If you want to work well, you need to take time for play, rest and relaxation. So if the daily grind is getting you down I can recommend an excellent medication-free treatment… a good pampering!

To be classed as a good pampering, you need three things:

1. Indulge and excite the senses

It must offer something out of the ordinary for your taste, touch, smell, sound or sight – if it indulges more than one all the better!

2. Bring about a quietness of mind

You may be contemplating the experience, hardly thinking anything at all, or calmly considering what has been happening in your life recently. In any case your mind is quietly in the moment, it is not distracted or excited by some external frenetic activity.

3. Generally go it alone

This is related to the previous point. Of course there may be other people around, but generally achieving quietness of mind requires personal solitude – no talking or distractions from friends.

Here are some of my favourite pamper suggestions:

• Oh la la! Visit a day spa for massage and/or beauty treatment.
• Best kept secret… Select some delicious home treatment products (body scrub or lotion, pedicures, facial – there are so many to choose from now!) and dedicate two hours to a slow personal pampering.

• Oh la la! Treat yourself to high tea at the finest tea house you can find.
• Best kept secret… Select a fine tea from a specialty store and enjoy creating your very own tea ritual – with a slice of sweet cake.

• Oh la la! Visit a forest or natural sanctuary – stay overnight and wake with the birds.
• Best kept secret… Find a shady spot in your local park and laze away the afternoon.

• Oh la la! Set out for a day drive with no destination – get lost and enjoy the journey!
• Best kept secret… Jump on your local train, ferry or bus and see where it takes you.

Keep it slow!

And remember that none of these can be hurried – set aside the whole day and let everything else fade into the background.

Share your favourite pampering tips in the comments

Rebecca

Struggling to meet unreasonable commitments and expectations is exhausting and demoralising. Yet frequently these demands are self-imposed: it might seem like your todo list driven by the needs of others but, if you review it honestly, you will see that the long list is borne of your own expectations and feelings of obligation.

Last week I detailed step one in my process for ‘cutting back’ my commitments: Capture all your commitments on paper.

Now for step 2 and 3…

2. How much time do you really have?

You now have a complete list of all your commitments: everything to which you have dedicated some level of psychic energy.

Now you need to get real about how much time you actually have for all this stuff. There are only 24 hours a day and 7 days in a week – this is non negotiable.

Neil Fiore in The Now Habit details how to use the unschedule methodology to ensure that you have guilt-free relaxation time and will, therefore, use your work time more productively.

For my purpose you need only complete step one of the unschedule process which is to draw up a weekly timetable and all your non-negotiable activities. This includes absolute must-do activities (like sleeping and eating) and leisure/lifestyle activities (like exercise and socialising).

The kind of activities you list in your unschedule include:

• daily must-do activities such as sleeping, eating, commuting
• other routine events such as medical appointments
• health activities such as gym or walking the dog
• quality time (that you enjoy) with loved ones / friends such as dinner or a picnic
• relaxation / pampering time to read a book, get a massage

You may be thinking, surely dinner with friends or getting a massage are luxuries that I only get after I have attended to my todo list? Absolutely not!

Firstly, these types of activities are absolutely essential to your ongoing mental, emotional and physical well-being and there should be time for them in your schedule each week. If you don’t ‘have time’ for some leisure and fun, then that is a sure sign you are doing too much.

Secondly, if you defer fun until you have finished your todo list then you will never get around to having fun, and you will continue to feel overwhelmed, overloaded and overworked. It is a vicious cycle!

Note: Neil Fiore’s unschedule is intended to help you be more productive with your work, so you only schedule non-work activities and then log your work time after you have completed at least one-half hour of uninterrupted work on a project.

For this exercise we are attempting to work out how much time you have for your personal commitments. If you have an office job then the hours of your shift are pretty much a non-negotiable ‘routine event’ which is not available for you to use for personal commitments. So you will need to add in, for example, a ‘work’ appointment from 8:00am – 1:00pm and 2:00pm – 6:00pm each weekday.

Having completed your unschedule you will realise that you may only have a couple of hours a day (perhaps longer on the weekends) for other commitments (by the way, Neil Fiore recommends you have at least one full day a week for recreation and small chores).

We now know just how limited our available time is, but we still think that all the items on our lists are equally important. How do we decide what to cut?

3. Is it something you really want to do?

Thinking ‘I have to do this thing’ or ‘I should do this thing’ or ‘I am a bad person if I don’t do this thing’ is a terrible way to motivate yourself. I have written before about creating the right frame of mind for positive action.

You need to make a deliberate choice about what you want to do, based upon a genuine consideration of all the options, an understanding of the benefits and costs, and an acceptance of the consequences of your choice. That might sound all too calculated and clinical, but, most of the time, we make can make these judgments very instinctively.

Look at each item on your list and ask yourself:

• Why is this item on my list?
• Did I make a positive choice to do this thing?
• If so, why was it important to me?
• Is it still important to me?
• Does it support one of my major life goals?
• What will happen if I don’t do it?
• If it is a promise I have made, can I renegotiate?
• Is this something I want to do in the future which I can add to my someday/maybe list?

As you do this review, please remember the first and second of the ten commandments for reducing stress:

1. Thou shalt not be perfect, nor even try to be
2. Thou shalt not try to be all things to all people

If attending another one of Uncle Wayne’s mind numbing monthly slide nights fills you with dread, why do it? Do you really believe you are contributing to positive family relations? If you refuse you may hurt some people’s feelings, but you cannot be responsible for the happiness of others. More likely, however, people aren’t even aware of the ‘sacrifice’ you are making for them and, moreover, if they were they would tell you not to bother. I think we tend to vastly overestimate our own importance. (Of course, this doesn’t mean you have to tell Uncle Wayne he is a terrible bore, there are always better ways to handle such circumstances.)

Conclusion

There are a lot of productivity techniques which, when applied well, will improve your efficiency and enable you to get more done in a day. More importantly, by being aware of what your choices, and cutting back on those activities which do not contribute to your longer-term goals, you will automatically find more time to devote to the things which are really important to you.

The bonus is that when you are working on things that are truly important to you, when you have a clear vision of why you are doing what you are doing, the work will seem more like a joy than a chore!

Good luck with your cutting back campaigns!

Rebecca

At any given time we don’t have a clear idea of what all this stuff is, nor do we know if we have enough time to actually do it all. But we just keep going in the hope that somehow we will reach an ‘end’. But we won’t. Our efforts, and our failure to reach this illusive ‘end’, will only exhaust, frustrate and depress.

This all sounds pretty grim, but we can do something about it! And the answer is not work harder or longer – the answer is to cut back on your commitments.

Last year I initiated my own cutting back campaign, and this week’s Zen Habits post “A guide to cutting back when you feel overwhelmed” prompted me to share my experience. As Leo explains in his post, overloading ourselves leads to stress (which is very detrimental to our physical and emotional well-being) and also decreases our effectiveness in achieving our goals.

We need to take care of ourselves, and use our energy wisely to achieve the goals which are important to us. Usually, doing this involves cutting back. The key to cutting back, as far as I am concerned, is to ‘get real’ about your own life.

Get a clear and honest perspective of what you are doing now, what you are capable of doing and what you want to do. Once you have this, it will become obvious what you need to cut. I am going to outline the three step process which helped me get a better perspective.

1. Capture all your commitments on paper

David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system contends that we all have a lot of ‘stuff’ bouncing around in our heads (according to Allen, stuff is: “anything you have allowed into your psychological or physical world that doesn’t belong where it is, but for which you haven’t yet determined the desired outcome and the next action step”).

As long as we allow this to continue, our mental energy will be consumed with keeping all these balls in the air and we will forever have the feeling that there is something we have forgotten, or something we should be doing that is more important than what we are doing right now. Sounds kinda overwhelming, huh?

GTD instructs us to capture all this stuff – that is, write it down. Until you make this list you will not have a complete picture of what you have committed yourself to do. And while all this stuff remains a big, undefined blob you will have no control over it and no ability to do anything about it.

So, to begin your cutting back campaign you need to make a list. Include EVERYTHING you are currently doing or trying to do. This includes big goals (like go back to university), small goals (like exercise every day), things you said you would do (like help out at a charily stall), and mundane tasks (like clean windows).

For the purpose of this exercise, if something is on your mind, if it is already on one of your many to do lists or if you keep meaning to get to it, then you have committed mental energy to that task and you need to write it down whether or not you beleive you are truly ‘committed’ to it.

Use David Allen’s own Trigger List to make sure you have captured all those niggling to-dos from all areas of your life.

In next week’s post I’ll cover the final two steps in my cutting back campaign.

Rebecca

IBD is an inflammatory disease and when we are flaring (and sometimes even when we are not) our digestive system is inflamed and/or ulcerated. This places our entire system under stress, as our body works hard to heal itself. In addition to whatever medications or treatments we may be receiving, we also need to give our bodies the best chance of healing by supplying it with good fuel (diet) and by focusing our available energy on the priority of getting well (by sleeping, resting and reducing external stress). So here are some tips on sleeping your way to better health…

How much sleep do you need?

I have always been someone who works best after at least eight hours of sleep, and if I am not well (because of IBD or the flu or whatever) I will often need more than eight hours. The amount of sleep people need varies – there are those that can function fine on a little more than five hours sleep and others that need much more!

This article from WebMD uncovers the source of the common recommendation for eight hours sleep per night, but also says that:

How much sleep you require depends on several factors including:
* Your inherited genetic need
* Your sleep hygiene (those daily activities you control such as drinking coffee, smoking and exercise)
* The quality of your sleep
* Your 24-hour daily cycle known as the circadian rhythm

For example, smoking, drinking, and exercise can affect your sleep dramatically. What you actually do in bed (like reading or watching TV) and how much exposure to light you have (looking at that bright computer screen ’til midnight) will also significantly alter both the quality and quantity of your sleep. They all interact to determine how long you need to sleep to wake up feeling refreshed and remain alert throughout the day.

The key is whether you wake up feeling refreshed and remain alert during the day. WebMD offers some advice on working out how much sleep you need which boils down to listening to what your body tells you. If you are exhausted every morning then you probably need more sleep (assuming you are taking care of yourself in all the other usual ways).

How to establish good sleep patterns

In the productivity and happiness blogosphere there is strong support for the benefits of being an early riser. The idea being that most people are most alert and productive in the mornings and that getting up early is an ideal way to reclaim quality time for important activities (whether that is exercise, work or simply starting your day in a calm state of mind).

An important part of this discussion is how to establish good sleep patterns which support early rising. Again, most people will recognise that not all sleep is equal in quality. If you stay up until 2am and then sleep through until 10am, it is likely that you won’t feel as good as you would if you had gone to bed at 10:30pm and woken at 6:30am. I know I don’t. Anyone who has (perhaps in university / college) experimented with unusual sleep patterns (or watched others go nocturnal) will also know that it doesn’t work well in most cases.

Steve Pavlina offers some detailed thoughts on how to be an early riser and still get the right amount of sleep in his two articles on the subject. Amongst some other good advice he suggests keeping a strict and regular wake-up time and then letting your body tell you when you need to go to bed at night. He warns that:

… to do this correctly requires a mixture of awareness and common sense. If you’re doing stimulating activities before bed, you’ll be able to stay up later and stave off sleepiness for a while… I can easily stay up later than my normal range of bed times if I work, go out with friends, or do other stimulating activities.

But this isn’t what I meant by noticing when you’re sleepy. I mentioned the test of not being able to read more than a couple pages of text without losing concentration. This doesn’t mean waiting until you’re about to drop from exhaustion.

The onset of sleepiness I’m referring to is when your brain starts releasing hormones to knock you out. You actually feel yourself getting drowsy. But in order for this to happen, you need to create the right conditions for it to occur.

That is, you need to be relaxed and winding down for the evening, more on that below.

If you are waiting until you are sleepy before you go to bed (rather than having a hard and fast bedtime), you might like to give yourself a reminder time, such as 10pm, to check how you are feeling. Otherwise you can get distracted with TV or the internet and before you know it 11pm has passed and you are dreading that 6am alarm!

Sleep better and wake up ready to go

Here are some top tips from around the web.
When preparing for bed, WiseBread recommends:

• Wind down for 30 minutes before you try to sleep (with a book or music – switch off the TV or computer as the flickering light can overstimulate and keep you awake and/or reduce the quality of your sleep).
• Check the temperature, you want to be cool but not too cold!
• Go to the bathroom, and don’t drink anything in the hour before you try to sleep.
• Spray your sheets with a relaxing scent.

Ravi Vora suggests being prepared to sleep happier and wake up happier:

• Clear your mind of today’s worries (what is done is done, and you’ll be better prepared tomorrow if you get a good night’s sleep).
• Lay your clothes out the night before and plan your morning so you won’t be rushed or stressed by unexpected delays.
• Have something to look forward to (this is a good productivity tip too – have at least one thing that you know will make you feel good such as lunch with a friend, or picking up a favourite magazine or taking a walk in the park).
• Listen to your favorite song as your alarm clock.

Finally Lifehacker offers some quirky advice on supplementing your sleep:

• Master the power nap (10 benefits of power napping and how to do it )
• Take a Caffeine Power Nap (try a cup of coffee followed by a quick 15-minute nap to reboot your brain and get you going again)

And don’t forget the final tip we all know but may not like to hear!

• Exercise to enhance sleep (best time to exercise is morning or afternoon – not before bedtime!)

Happy snoozing!

Rebecca

Why do we fail?

In The Now Habit, Neil Fiore explains that our resistance to action, our procrastination, is not due to laziness or lack of discipline. He says that there is always thinking and reasoning (although we may not be conscious of it) directing our behaviour. If we can be more aware of this thinking then we can recognise when it is flawed, and we can develop strategies to overcome negative thinking. Fiore explains much more than this, but let’s apply this simple summary to the matter of starting a new exercise program.

On the surface we might make excuses like ‘I don’t have time’ or ‘it’s not important’. We discussed last week that making a conscious choice to change a behaviour will help overcome initial resistance. But under the surface we may be avoiding our exercise program because we are afraid: we have failed before and don’t want to fail again; we think that we are too unfit and it will be too hard; etc. If we identify these thoughts and examine them objectively we would see that they are flawed: our success or failure is completely determined by our behaviour (which we control) and we can only get fit by exercising (which can be made as easy as we need it to be to start).

Leo Babauta at Zen Habits suggests
that the main obstacles to establishing a regular exercise habit are:

• We make it too difficult for ourselves by starting with big goals that are hard to sustain
• We try to tackle too many goals at once and cannot maintain the necessary focus
• We don’t give ourselves good motivators (such as keeping a log, joining a group, rewarding success)

So how do we succeed?

After creating the right frame of mind, you are ready to practice your good health habits. Here are my top tips.

1. One achievable goal

You want to maximise your chance of success. Zen Habits advocates tackling one goal at a time so that you can give that goal your full focus. You should also make your goals achievable according to your circumstances. If you are sick then it might be a big achievement to simply get out of bed and take a walk around your yard. The important thing is you are establishing a habit (ideally at the same time each day) and you can build on this as you get stronger.

2. Measure your success

Keep a log of your success and feel proud when you stick to your resolution. Most importantly, don’t berate yourself if you slip or miss a day. Negative self-talk will only set off a cycle of negativity and further avoidance as we discussed last week. Remember that each moment is an opportunity to make a different choice. As in now. And now. You get the idea.

3. Stop thinking

That’s right. You’ve considered all your options and made a positive choice as to what you want to achieve. And you have established specific, measurable goals which support your vision of success. You did all this with your ‘good’ brain – the positive, rational, motivated brain.

However, the brain you have at 5:30 am when the alarm reminds you it’s time for a bike ride, or the brain you have during that mid-afternoon low when your chocolate craving hits maximum, this is your ‘bad’ brain. And you must not engage in any dialogue with your bad brain. Your bad brain is very cunning and will offer all sorts of reasons why you shouldn’t go for a ride today, how you will catch up tomorrow, how one day won’t make a difference. And you’ll argue valiantly but eventually be convinced by the very logical reasoning of your bad brain.

The trick is to create very specific instructions for yourself (with your good brain) and then follow those instructions automatically with no further discussion. If bad brain starts up don’t even engage in debate – go into auto pilot and get the job done.

4. Make it regular and make it fun

It is easier to establish a habit if you do it everyday. Give yourself a goal – exercise everyday for the next two weeks or do not eat any chocolate for the next seven days. The longer you can do it consistently the easier it becomes! Do whatever you can to make it an enjoyable, fun habit. Listen to your MP3 player while you walk, give yourself a small reward everyday you don’t eat chocolate (what about putting that $1.50 you saved on the Snickers in a jar and buying a book or CD at the end of the month?).

Engineer for success

This idea from Zen Habits may sound too scientific and complicated, but basically it is about creating ‘cheats’ which will pull you towards your goal and push you away from what you don’t want. Make the path you want to follow easy for yourself, and make the other choices more difficult!

Leo Babauta includes lots of examples, and some of these we have already touched upon. But when you think about the strategies in this framework you can see why they work. Here’s just a few:

• Increase positive feedback for the habit by keeping a log (giving you satisfaction), getting positive support from others (locally or online) and rewarding yourself.
• Decrease negative feedback for the habit, such as the discomfort of starting exercise, by only doing a little bit in the beginning. If your craving chocolate, try some fruit and nuts (if they agree with you).
• Increase negative feedback for not doing the habit. You want to make it hard not to do the habit. If you’re trying to exercise, get rid of the TV and Internet and make your house uncomfortable, until you do your exercise.
• Decrease positive feedback for not doing the habit. What tempts you not to do your habit today? If you’re trying to exercise in the morning, the positive feedback from avoiding the exercise is staying in bed and getting more sleep. Set up multiple alarms all around your room and don’t go back to bed. You’re up now so why not go for a walk? Have someone waiting to meet you for your morning exercise.

Good luck IBDers – let me know how you are going with your good health habits!

Rebecca

And having IBD (or any chronic illness) makes it even harder. We must contend with fatigue, nausea, pain and diarrhea (and more), and with occasional feelings of hopelessness and depression. There are plenty of completely reasonable excuses available: “I’m too tired to do anything” or “I’m sick all the time anyway so why not have that chocolate / coffee / wine, even though I know it will make me feel worse”.

Why try?

As explained on the About page, my philosophy on IBD treatment is that:

• The human body comprises many systems working as a whole;
• Any improvements to your holistic health are beneficial – this applies whether you have a chronic disease or not;
• Improvements to your holistic health may not directly affect the course of your IBD but will help you feel better in your daily life.

However, and most importantly, no-one can know your body like you do and ultimately you must make informed choices about how best to look after yourself.

In the past I have been afraid that exercise will, at best, leave me feeling too tired to get through day to day life and, at worse, aggravate my disease. However, I have read many on the internet from patients, even those with very active disease, citing the benefits they feel from some form of exercise. I have spoken with my own doctor about it, who has said that despite my active disease there should be no problem with exercise such as walking or light weight lifting as long as I did not overtax myself.

Canadian researchers found that for people with mild Crohn’s disease, taking a walk a few times per week helped boost their well-being and quality of life. However the same report says that patients with moderate or severe symptoms of their Crohn’s disease should not engage in an exercise program until their symptoms are better controlled.

Of course, whatever you do must be appropriate to your circumstances and level of health.

Although strenuous exercise might be out of the question for you, you may like to try gentle stretching and movement, or meditation exercises. This, along with having a healthy diet and getting plenty of rest can only help your general health and well-being.

And here’s a final perspective on why we should maintain positive health programs. Referring to another article from “New York Times Magazine”, Gretchen from The Happiness Project surmises:

It turns out that people who stick to a doctor’s orders – say, by taking a prescription – are different, and healthier, than people who don’t. In one drug study, a group of men were assigned a drug or a placebo. The men who faithfully took their pills had significantly better outcomes than the men who didn’t – even the men who were only taking a placebo! The conclusion: a group of people who faithfully adhere to a program that they think healthful (taking vitamins, exercising, eating a better diet) will have a different outcome from a group that doesn’t…

How to build good health habits

Here are some of the ideas I have picked up about how to establish new habit (such as exercise) or change an existing habit for the better (such as switching from sweet to healthy snacking). I am focusing on health in this article, but many of these ideas can (and have) been applied more generally to whatever goal it is we wish to achieve.

The first step is creating the right frame of mind – a positive outlook that will help overcome initial resistance to a new healthy behaviour. Next week is step two – how to turn that new behaviour into a habit and keep it going!

Creating the right frame of mind

I read two great books for the first time this year: Getting Things Done by David Allen and The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. Each time I reread them I find something new. The following is a mash of the concepts from these books which had greatest impact on me, and my thoughts on how to apply them in daily life.

1. Don’t think ‘I have to’ or ‘I should’ or ‘if I don’t I am a bad person’

Trying to badger yourself into a new behaviour with authoritarian or critical self-talk will not work. This will only spark a childish, rebellious resistance which will lead to procrastination, avoidance, guilt and more negative self-talk about your own failings.

2. Make a choice

You choose your path in life, and although certain events (such as having IBD) are beyond your control, you choose how you will respond and behave. This is a powerful thing. Starting an exercise program or changing your diet because ‘it’s the right thing to do’ or because someone ‘told you to’ are not great motivators. Doing it because you have made a positive, informed and deliberate choice is much more powerful and will support you through the process.

3. Think through your options

If you are going to make a genuine choice, then you need to weigh up the options. You can choose not to exercise, to eat fatty or irritating foods, or to sleep erratically. What would the consequences of that behaviour be? Make a list. Or you could choose to undertake some type of exercise, eat better, and sleep regularly. What would the consequences of that behaviour be? Make a list.

4. Pull yourself towards the goal, don’t push

Hopefully you have considered your options and decided that you absolutely want healthier habits. Now focus on the positive consequences of this choice. Be very clear about why you have made this choice, give yourself a purpose statement eg. ‘I choose to exercise because it will make me stronger and give me energy to do things other things I love doing’.

Then, in the words of David Allen, envision wild success and describe what that looks like eg. ‘I will exercise for at least 20 minutes every day and I will be stronger and more energetic and I will be proud of my commitment and my achievement’. Record your purpose and vision statements somewhere you will see them regularly so, on bad days, you will be reminded of the positive reasons for making this choice and will be pulled towards your ultimate goal.

5. Repeat

Keep reminding yourself why you made this choice. Thinking about your higher purpose and your vision of success will get you through the ‘yuck factor’. Don’t dwell on the negative aspects like getting up earlier or stiff muscles or really wanting that piece of chocolate. There will always be less enjoyable aspects of any task, but dwelling on them and then telling yourself to ‘just push on’ will not help. Focus on positive outcomes and pull yourself towards your vision.

Check in next week for part 2 of this post – how to make your new good health behaviour a habit and keep it going!

Rebecca

Recognise the problem (or itch)

It took me a very long time to realise that my sporadic sore throats were actually caused by ulcers and were, in fact, occurring at quite predictable intervals alongside other symptoms of my Crohn’s disease. I then concluded that, as my Crohn’s was already being treated with medication, the ulcers were ‘one of those things I have to suffer through’.

Of course that was not (and is not) true.

Find a solution (or anti-itch remedy)

I eventually asked my doctor, pharmacist and friends/family if they could recommend any remedies for ulcers. The first recommendation was an ulcer specific topical ointment which was difficult to apply (you had to dry the area first!) and impossible to get to those sores at the back of my mouth. I now use a anaesthetic / antibacterial mouthwash usually recommended to relieve pain following dental procedures. It relieves the pain (for a while) and I believe the antibacterial effect also assists with healing the ulcers more quickly. I also avoid foods likely to irritate ulcers. Such simple remedies to make myself more comfortable!

Any sustained discomfort, even if it is minor, can exhaust our physical and emotional reserves. ‘Putting up’ with mouth ulcers for two weeks or more left me tired and cranky; more likely to respond negatively to those around me; and more inclined to become depressed about my circumstances.

Gretchen says:
One habit I’ve developed as part of my happiness project has been to try to do a better job managing discomfort. Not letting myself get too hungry, too sleepy, too cold, or too itchy, makes it easier for me to stay patient and light-hearted.

This is good advice for anyone and particularly those with a chronic illness like IBD.

My 7 steps to improving day-to-day comfort

1. Be aware.

Over time we ‘tune out’ to physical complaints and become accustomed to higher levels of discomfort. This can mean we don’t respond as quickly as we should to the warning signals of our illness. Keep a health diary (more on this in a later post). Take a little time each day to quietly listen to your body and note any changes, for better or worse. Try to identify patterns.

2. Avoid assumptions.

Don’t assume that a problem is related to your IBD and therefore it is part of a chronic illness you can do nothing about. Equally, don’t assume that it is not related to your IBD and therefore there is no point mentioning it to your doctor. Keep an open mind and look for creative solutions (see steps 4 – 7).

3. Value your own comfort.

Don’t prematurely dismiss a problem as minor or not worth treating. I’ll say again, any sustained discomfort, even if it is minor, can exhaust our physical and emotional reserves. Think of it like a savings plan, don’t expend precious energy on problems which could be easily resolved by other means. Instead, build a healthy energy reserve for when serious health problems arise. Aside: In fact, the concept of building a healthy energy reserve will underlie many of the strategies discussed in future posts.

4. Be creative.

Having regularly observed your body and any patterns to your symptoms, and kept an open mind about the possibility of improving these symptoms, you have probably already identified some easy and practical ways to make yourself more comfortable. For example, if I don’t eat something every couple of hours my energy and mood can quickly spiral downwards. I carry a snack in my bag at all times so I won’t be tempted to buy something sugary which will leave me feeling sick later.

Be as flexible as possible – if you can’t address the problem itself, can you change the circumstances around it to make yourself more comfortable? For example, adjusting your schedule so you have more time to get ready in the mornings when you are feeling nauseous.

5. Ask others (local).

Depending on the nature of your problem, talk to your doctor (GP and specialist), pharmacist, friends and family. When you ask around you might be surprised to find that someone you know has had this problem before and they have developed their own solution. Don’t underestimate anecdotal advice, although ensure that the source is reliable. I have received great practical tips from the head nurse at a local IBD research centre. Her advice is not necessarily documented in medical journals but it is based on the experience of many patients.

6. Ask others (global).

This is similar to step 5, but with an additional warning to be cautious about online advice. I feel fortunate that I now have access to a much larger community of health professionals and IBDers through websites, blogs, forums and chatrooms, and so am more likely to find others who have had similar experiences to me and/or who may be able to offer me advice. However, I also remember to consider all this advice with cautious interest.

7. Don’t forget!

Make a note of what you did to make yourself more comfortable and how well it worked – in your health diary or somewhere you can refer to it again in the future. Next time you notice a similar problem, test and refine your solution / remedy.