This may seem like a silly question. Surely it’s a simple answer, depending on the question; less pain, better sleep, less stress. Unfortunately reality is often a lot less simple than we would like.

You’ve probably heard of the term ‘healing crisis’ before. I think it’s an overused term that is even used as an excuse for improper treatment at times, but there is a nugget of truth in there. Often the process of getting better frankly doesn’t feel like it. But what’s important in that moment is change. Some kind of shift, some movement in the patterns that have become entrenched.

But change can be scary. It can be painful, uncomfortable, even earth-shattering. True change is life-changing, in that your life afterwards doesn’t look like your life before. It’s like puberty, becoming a parent, losing a loved one.

Change in your health can feel like that, but the only way to begin to get better is to change. Change the pattern of disease and dis-ease. And start working on progress.

Progress, no perfection

As my seven year old daughter often corrects me “Practice makes progress, not perfect”. I think it’s the same with our health. A focus on overall progress, keeping in mind where you started, and moving towards a well-defined goal is what gets us through this often-challenging process.

If we took the time and the end of each day to score ourselves out of ten and plotted the points on a graph, we would see a very bumpy line. Some days we’re more of a 6, maybe even an 8. Others we’re a 2 or 3 and can barely keep it together. This is perfectly normal. It’s just that when we’re suffering from a serious illness those leaps tend to get more extreme.

When we’re getting treatment and looking for improvement, what really matters is which way our daily graph is trending. Is it incrementing upwards, however slowly? Or is it flat-lining, staying as it is. This is the true measure of getting better; not the daily result, but the overall direction.

Your personal definition of better

Which brings us to a hugely important piece. Your health, your progress, your illness; it’s personal to you, and other people don’t get to define it. Progress for you might look completely different to someone else and that is fine. Perhaps progress for you is a flat graph. Because that means you’re not deteriorating. That means you’re stable for now.

Your goals should be your own, and only need to make sense for your personal health journey.