from my perspective means you’re waiting on someone else to response before it can be finalised.   On the other hand, there are days when a chunk of the things that were deferred get resolved. My day was productive as some of those older emails were “done” (Do it) and filed.  Of the four Ds, the File action is my favourite 🗃.

It’s funny to read that the four Ds come from a book called The Power of Focus, when I write these posts it feels like the very opposite: it’s meandering the thoughts of mind. When creating a post in WordPress, you need to give the post a title so you can save it.  This is where mapping the intention happens in my head for what the post is about.  The amount of times, the heading has changed because it hasn’t stayed true to intention is quite amazing. Maybe I should read the book(?).

One of the things this healing business does, it makes you tired.  Particularly, if you have also been embarking on a new way of living.  Luckily, work is flexible and working from home provides a wider span of a working day.  Not to do more work, just so arrangements can fit in with family life.  The reason it’s lucky for me is because at lunch, exhaustion hit and unusually I took a nap.  So I set the timer and simply napped.  The afternoon flew by and so many things got done.  Maybe it’s true that productivity increases after you take a break.  Wow!  What an interesting concept 😉 (cheeky sarcasm).

Back to today, the post was going to be about the dangerous state of being on the verge of fully recovering from an injury can be.  For instance, the broken ankle and even the stiffness of the muscles, tendons and ligaments has loosened remarkably well in the forward-backward action.  Even the controlled ankle roll is beginning to loosen.  For most of the time there is little pain and stiffness when walking slowly.  This means there’s a tendency to start doing things normally; why wouldn’t you?  Of course, it sometimes means doing things that could triggers a muscle to respond that hasn’t been worked as frequently as those forward-backward actions.

The importance of performing the exercises dawns all to poignantly when that happens.  Like when putting cat food away on the bottom shelf and trying to squat to organise the cupboard to accommodate the food a little better really hurts.  Luckily, the pain level wasn’t too high, and it was a good reminder to continue the stretches.

So, I can focus on the article and not doze off to sleep a spot of meditation was in order.  This wasn’t an everything’s okay move, because there’s one physio exercise that tested the boundaries of tolerance many times.  Meditation is a move which would test the movement.  

Slowly and carefully, I went to sit in my normal meditation position. Getting there was good, sitting in the position was okay.  Seven minutes into the ten-minute semi-guided Headspace session the pain in the ankle crept to about a three out of ten.  Nonetheless, it crept.  The rule of, if you’re in doubt about the pain level you should pull back.  This, I did.  Undoing the pose held the surprise, it was where the pain existed.  Ouch!!!  Ouch! Ouch! 🙀.  

Looks like there are still areas to work on.  Physio on Saturday, as opposed to two weeks ago when that statement inspired dread – not anymore!

Let’s see what the cards say!