This is me. On a walk. Listening to a Janet Murray podcast #358 ‘13 Ideas for engaging social media posts‘ www.janetmurray.co.uk
In the podcast she mentions how effective asking questions can be on your social media accounts, and she tells a story of when she was at the gym and she saw two trainers outside having a smoke, and the question is – should we expect trainers, therapists, coaches to do what they tell us to do? Do they walk the talk?
Now, the reason I am taking the walk is because a prospective patient phoned me to ask if I ran programmes to help people lose weight. I explained that I didn’t but talked her through my approach to patients wanting to lose weight healthily, about how I give dietary and lifestyle advice etc. So far so good.
The point is this…
This person phoned as I was eating a bowlful of strawberry ice cream with nut and raisin milk chocolate as a side, and I am at least a stone overweight myself.
This gave me pause for thought. How can I give advice to patients that I am not following myself? How can I expect patients to have any confidence in an overweight practitioner giving them dietary advice? The thing is I know what to do. When I listened to the audiobook ‘No Excuses’ by Brian Tracy, I managed to organise my life brilliantly and became very responsible for my own health and work output.
But life gets in the way, we go on holiday, plan a party for parents, have a houseful of visitors and our routine vanishes; poof! But I never got it back – I just kept eating the party food because we still had some leftovers. We had Cheerios left from our visitors, and I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away because they were in date and there was nothing wrong with them. As I ate the last bowlful I realised it was a mistake and that the cereals had gone to waist, instead of having gone to waste. But I still couldn’t throw them away as that was expensive organic goat’s milk in that bowl…
So, three days ago I restarted my morning walks before work, before breakfast, before anything really. I walk for about half an hour by the canal and keep an eye on the blackberries and elderberries so I can pick them at exactly the right moment. Today, I popped on that Janet Murray podcast, and as I walked briskly around the docks I heard her recount the ‘trainers who smoke’ story, and I thought – I am going to walk the walk so I can say – yes Janet, I am walking the talk…
Back at my desk to mark exam papers – feeling refreshed and invigorated.
