Category: Resilience
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Are you a crybaby?
Just after the 2024 Olympics, I read an article in a publication called ‘The Atlantic’ which was titled The Crybaby Olympics by Christopher Beam. I now can’t open it without a subscription, but I took a copy of the article’s tagline: “Sports have always had sore losers. But based on…
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Conditioning and pain
Ever heard of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849–1936)? He was a physiologist who did experiments with dogs. Put simply, he would ring a bell each time he served the puppies their dinner. After repeating the routine often enough, he could ring a bell, and the dogs would salivate even if there…
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Nothing is inconsequential… including you
While I was busy living my life over the last 50 years, I generally assumed that the little things were essentially inconsequential… “Don’t sweat the small stuff” and all that jazz. Scraped your knee? Meh… it will heal. Arrive late to a meeting by a few minutes? Accidents happen. Did…
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Swimming for migraines
In Australia, where I live, summer has ended. Based on what I know from previous years, within a few weeks the temperature of the water in backyard pools will go from “balmy” to “fresh”. Another few weeks after that, and the water becomes “nippy” and off limits to all but…
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Do Sh!t Differently (DSD)
My first real job was working as an architectural graduate in a large private firm. And by ‘large’, I mean VERY large by Australian standards: 100 people all working in one place, most of them graduates of the exact same degree I had… dozens of architects all trying to climb…
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What does it mean to be “on the mend”?
When I was a child in the 1970s, I remember my paternal grandmother always being busy. She was either baking cakes, digging in her veggie patch, cleaning the house – or mending… something… anything… everything. More recently, I’ve noticed that we live in a much more throw-away society. Things are…
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The 4 F-words of trauma
This blog post is a very high-level discussion about how people respond to trauma and is hopefully not upsetting in any way, but it IS about stressors, so you may want to give it a miss. * * * * * For a long time when I was growing up,…
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Layer-cakes for healing
Healing requires many different things to take place, often all at the same time. You need to be meeting with doctors to finesse your medication options. You need to be working on your lifestyle decisions to give yourself the best chance to heal in the least toxic environment. You need…
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The three ghosts of Christmas migraines
I’ve never been a huge fan of Charles Dicken’s story “A Christmas Carol” (1843). The cranky old selfish man Ebenezer Scrooge was a horrible central character, and yes, I know that he undergoes an epic character arc which redeems him… but still… what kind of person picks on a child…
The Mindful Migraine 