Joanne Smith explains why flare-ups aren't failure: your brain is getting harsh instructions from self-judgment. Using the 3 Principles approach, she shows how recovery speeds up when you stop forcing results and give your brain calm, accurate information instead.
Just because you're having a big flare-up in a symptom or a pain, why get disheartened when we know that our brain is, whatever it might be, whether it's our thoughts, whether it's how harsh we're judging ourselves, like, I should have done that 50-mile ultra, I should have done another one this year, I did a 100-mile ultra every year for the last 3 years, but I didn't do one, I should have done that, and I'm like full-on giving myself a hard time. No, no, I'm not doing that anymore. And there is nothing to do. I don't need to stick to any training plan or anything. And obviously those that know me know a lot about that. I talk often about the 3 principles approach too, which is an understanding in psychology which was also game-changing for me too. So along with having that understanding about thinking and how thoughts work and how we feel every thought, whether that's unconscious or conscious, then it's just understanding, nothing to do. So we're not needing to go fixing our nervous system or doing something special. This body knows how to do this if we have the calm response and how we're responding to the symptoms. So just basically inputting into our amazing brain or computer system the accurate information and consistently. So you'll get there quicker when you stop trying to get there so quick.
