Reflecting on ME

Believe in ME with Rhona Barton

Hello and welcome to Believe in ME with Rhona Barton.

This podcast is about all things Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) related!

I'm Rhona and I lived with ME for almost 10 years during which time, I was bed-bound and wheelchair-bound, welcome to my Podcast.

Hello and welcome to Believe in ME with Rhona Barton. In this week’s episode, the last one for 2022, I’m going to be chatting about our Reflections on 2022 whilst living with ME/CFS or Long Covid.

You can head to www.rhonabarton.co.uk/media for more information about me and my story.

Don’t forget that you can review, share & subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you’re listening now.

Ok, let’s jump straight in!

I hope, if you celebrated, you had a lovely Christmas. As 2022 draws to a close, a lot of people begin to reflect on the past year, but what does that actually mean? How do you do it and why?

For people with ME/CFS and Long Covid, there can be a large amount of time to think. Especially if you are going through a flare up of symptoms, so we’re probably very skilled in reflection.

Reflecting on the past year lets us look at the highs and lows and evaluate them in a way that, we hope, will improve our overall performance in the next year. It gives us the chance to feedback to ourselves about the lessons we have learned and think about changes we may wish to make in the future.

But why should you even bother thinking back over the past year? It’s gone, you can’t change it.

What you can do though, is learn from it. You can think about patterns of behaviour and the outcome of that behaviour on your health, relationships, career, finances etc.

Reflecting can give you an overview of the key occasions that have taken place during the year as well as the steps you took at that time and the outcome or reaction. You may also spot a trend in your reactions. This then allows you to consider how you can deal with similar situations in future. Or, even better, it will help you understand WHY you did something.

One key to reflection is doing it in a productive way.

How do you look back at the past year and draw conclusions that could improve your way of living in the new year?

If we start with some basics, you could just grab a pen, a notebook and some quiet time and start writing. Give yourself permission to be honest about it all. Be direct with yourself without judging yourself harshly. Do your best to remove any barriers or excuses that may stop you from putting in the work. Nobody is going to be reviewing your work. It’s not going to go on display anywhere. This is for you. If you choose to share with others, that’s up to you.

If a pen and paper is too much, consider using a voice recording app on your phone or even a video recording app. Whatever works for you.

If you’re not sure where to start, some areas you may wish to consider are:

Your health – physical, emotional, spiritual, mental

Your Family – partner, parents, kids, pets

Love life

Career

Education – formal, informal & personal development

Things you are grateful for

Consider what the best thing that happened to you this year in each area was.

What about your biggest achievement?

What about things that didn’t go according to plan? Think about the things that were out of your control.

Did you start the year with a list of goals? How did you do in terms of achieving them?

I’m not one for New Year Resolutions, but if you are, how did you get on with them this year?

Once you’ve got your highlights for the year noted, take some time to look in more detail at them.

Identify what you have achieved and try to narrow down the steps you took to get to that successful end.

Consider those items you didn’t achieve. Do you still want to try and reach them in 2023? If so, what will you do differently?

List the lessons you have learned, the mistakes you keep making, the behaviours or patters you have followed. Decide what you want to keep and take with you into 2023.

Don’t shy away from any of the negative emotions or experiences. It’s normal for people to have a mix of highs and lows as they go through life so don’t be worried if you have this showing up as you reflect.

Reflection can be hard to get started so don’t try to tackle too much at once. Perhaps just look at one area to begin with and dig into that. The good news is, this is an exercise you can do as often as you would like so there’s no need to rush and get it all done by the end of 2022!

Let’s think about some key take aways from this episode:

1. Reflecting on the year you have had can help you face the New Year with a clearer mind.

2. Breaking the year down into each month and considering your highs and lows for each, could be a more management task that dealing with the full year all at once.

3. You don’t need to share your reflections with anybody else.

4. You don’t even need to reflect if you don’t want to.

That’s it for today everybody. I hope you have found this episode helpful and that, if you choose to reflect on 2022, it has given you some guidance on how to do so.

I’d love to hear how you have found reflecting on your year so feel free to reach out via any of my social media links or my website.

You can still download your FREE copy of my Activity tracker by heading to www.rhonabarton.co.uk/links.

Whilst you’re there, you can head to my media page for more information about me and my story.

Thank you for listening. Don’t forget that you can review, share & subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

I hope today’s a good day for you and all the very best for New Year. See you in 2023! Bye for now.

Don’t forget that you can review, share & follow the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also sign-up for my mailing list by visiting www.rhonabarton.co.uk or join my Facebook group – Believe in ME Community by following the Facebook page (@rhonabartoncoaching).