Reading the signs

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I'm not talking about the signs you pass in your car as you drive along the road, on your way to work each morning. I mean the kind the universe throws at you, in it's attempt to make you stop and think.

More often than not we totally miss most of them, caught up in busy lifestyles, running after kids, working long hours.
The thing is, when we are really in tune with ourselves and what's happening around us we can learn to read the signs and in turn change the path that we are on.

Sometimes signs can easily go unnoticed. Like a topic, or name of someone who's been mentioned in conversation with others on a number of occasions. Sometimes signs come at you like a speeding train, kicking the crap out of you because you simply didn't listen the first time.
Sarah Wilson talked about how she reads signs a while back. She says they come to her in threes. She mentions how the name of her meditation teacher came up in conversations with three different people and so she booked in to go see him. Best thing she'd done in a while. She knew her body was telling her she needed to go see him.

Signs don't have to come in threes. It may be that you've been thinking about how much you need to book in for a check-up at the dentist, and the very same day you overhear a work colleague on the phone making an appointment with their dentist.

Signs aren't always obvious.

When I was first diagnosed with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis I didn't understand why I had gotten so sick. I was young. I thought I looked after myself.
It's only now, years later, that I realise just how wrong I was.
I had run myself into the ground. I was partying hard (I was 21 at the time), had gone through a terribly emotional break-up with my boyfriend at the time, and my diet left a lot to be desired.
I had totally ran myself into the ground.
Then I got sick. I was depressed, exhausted, overweight, and I didn't even realise what was going on. I wasn't in tune with my body.
Looking back, I know that this was why I got sick. There were probably 50 signs along the way that could've told me so!
If I had've looked after myself this may not have happened. If I had've taken the ongoing illnesses, weight gain and depression as a sign, it may have been a different story.
But it did. And I now look at it as a blessing in disguise.
I now eat well, exercise, and look after my body. I feel better now, at 30, than I did at 21!
With age, comes maturity, and with that comes a deeper understanding of reading the signs. Listening to what your body, or what the universe, is telling you.

Last week my husband was diagnosed with Psoriatic Arthritis. It had come on suddenly. A month earlier he seemed fine. He was running with me and eating a fairly balanced diet. Yet he had been run down, stressed and after a bout of gastro, followed by a cold, along came the joint pain.
He has always been prone to sickness. Around the age of 18 he had glandular fever. After that, he seemed to get one illness after another.
Now, I'm not saying that if he had've read the signs that he may not have gotten sick, we'll never know that. But auto-immune illnesses, including thyroid disease and various types of arthritis, can often come on when your body is under stress, when you've run yourself into the ground.

Right now, we are looking at ways to heal him and get him back to normal.
I think he realises that he now, more than ever, needs to look after his body, listen to it when it tells him he needs to sleep more, stress less and eat well.
I think it has also made me realise just how much we need to learn to read the signs and listen to our bodies.

Do you read the signs or do you keep cruising along, on autopilot, unaware of what's going on?