I woke up this morning with all of my joints hurting, not just my arthritic knee.  Even my elbows were hurting and my thumbs if you could imagine.  I had nothing pressing and could actually have turned over and tried to go back to sleep, or at least taken some pain meds and just zoned out for the rest of the day.  I didn’t. 

Why?  Because doing nothing would have not helped and pain meds are only temporary. 

MOVING MY BODY is what gives me the most relief.  Got myself out of bed, had some coffee, put on my new bathing suit (new clothes always raise the spirits) and took myself off to the gym to swim away my aches and pains.  Swimming felt wonderful.  I got to stretch my body, warm all of my muscles up with an easy full body workout and get those feel good hormones going.  I hit the triple, now to take it home.

I was showered, my hair was washed and I had on light, airy, summer clothes that I felt good wearing.  I still hurt but I was keeping it going.  When I looked in the mirror I saw wet stringy looking hair, a face devoid of makeup but definitely showing the pain.  I didn’t like it and then I realized.  I had the ability to change this.  Just like a quick blow dry of my hair and 5 minutes worth of make-up could change my appearance, I could change my attitude.

So I did it.  And I timed it.  It took me 15 minutes to quickly do my hair and moisturize my face and put a little make up on.  When done, I looked in the mirror and said to myself- Self, that’s better…it may not be your best day, but it is better than it was at 5:30 this morning.  I also made a pact with myself to get up and move a little every hour so my joints would not stiffen up completely again.  This also helps and I have many little household chores I can accomplish in 5-10 minutes.  My first was making a second cup of tea.  My next was taking in the trash and feeding the fish in my little pond.  In about 15 minutes I will be emptying the dishwasher.  And so on, and so forth.

I have control over my attitude, how I choose to treat my arthritis pain and how I have learned to not use food to soothe the savage beast.  It doesn’t work.  It makes it worse.

How do you turn your bad days around?