You may as well do it now and done!

Many years ago my mother flippantly remarked that it seemed that if you want to live long you should get a sickness and take care of it. Of course we all laughed at that negative piece of wisdom. Yet had I not gone to the Port of Spain General Hospital Blood Bank to donate blood some thirty odd years ago and found I could not because my blood pressure reading was too high I would have had no reason to make radical changes to my lifestyle to manage my blood pressure readings.

If I had failed to do that I may very well have been struck down before now with a heart attack, stroke or death. Today years later it seems that my mother was right after all. Yet changing one’s pattern is extremely challenging and for some even impossible.

Recently I sat in on an enthusiastic discussion at a birthday party on what makes so many people overwork themselves to the point of falling ill. As several women put it, if something had to be done in their home why put it off to another time, as in any event they will still have to come back to it, so they may as well do it immediately and get it over with, notwithstanding the fact that they be postponing a well deserved rest.

This attitude has seen many a housewife visit a doctor for some ailment or other. Such devotion to duty is not by any means rare, but the results can be quite detrimental as at least three of the women testified.

Knowing the outcome of the postponement of their much needed rest in favor of getting the chores done did not prevent them from jumping out of their beds and doing the chores anyway, even if it meant having to visit their doctors afterwards. Are you like that? If so how have you resolved that tendency to overdo?