Miracles

I’ve had tonsillitis this week.  And while it’s not life threatening it’s seriously debilitating, not just the sore throat that feels like you’ve got a brussel sprout stuck with razor blades caught there, but also the crippling flu like symptoms - fever, aches and pains, feeling cold ... blah, blah, blah - enough of my moaning.

After two bed-bound days with all my appointments cancelled and no sign of feeling any better, I went to see a doctor at the emergency clinic and left there last night armed with penicillin.  Twelve hours later, while not back to normal, I am certainly on the road to recovery.

Penicillin is without doubt a miracle. 

I love the story about the many, many scientists before Fleming who had seen penicillin in their petri dishes, however instead of celebrating their discovery they just got cross because their cultures hadn’t grown!  Now of course I couldn’t guarantee the absolute truth of this story, but its sentiment is interesting.  How many of us disregard things because we can’t see their good? 

Now, on a completely different tangent (yes not being able to hold a thought for long is one of other side effects of being unwell) the penicillin got me thinking about the whole idea of miracles. 

By definition a miracle is 1. an extraordinary event attributed to some supernatural agency or 2. any remarkable occurrence (source: Concise Oxford Dictionary) and while penicillin may not be the first it’s certainly the second.

When we start to think about our lives there are just so many ‘remarkable occurrences’ that they cease to be remarkable because we get used to them, we simply take them for granted. And I suppose because they are with us all the time that by definition they stop being miracles because they stop being remarkable, yet somehow that doesn’t feel right.  So because I’m feeling so much better I want to think about and celebrate the forgotten miracles today.  I’m going to take a moment to say thanks for some of the miracles that happened just this morning. You can read on to share my miracles if you like or just take a moment to be grateful for yours, it’s up to you ...

1. running hot water - it’s really, really cold outside, I turned on the tap in the shower to find hot running water - and heated towels from the towel rail - bliss! Thanks Romans for your passion for sanitation and comfort
2. contact lenses - allowing the blind to see again, thanks Otto Wichterle
3. radio 4 - not just the content of the Today programme, but the technology behind it; isn’t it amazing that people in a studio on the other side of London interviewing someone on the other side of the world can be heard in my bathroom in real time? Thanks Hertz, Branly, Tesla, de Moura, Lodge, Bose, Rutherfod, Braun, Popov, Baviera, Marconi, Stone, Fessenden, Fleming, De Forest and those who came bofore and after them and thanks also to Evan, John, Jim and Sarah
4. my children - and lovely cuddles this morning, special thanks to Ian Donald for the ultrasound scanner without which I may not be writing this blog today
5. penicillin - well, you already know that story, thanks again Mr Fleming I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your work!

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Things I learned this week

I did two really stupid things this week...

Firstly, I exploded two tins of condensed milk as I was trying to make toffee.  This had nothing to do with the method and everything to do with me leaving the pot to boil dry. 

The hot toffee covered the ceiling, the walls and the floor as well as the cooker itself.  The force of the explosion was immense smashing a huge hole in the cooker’s overhead filter system. The whole house was full of smoke and the kitchen was moments from catching alight (for some reason the three smoke alarms we have in our house didn’t work). 

It took me about an hour and a half to clear up the mess and three days or so to get rid of the smoke smell.  It was a really, really stupid thing to do and the consequences could have been much worse.

When you do something stupid like this it’s really easy to ask yourself “What the f*** did I do that for?” (and indeed that question did cross my mind).  However, I immediately put it out of my mind and replaced it with the question: “What did I learn from that?”

Why? 

Well question one is limiting and stuck in the past.  It apportions blame which in turn can diminish your self-respect.  Interestingly, it also makes you want to defend your actions (as if there is any defense for leaving a pot to boil dry).

The second question, however, is open-minded and future-oriented.  It makes the assumption that there is something to learn and trusts that you are capable of learning it.  And finally you don’t need to defend yourself, it gives you license to do something different next time.

So what did I learn from the exploding toffee incident. Well, I learned that you shouldn’t leave a pot to boil and then get caught up doing something else.  I learned that our smoke alarms need replacing. And I also learned that good pots and pans are well worth the money (unbelievably it survived good as new).

The other (marginally less stupid) thing I did this week was run the Windsor half marathon with very little training. This is clearly against the advice of any one sane. What did I learn from this: you can do anything if you put your mind to it!  Because while my physical fitness may not have been the best, my mental fitness was good: I relaxed, found my rhythm, listened to the new Hypnogogo and just kept telling myself I could do it. 

Next year I might even do some training!

Things that make you go hmmm!

I’ve been thinking a lot about abundance in the past week as I’ve been working on the mediations and visualisations for Kate’s and my Harvest Abundance workshop on the 9th October (www.unstuck-thinking.co.uk/Harvest_Abundance.html).

My start point for creating abundance is ‘what do you already have (or do) that makes you happy?’  Because surely you only want in abundance that which makes you feel really good.  So in the name of research I made a list of all the things that have made me smile (or even laugh) in the last week.  Interestingly they fell into four main categories:

Doing something that gave me a sense of pride in my achievement
Things that made me feel loved or loving
Things that gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling - that is: those things that are outside of my control but make me feel good anyway
Slapstick, well actually schadenfraude if I’m totally honest!

This led me to the conclusion that either I have an extraordindarily limited range of emotions or that perhaps we don’t need anywhere near as much as we think we do to make us happy.

So my challenge to you this week is to make a list of all the things that make you smile, be grateful for everything on that list and let me know if you can add some more categories of human emotion to my rather stunted list.

Anyway here are the 21 things that made me smile, in no particular order:

1. seeing old friends (love)
2. recording a first draft of the new Hypnogogo (achievement)
3. my husband falling asleep in the pub (slapstick)
4. a complement I received when wearing a new dress (achievement)
5. taking the first positive steps to get a new idea up and running (achievement)
6. meeting a new baby whose Mum I helped with Hypnofertility (love)
7. running nearly 12k on my first run in eight weeks ... and not hurting the next day (achievement)
8. the passion and inspiration of the team who put together international PARKing day at Waterloo on Friday (warm & fuzzy)
9. South Pacific on Friday night ... show tunes and a catch up with a fabulous friend (love)
10. watching my son kick ass at his first ever Tae Kwon Do lesson (love)
11. The Inbetweeners (slapstick)
12. yoga with Cath (achievement)
13. picking vegetables and then cooking them for lunch (achievement)
14. being reminded of how much in love with my husband I am (love)
15. September Sunshine (warm & fuzzy)
16.  knowing it’s less than 100 days to go til Christmas (warm & fuzzy)
17. snoozing with my children on the sofa (love)
18. booking a holiday (love)
19. too much coffee and two successful meetings on Wednesday (achievement)
20. knowing too much detail about people I hardly know on Facebook (slapstick)
21. sitting on the Southbank feeling very lucky to live in a city as magical as London (warm & fuzzy) with the amazing RSD (love)

Thank you for my rich, beautiful, loving and very funny life!

To see old posts for this blog please visit www.unstuck-thinking.co.uk/my_blog.html