What do you yearn to drive? A Ferrari, Maserati, a Bugatti, a sleek Audi, a Mini cooper, the potential list goes on…..

You may not dream of a lovely car, you may be more practical and dream of a house or crave a luxurious holiday. So if you don’t dream of a car what do you drive currently? A sleek, clean, well maintained vehicle, an unreliable bomb or something in the middle?

Just recently I heard a very powerful analogy that made me stop and think. It was how you treat your car may be a mirror for how you treat your body. At first this may make you say, so what? But take the time and play along.

Many studies have been conducted that state how you keep you car says much about your personality. Forbes magazine in 2009 wrote, “Porsches smack of success. Hondas preach practicality. And, according to a recent report, Chevys proudly proclaim of their owners, “I don’t use the Internet.”

How you treat your car also says a lot about how you treat yourself as a person. If you car is pilled so high with old Maccas wrappers, bubble gum, cassette tapes and old tissues it may scream “disorganised.” If it is clean, there is no dust or cobwebs insight it may scream “perfectionist” or that your car is a big priority for you. Again you may be somewhere in the middle.

For me, I expect a lot of my car; I don’t maintain it, well. I expect it to start without issue and not to breakdown. I only notice it really when it isn’t working. That is much how I used to treat my body and my health. No nurturing in sight, how sad for my poor body, it had to scream for help before I was forced to stop and listen.

This is a powerful analogy for me because to showed me that I took both my car and my health for granted. And who knows that the fastest test to rectify this is when what you have taken for granted is taken away.

So when I was diagnosed with breast cancer I was forced to stop and take stock of how I had been treating my body and my health. I had expected to always have my health, that nothing would ever get in the way of me doing what I needed to do each and every day.

It is a very different reality now, after 3 surgeries, Chemo and Hormone treatment my body is screaming out for some time out and nourishment. I no longer can take my body for granted, in fact it is more like, “what will my body allow me to do today?”

So although this may seem like a silly topic without much meaning I ask you to take the time and consider how you treat your car, and or your body. After all they are both vehicles we use to do whatever we need to do.

If you need to carve out a little extra care for your beloved vehicle / body please do it before it just stops working from pure exhaustion. It’s always better to prevent a problem from ever happening than to begin to treat it after the collapse.