One evening, I felt some abdominal pain that I thought was indigestion. Overnight, the pain became more severe, so I called an on-call doctor. I described my symptoms, and the doctor suggested I go to the emergency room right away to get blood tests and a CT scan. I panicked. Where’s my mask? I don’t want to go to a hospital right now. But I got to an ER not far from us, and was diagnosed with diverticulitis, which involves inflammation in the colon. The doctors didn’t know what caused it, but I believe it was my lifestyle — particularly underlying stressors that I wasn’t aware of.
Before this happened, I planned on altering my diet. I was going to focus on my diet as part of my Thrive journey and Microsteps — but that was done for me due to the diagnosis, because I couldn’t eat solid food, only yogurt and liquids. I’m also pretty much a vegan — I eat a lot of fiber and avoid red meat — so I assume my diet has not caused the diverticulitis. It had to be my lifestyle.
I am incredibly grateful for the Thrive app because I don’t know what other circumstances would push me to think about the situation in this way. Without the app, I would’ve just taken my antibiotics, thinking the diverticulitis was purely an issue with my physical health. I’ve since realized that the body will tell you things the mind won’t. So listen to your body. You’ll get more insights from how your body reacts than how your mind responds, because your mind is so distracted by other things. You can fool your mind, but you can’t fool your body.
My other favorite Microstep thus far has been to start every meeting with a question for an individual or the entire team. Some of our team meetings have been really fantastic since we’ve been doing that.