Through a funny story about staring at an Oreo cookie, Dr. Carrie explains how she embraced the need to grow in the area of self-control.
How you do one thing is how you do everything in life. Kerry: I think I have a lot of self control in certain areas of my life, but in other areas, I have no self control. She encourages you to reflect on what areas of your life do you want to improve.
How you do one thing is how you do everything in life. Hey, Cadre family doctor Kerry here. I heard this phrase again today and it was such a good reminder because I think of myself as someone who has a lot of self control, very disciplined person. I am one of those that can meet deadlines in advance. I stick true to my word. I am one of those people that thinks my word is gold. So I definitely stay true to my word. I meet deadlines. I can be very disciplined when it comes to getting stuff done, tackling my to do list, always following through on tasks that I'm assigned or that I assigned myself.
And I had somebody repeat that phrase to me today and reflected on it and said, gosh, maybe I'm not the most disciplined in the world because I think I have a lot of self control in certain areas of my life, but then in other areas of my life, I have no self control. I used to test myself with junk food because that is my number one weakness, like chocolate, anything. Junk food and oreos are a huge weakness of mine. And I was trying to lose some weight at one point. I didn't have a lot to lose, but I knew that my, like, binging on junk food was contributing to my difficulty losing weight.
So what I did was I took an Oreo and I put it at my computer station when I used to be in nursing. And don't. I do not recommend this, by the way. In healthcare, you should not have food sitting out at the desk, especially like oreos sitting out. But I put an Oreo right there and I was obviously not going to touch it because this is like germ zone central in the nurse's station and willed myself to not eat it. Now I'm not going to because it's covered in germs, because it's at the nurse's station and it's sitting there on my computer, which is God only knows how many germs are on there.
And I would stare at it and I would repeat to myself, like, I have self control. I have self control over this Oreo. And it was really kind of silly and stupid. And I don't recall anybody ever recommending a diet like this, but I wanted to show myself that I had self control over the Oreos guys. And unfortunately, it worked in the moment. But I would get back to the break room and there'd be fresh brownies, all sorts of other junk food that I would just binge on. And the whole process didn't work.
So I'm not advising this as a way to lose weight. But what I was telling myself is, do I have the self control to be able to overcome this, like, addiction I have with sweets? And unfortunately, as somebody who has a lot of self control, I don't have a lot of self control with sweets. But then I think about, do I have control over my tongue? Do I have control over the words that come out of my mouth when I'm angry? Not usually. I tend to swear a little bit when I'm angry, and I'm somebody who tries really hard not to curse.
And then when I get angry, the s the f. The h. The words come out. And so it just was a good reflection moment for me today to say, do I need to exercise more self control? Like, if how I do one thing is how I do everything. Am I really exercising self control in every area of my life? And if I'm not, what do I need to do to build that strength in that area, to exercise that muscle? Because that is something that I want more of in my life. More self control, more discipline. And so I might be super good at it in one area, but really lacking in another.
And that really just points to my character overall. So I would encourage you to think about that phrase, how it affects you in what areas of your life do you want to improve yourself? And then reflecting on, like, maybe in this other area, I'm doing a really good job of that. So how can I take those traits, those characteristics that I can do in that one area and transfer them over to this other area so that I can improve the area and then set goals for yourself when it comes to this. Like, if you want to cut out sweets, maybe you don't go to cold turkey.
Maybe you set some reasonable goals and whatever. Whatever the challenges that you have in front of you, goal setting is always really helpful. So I would encourage you to just reflect on that and think about what areas you want to set some goals so that you can become the best version of yourself possible. Thanks for tuning in with me. I hope this was helpful. God bless, guys. Bye.
