[09:43] I’ll just be totally honest with you guys. This one is really hard for you to figure out on your own, because you don’t know what’s going to help you the most. You don’t know how a particular supplement might help you. You don’t know how your body might respond to a particular treatment. This fourth one is really for those of you who have good doctors you can ask, who have coaches that you’re working with. You can ask your coach, “Where should I start?” Those kinds of things are usually where this fourth option comes into play.

[10:22] I do this a lot for my clients. My clients will often ask me, “Well, where do you think I should start?” I will often tell them things like, “Well, if you could change this one thing here, it will change all of these other things, and it will actually give you more bang for your buck.” I might say, “Well, I would actually start with this thing here because we’ll know right away if it works or if it doesn’t work. It either works and it’s awesome, or we know right away it doesn’t work, and we can try something new faster.” This is another way of making the biggest difference for you. Instead of waiting six months to find out if something works, if we can find out in a couple of weeks if it works or not, then you can go on to either adding something on top of that or trying something else.

[11:20] Again, just to recap: 

1. First, for knowing where to start, is just thinking about what’s easy. What feels easy? What is the next tiny little baby step that you can take to just start moving forward and making a change in your life?
2. The second thing is: What is your biggest challenge and frustration? What are you super motivated to change or fix or add?
3. The third option is: What feels the most fun? What would be enjoyable? What would you love to do? What would you add in or change? Usually this is more of an “add in” kind of thing, because doing something that’s enjoyable usually means adding something in.
4. Then fourth: What is going to make the biggest difference for you? What is going to give you the biggest bang for your buck? Ask somebody who knows enough about you and your situation, and about fibromyalgia, and about what it is that you might try, to be able to give you a really good, educated, expert opinion on that.

[12:32] Now, in part of this question of “How do I know where to start?”, I know there’s also a real practical aspect to that question too. Which is: Do I start with improving my sleep? Do I start with reducing my pain? Do I start by changing my diet? Do I need to cut out sugar? Do I need to add this supplement? Like, how do I know which of these things I should do?

[13:01] That I can’t tell you on a podcast, because I don’t know your situation. Right? Like, I’m here in my office recording this, and there is nobody else here with me. I can’t ask you questions. I can’t look at your medical history. I can’t ask you how you’ve responded to other things, to know how you might respond to this new thing. Right?

[13:28] If you are looking for that kind of specific, practical advice for literally, “What should I do next?”, then I would recommend that you schedule a consultation. This is exactly what we do with our clients.

[13:45] If you’re interested in doing that, you can go to FibromyalgiaPodcast.com. You’ll see the Find a Coach link in the upper right hand corner. You just fill out that application, and you can schedule a time to talk to someone. We now have coaches — I’m just so amazed at this — we now have coaches in nine countries around the world, now that our most recent class has graduated.

[14:10] I have space, at least at the time that I’m recording this, I have space for a few people in a new class that I’m doing. It’s actually for patients, helping patients, educating them on fibromyalgia, and teaching them how to manage their illness. It’s based on the work that I’ve done with my private clients, but also with the coaches and advisors that I’ve trained. We’ve got space in that class as I’m recording this.

[14:40] I also have all those coaches, all over the world, many of whom are taking new clients. If you really need that one-on-one, “Here’s my medical history, what do you think I should do?”, we would love to have that conversation with you. We aren’t doctors. We can’t prescribe. We can’t diagnose. I can’t run lab tests for you, you know, things like that. However, I can look at the things that your doctor is doing and give you my expert opinion, based on my own experience of 11 years now as a coach, working with clients. I can also give you a pretty good idea of how I think your body is going to respond to things, based on your past experience and what I’ve seen with other clients.

[15:37] For instance, if someone has a hard time with meditation, sometimes — there are other questions I would need to ask, to feel this out a little bit more — sometimes that can be a good indicator that certain other types of therapies, like potentially even acupuncture, aren’t going to work as well. We might want to try something else. There are other kinds of meditation we can also try, right? The more we know about you, the better recommendations that we can make.

[16:13] There are other tools that we use as well. Different types of assessments or quizzes we might have you take can kind of clue us in on how your brain is working, or what your body might need, and educate you on what some of those options might be. Supplements to talk to your doctor about, potential tests to run that maybe your doctor hasn’t thought of that might indicate that your body is processing certain things in a different way and that it needs a little bit of additional help. There are a lot of things like that, that we can educate you on and give you advice on, in terms of what direction you might like to go.