Dr. Kenney’s Friday 5 Spot
On Fridays I like to share experiences I’ve had during the week with patients and in my personal life that I’ve found significant. I like to share them in hopes that you might find value in them and have something resonate with you in your life.
Something I learned. My ex-brother-in-law is a mechanic and excellent at fixing everything from cars to household appliances. I on the other hand, am a true novice when it comes to repairing anything other than the human body. However, he taught me that if something wasn’t working, a suitable place to start is by taking it apart, cleaning it, and putting it back together. Doing so allows you to look for any glaring problems while examining individual parts, and cleaning it often removes things that impair performance. This does not guarantee it will work again, but it is an excellent place to begin. As a chiropractor, I also believe in a similar approach to our own health.
If your health is not where you’d like it to be, I also recommend taking it apart, cleaning it, and then putting it back together. The taking apart portion would be examining your habits and processes and deciding what is working and what’s not. This is likely to be easy because we know the things we are doing that harm us. Cleaning things up will mean replacing whatever is not serving us well with improvements that do, such as increased exercise or better nutritional choices. As you begin to employ these new habits, you are actively putting yourself back together and are almost certain to find yourself working better mentally and physically.
Something I believe. I heard someone talk this week about doors in our lives being open or closed. These “doors” are a metaphorical way of describing our ability to reach a certain goal, destination, or achievement. When we want something and it’s not happening, we often feel the door is closed and always will be. We expect that if it were to be, it would occur effortlessly as though we were going through an open door. It is my belief that this is rarely ever the case in life.
I believe what we desire most in our lives is likely to sit behind closed doors. As a result of this opposition, most people will simply give up on those dreams and aspirations. My feeling is that anything can be overcome with the right faith, consistency, work ethic, and attitude. It is not the “door” that is the obstacle, rather, it is our mindset when we encounter that hurdle. If a “door” is closed, keep knocking until someone finally answers or kick it down if you must.
A recent reminder. I saw someone make a very benign mistake this past week. Though no one was upset or hurt by it, the person who made it reacted very poorly. Rather than just laughing off what happened, they went nuclear and ended up going too far. As unfortunate as this was to witness, it reminded me of an important lesson.
We’ve all heard the phrase, “the cover up can be worse than the crime.” This means that rather than admitting fault, people often bury it by behaving far worse. Sadly, we often do this in our personal lives. Rather than admit to an error and say we’re sorry, we sometimes double down and react in a way that makes it exponentially worse. I’ve been guilty of this many times myself in fact. Rather than compound our transgressions, the best policy is just to own it, say, “my bad,” and try and atone for it. People have empathy and are forgiving when they know we are sorry and trying to improve. Conversely, they are far less patient with us when we try to lie, yell, or gaslight our way out of a mistake.
A great concept. Many times, when I’ve coached football, we have found ourselves in situations where things are not going as we’d like or planned. We may be behind, under-performing, or in need of a momentum swing. Often when this is the case, my assistant coach and I will look at each other and say, “We need a play.” This is our way of communicating that it’s time to reach into our bag of tricks and do something unexpected. This is intended to create a spark for us, dis-spirit our opponent, raise our confidence, and turn the tide back in our favor. As simple as this is, I can assure you that sometimes one single big play can completely alter the course of any game if executed properly. Life can work similarly as well.
As people, we often find ourselves in physical, emotional, relational, financial, or work-related ruts. It can feel daunting imagining how to bring ourselves out of these predicaments. A simple place to start is just like we do in football, with one “big play.” Getting up earlier, working out daily for a week, avoiding alcohol for a period, decreasing spending, asking someone on a date, having the courage to ask for an overdue raise, etc. are all examples. It’s not that any of these will completely correct any of your problems, but they are likely to create positive momentum that can lead you toward better outcomes.
Some quotes I Love.
“It will be hard, that’s a fact. But it doesn’t have to be miserable, that’s a choice.” – Brandi MacDonald
“I’m humble because I’ve seen enough people turn into the things they once laughed at.”
“You can achieve anything, you just have to be crazy enough to do it.”