Failure to thrive

by Personal Development

A while ago, when I was working one of my crazy contract jobs I finally made an appointment for my annual physical. You know how you wait in the room totally bored and impatient about the thousand of things you should be doing? So I was checking out all the miscellaneous info and one thing was a sheet of diagnostic codes. And one of the codes was for something called ‘failure to thrive.’

 

When my doctor came in and asked me how I was feeling I told her I thought I had ‘failure to thrive.’ I’m not sure she thought I was funny, and explained to me that it was actually a newborn diagnoses. And then she asked what was really going on. I went through my litany of always tired, got sick a ton, you know the drill.

 

She proceeded to ask me some questions:

  • Do you get enough sleep? No.
  • Are you eating well? No.
  • Are you exercising regularly? No.
  • Are you drinking too much? Yes.

You get the picture. She was not dismissive and ordered a handful of tests to make sure there was nothing more serious going on. But the basic message was, you know what to do why are you not doing it?

 

I am proud to say that I have gradually started to clean up my act and I’m mostly sticking with it. And someone recently said to me, ‘you never get sick.’ I almost teared up. And I did tell the story to my acupuncturist with pride on all the work I’d done. But it wasn’t easy. And it’s still not.

 

What’s one thing you know if you did it there would be a change in your quality of life?

 

What’s the smallest thing you can do to start?

 

Reach out if you’d like to talk more about how to make it happen in a way that will actually work for you.

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Hi, I’m Dana

I help ambitious career-driven leaders gain clarity and make needle-moving decisions to confidently and purposefully get ahead at work without burnout or sacrificing precious family time.

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