Ascend
Throw Up
Welcome to another episode of the Ascend podcast with Curtis Vickery. So not too long ago, one of my daughters got sick and she wasn't feeling good. And in the middle of the night, my older daughter came up and was like, Hey, she threw up, it's all over the bed and gross. And, you know, if you have kids or you've ever had to help with that, obviously that's not like the most exciting thing to get woken up to was like, Hey, there's stinky smell like a barf that not only do you need to clean up and probably start a load of laundry, but you got to wash off the kids. Sometimes they need to take a bath or a shower and then you got to get them changed. And then you got to, you know, do they stay in the room? You know the whole process, right? So that happens, right? And as often in life, sometimes these weird experiences trigger other thoughts in my head. And I started to think about throw up and hear me out on this. I'm not going to describe the grossness of it. But one of the things that's interesting is that I've recognized that the older my kids get the better they are at recognizing and mitigating the risks or the impact of throw up. So it made me think about my daughter who is pretty young. And she doesn't super know how to describe how she's going in the first place. So that makes it hard, right? Because you're like, well, what do you mean? And again, what I'm expecting, even though I know she's younger, it would make it really easy if she just used words and explanations that I knew really well, but that's not usually how it works. And so because of that, for most of my kids, when they've been younger, there's a lot higher likelihood that there's a gross mess, right? It gets a lot more everywhere. They can't make it to like a bowl or a toilet or a sink or whatever it may be. But there are usually signs leading up to that, right? And you learn this over time, is that your body starts to give you hints or kind of a foreshadowing of like, hey, something's not right. And let's be clear, throwing up is actually a healthy bodily reaction that your body's trying to do to try to help make itself better, right? And so we don't want to get caught up in that like, oh, it's this bad thing. I'm not here to debate that. I don't like the feeling of throwing up, and I don't think anybody really does. But how can we and how do we start to recognize those signs that can help us to avoid a mess, a disaster, you know? And so number one, it takes reps, right? Being able to have the experiences, know what that feels like, kind of, you know, not that you want them to be messy. And I would always love it if it could automatically communicate. Those things in some kids are way better earlier than other kids at communicating those things and understanding their bodies that way. But we want to try to mitigate and manage our splash zones in life. So my question to you would be is, you know, taking those thoughts and looking at the relationships that you have in your life, right? What are the signs that you see in other people, right? Of how the relationships going, are those common things? Are they always right or are they always wrong? Knowing what those are and being willing to communicate and mitigate those things can actually lead to happier relationships, not allowing issues to go unspoken about and could, and later on, blow up into something that was not needed if just assessed earlier. Another kind of one that I've thought about, which is a little uncomfortable for me, because, you know, I am me and I'm in my own head and I feel like I understand myself well, but do I know the signs that I give off when something's not right with me? And do other people recognize the things I might need to ask? You know, I might need to ask my wife or my kids, but like, hey, you know, how can you tell when I'm in this mindset or I'm easily irritable? Or, you know, what are those things that lead me to that? And are there ways that either I can mitigate that or that they can help? You know, I mean, a classic thing that a lot of people make jokes about is, you know, sometimes in conversations people can get kind of snippy with each other and later on throughout the conversation you realize that you haven't eaten or they haven't eaten something, you know, as humorous as that may be, the hangry thing is a real thing. There's research to back that up with our processing, right? And so maybe we need to eat something and then have a conversation. I don't feel like that's a form of manipulation. That's a form of a preventative measure to having the kind of a conversation. I'm not saying you're going to guarantee the outcome of the conversation, but the kind of a conversation that you want to have with somebody. So I'd encourage you to ask yourself throughout the week or when you have time or maybe it'll be triggered in your mind when you maybe you see someone else maybe acting a little bit off and be like, oh, I wonder if that's a sign for me to either intervene or ask or to help appropriately. And if you don't know how that person wants that help, it could be good to ask before that moment comes. You can't always avoid those things. You're going to eventually at some point try to give help and someone won't like it and that's okay, but learning what that is. And if there may be will be an opportunity again, understanding their why and actually listening to them genuinely and then trying to help them out can be a really good thing. So maybe this whole idea of, you know, throwing up and that experience, maybe that could help you in reflecting in your life too and improving the relationships that you have and proving the relationship you have with yourself too is key. But I hope some good things can come out of it for you. This has been another episode of the Ascend podcast. Keep climbing and join me again next time.