{"id":41522,"date":"2019-07-22T15:19:07","date_gmt":"2019-07-22T13:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/estherjacobs.info\/?p=41522"},"modified":"2022-12-29T12:28:22","modified_gmt":"2022-12-29T11:28:22","slug":"can-you-ignore-your-warning-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estherjacobs.info\/en\/blog\/can-you-ignore-your-warning-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Can you ignore your warning light?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can you ignore your warning light?<\/h1>\n

What do you respect more: your car or your body? Let\u2019s dive in to discover the truth.<\/h2>\n<\/div>
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\"Can<\/span><\/div>
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Picture yourself driving a car on an almost empty tank; you\u2019re in a hurry and you don’t have time to get gas. This situation that we all know too well. Then the \u2018low fuel\u2019 light comes on. You are now driving on your reserve fuel.<\/p>\n

How many more kilometers or miles can you drive with the warning light on? Depending on the make of your car it\u2019s usually between 50-80 kilometers. So there\u2019s no immediate emergency; you know you can keep going for a bit. But if your destination is more than 50 kilometers away, you don\u2019t want to risk it: you know you have to get some gas. If you disregard this warning that your car is giving you, there will be a ‘hard stop’ when you run out of fuel. You\u2019ll be stranded. You don’t want to run out of gas: it\u2019ll take a lot of extra time and hassle to refuel and you would reach your destination even later than you would have if you had stopped. You know there\u2019s no \u2018negotiating\u2019 with you car, so you respect the car\u2019s warning and stop to refuel, no matter how busy you are.<\/p>\n

What about our bodies?\u00a0 What do we do when our body’s ‘warning light’ comes on?<\/p>\n

Do we even know what our body\u2019s warning light looks like? Do we recognize the warning signs, when we feel tired or irritated, when we have a headache or can\u2019t concentrate anymore, or when the first signs of a flu present themselves?<\/p>\n

When we should be planning a \u2018refueling\u2019 stop, we often just grab a coffee, a sweet snack or some painkillers\u2026<\/p>\n

When our body\u2019s warning light comes on, there’s no hard stop, like there is for a car. We can always push ourselves just a little bit more.
\nWe think that\u00a0 getting a good night’s sleep will solve the problem. We’ll take care of it after that deadline. \u201cThere\u2019s just no time for it now.\u201d
\nSometimes we can indeed \u2018overrule\u2019 the tiredness and even the onset of flu with some coffee and pain killers. We just push on and after a while the warning light turns off again, or we just don\u2019t notice it anymore.<\/p>\n

But then we might get a migraine, or the flu might really hit us a week later. Our body is trying to tell us something.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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What does it take for us to listen? When will we take these warnings seriously?
\nThere are plenty of stories of people ignoring the \u2018small\u2019 signs that they should slow down, only to be confronted with a big physical setback later on.<\/p>\n

Refueling your body is just like getting gas for your car: it\u2019s required for it to keep functioning. Unfortunately there never seems to be a convenient time to do it.
\nBecause we know there\u2019s no \u2018negotiating\u2019 with our cars, we respect our car\u2019s deadline; and we stop to refuel, no matter how busy we are.
\nWhy don\u2019t we respect our bodies and treat our own warning signs in the same way?<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Reflection: Get to know your body better<\/h2>
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