Days 26-36 The Road to Recovery, C7 Steroid Injection – updated top 10 list to do daily!

Aug 1-10th.  What a ride the past 10 days has been.  We finished our vacation in Colorado with a quick trip to the Black Hills of SD before heading home.  During this time the symptoms of the nerves was all over the place.  Crazy what these nerves do to your body when they are compromised.

On our trip to CO we had a day of golf scheduled with my Dad.  At that time my neck and arm were feeling ok however I was not too sure about golfing and what that would do and most importantly how it would affect the rest of the trip if I aggravated my neck.  So I opted to not golf and let my boys play with my Dad and I rode along.

Dad loves to play golf and they sure had a good time.

I wrote previously about our hike up Uncompahdre Peak.  It was a successful hike to the summit and here are some photos from it.  I would highly encourage you to do this hike if you are up for it!  About 8 miles round trip as long as you have a high clearance vehicle to get you to the trailhead.  My neck and arm did really well on this hike!

Even with the wildfire haze, the views were amazing.  I had very few issues with my neck, the only time it bothered me was if I slipped and jarred it unexpectedly.  That usually hurt for about 5 minutes before the shock subdued.

After this hike we started to prepare for our hike on La Plata Peak which is a 14,000ft peak in the Sawatch Range.  The trailhead is on the road to Independence Pass.  This is a great hike for the novice 14er as there is only two areas where the steep rock affects you.

We talked our kids into doing this one with us.  They love rock climbing, running, rock hopping, etc.  They’ve never been that excited to take on a ten mile hike that will take 8 hours.  They did it anyway and had a blast.  So much fun to watch them excel.  I was really nervous for them as they only had road running shoes to wear and there are some steep dirt trails that can get very slippery.

Once again my neck and arm did really well, here are some photos from this hike:

We did some other hiking as well and again my neck and shoulder did very well.  I even got in a 4 mile run!  Pretty exciting for me.

Once we got home it was pretty much the same, although I was starting to feel the affects of no rehab during the 2 weeks we were gone.  So I scheduled a session with Matt when I got back and the next week with Dave and Bob.

I was invited to play in a golf outing when we got back and I figured this would be a great opportunity to see how golf affects my neck and arm, so I decided to play as I didn’t have to worry about not having fun on vacation.  All in all it went really well.  I had to swing slower and with a shorter back swing, so once I figured out how to make that happen, I was playing relatively pain free.  Woke up this morning and felt pretty good as well.  I need to ice, decompress and do my exercises to keep my body happy!

During my time away and needed to update my top 10 list.  I cannot believe I missed this one very important aspect of my daily routines.  The one that was missing is reading 10 pages a day of a good book that will help you get better.  Jim Rohn always said “you have to work harder on yourself than you do at your job.”  I really believe that and I would not be where I am doing without following this philosophy for the past 25 years.  I read at least 10 pages a day.  I have participated in a weekly study group for the past 11 years where we are all learning to get better.  I am not perfect and I do miss some days and I don’t let that bother me as I know that I will not miss very often.  I also quit listening to the radio about 10 years ago and strictly listen to books, podcasts and other stuff to enhance my learning opportunities.

Here is the updated top ten list:

1. Pray, the power of prayer is amazing!  Pray for others, pray for healing, pray for strength, pray for love, pray to give, pray for forgiveness, pray for grace.
2. Journal – Keeps me in the NOW.  Helps me focus on what I can do and what I can control.
3. Affirmations – Present tense, I AM, personal.
4. Visualizations – I visualize healing.  Visualize the vertebrae separating and making more room for the nerves to heal.  Visualize dominating an ANW course:)  Visualize no stress!  Harmony.
5. Gratitude – This is part of my journaling but now more than ever I am grateful for what I do have.  When in pity party mode, just give of  yourself to others who are even less fortunate and all of the sudden your pity party goes away.  Inside of gratitude is giving: Give of yourself, your time, your talents, your being.  Give however you can.  Give without any expectation of receiving.  Give unconditionally.  You will never regret it.
6. Nutrition- you have to eat well to live well.  Saw this quote yesterday – “You are what you eat ate”.  So basically, when you eat something you have to consider what that ate or where it was grown.  Think about that for a while.  Let it sink in.  Think about all of the food you eat.  Where did it come from and what might it have gone through to get to your mouth.
7. Meditate – new for me but very powerful in relaxing and reducing stress.  Like I wrote about in a previous blog, 90% of neck/back injuries are causes by tension stress and lack of oxygen in the muscles.  Meditation has been proven to help that.
8. Live above the line – Be honest, live with integrity.  Be honest with yourself the most.  You are not as good as you think you are.  I know I am not.  Hire a coach and get someone to tell you what they really see vs a sugar coated version.
9. Forgiveness- Never hold a grudge or resentment towards others as this is the ultimate in stress.  Holding onto any negativity in relationships is not good.  The biggest person to forgive is YOURSELF!
10. Read 10 Pages of a good book a day.  Imagine if you did this for 1 year- that is 3,650 pages.  12-18 good books year.  Now do it for 10 years, 36,650 pages, 150 good books!  What would you learn?  Who would you become having read and learned and implemented.  Start a study group of like minded people that will challenge you and keep you focused on growing.  This could be a bible study as well, that would be very enlightening for you.

Thank you for following, please give me some feedback.

To your health & abundance,

Steve Aune, Ninsurance Ninja

http://www.ninsuranceninja.com

 

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