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Do you fall behind and find yourself in ruts with the goals you're trying to achieve in life? Especially in your vision goals?
I am the same way, but I am learning from amazing humans and from trial and error some easy ways to be more successful in moving towards goals and I know they will work for you too!
Take the free quiz "Do My Eyes Work Together?" here https://learn.strabismussolutions.com/do-my-eyes-work-together-6-tests
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Hi, my name is Melissa Daniels and I have Sturbismis, which is when your eyes don't point in the same direction
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And for four years, I've been working on improving my vision and teaching my brain to use both eyes
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And in those four years, I have learned a lot about being consistent in forming habits and learning how to do these small daily tasks that are going to lead to this huge
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huge overall improvement on your life. And I wanna share some of those techniques
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that I use with you because I feel like it makes it such a big difference. So this video is definitely probably gonna be geared more
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towards people who are working on improving their vision right now that are maybe struggling with creating
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those good habits or figuring out how to apply it into your daily life. So that describes you, this video is definitely for you
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I will say I just finished reading James Claire's book atomic habits, which I think I might be the last person in the world to read this book
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So phenomenal. If you haven't read it yet, you definitely should. It totally aligns with the things
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that I have learned over the last four years. And I wish I'd read it at the beginning, so I didn't
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have to figure it out the hard way. One of the quotes from his book is, success is the product
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of daily habits, not once-in-a-lifetime transformations. And success in vision therapy is exactly
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that. It's the product of daily habits. It's all of those small things you're doing every day
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Not just this one light switch comes on and you go from using one eye to using two eyes
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So there are a lot of different ways that you can form habits and I definitely recommend reading
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atomic habits because it will really help you figure out a method that will work for you
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But I wanted to share the two things that I've been working really hard on this summer that
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have made this summer my most successful summer ever. I graduated from vision therapy this summer
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I was more consistent than I've been in the past with exercises and my vision has definitely
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improved. And usually summer is the time of year for me when everything goes out the window
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Sometimes I go weeks and weeks without even touching a vision therapy exercise and my vision
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deteriorates significantly because I spending time with my family which I want to do But this summer I was able to figure out how to find the balance I want to share that with you So to share I going to
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tell you about my new favorite toy, and that is my Roomba. A Roomba is a vacuum that's a robot
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It just, you just push the button and it vacuums for you. And the first time I tried to use my Roomba
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I cleaned the whole house, opened every door, cleaned under the beds, and then I left the house
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and turned it on and I was so excited to come home and see a perfectly clean house
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And it was severely disappointed to come home and find out that it only had gotten through
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like half of each room. It had gone in, down a few lines, and then like gone to the next room
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It was kind of random. And I'm like, this thing is the worst. I hate this vacuum
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And I didn't understand it. But what I realized is that I gave it too big of a task, right
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I needed to make it a smaller, more manageable task. And what I've learned is that if you put the room but in a smaller room and shut the door
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it does the room perfectly. It gets everything so clean and it just works way more efficiently
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And humans are the same way. If we have this huge task and a huge goal, it just feels insurmountable, right
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It feels impossible. And so when it comes to your vision goals, you need to break it down and make it manageable
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for me that meant taking all of my normal goals and cutting up down by a third
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Instead of saying, yeah, I'm going to do vision therapy an hour, six days a week during the
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summer, I got more realistic and said, I'm going to go for three days a week for 15 minutes
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And that is all I'm trying. I also, instead of making a goal to have this huge improvement with my vision, I just made
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the goal of making it stable. As you're learning and learning to use both eyes together
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there's definitely an ebb and a flow and I decided that I wanted to solidify where I was
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so that my brain can consistently use them together. Not that I was improving my stereo
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but I was not going back and I was making the habit of using both eyes more consistent instead
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of less consistent. That was my big goal and that really made a big difference to make it smaller
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So I would challenge you to figure out how can I make this goal smaller Is it the amount of time I spending Is am I expecting too much of myself If what you doing right now isn working it probably because it too hard And I not saying that you shouldn set huge goals right
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I have a huge goal that's out there. I want perfect vision, okay
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I want it to be perfect. That is a huge, insurmountable goal for somebody with Stripismus
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Some would maybe say it's impossible. I have that goal. but when it comes to filling out my weekly calendar
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I'm not making every thing that I do based on that goal
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It's not like, okay, tomorrow I'm hoping for that. I'm breaking it down into, okay, we're going to do the summer of stability
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We're stabilizing where I'm at so that I don't ever go below this point again
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And I'm going to do this much a day. And eventually that is going to get me to my goal
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but I'm picking more manageable goals in the moment that will help me eventually get to that big
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Huge goal. Okay. That's the first thing. Make the room smaller, right
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Get that Roomba in a smaller room. Get your goal in a more manageable space
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that you can really see what's going on. The second is to pivot, right
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We, if you've watched a Roomba, it's crazy. It, like, if it hits a wall, it doesn't just stop
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It keeps moving. The Roomba never stops moving. Well, every now and then it stops to calculate
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but it's in general always moving and it bumps into the wall and then it figures out which way it can go
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So it keeps, it's like, okay, hit another wall, hit another wall, hit another wall, oh, now I can go
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and then it hits something else and then it keeps pivoting. So I want you to think of yourself in that way
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You're never going to make these huge goals by just sitting there and like watching carefully
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hoping for some great answer to come. You've got to keep making adjustments
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So this means that when you don't get any therapy done for the whole week
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it doesn't mean you beat yourself up. You just say, okay, hmm, why didn't that work? How do I need to pivot
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Do I need to try a different time of day? Do I need to try it in my car when I don't have people around
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Do I need to do it at night? Do I need to give somebody the password to my social media
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And I only get my password after I've done my vision therapy
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So there's a lot of different things that you can try, but just keep that visual of moving
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You've always got to keep moving, trying something else. That where the learning is going to happen is when you actually doing Some things that I tried I definitely changed around the time of day that I was doing therapy I tried doing some of the
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exercises with my kids that worked on some of the different exercises that I do. I tried some of
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them at the pool. I learned to use my vision when I was going for a walk or a hike. I definitely
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was engaging my peripheral during those times. So I tried to do, change some of the exercises
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that I was doing that could be done in my real life situations. Let's see. Oh, stacking, and this is
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this is a great atomic habits word, but you do habit stacking. And you take a habit that you already
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have, like brushing your teeth, and then you add some sort of vision therapy exercise while you're doing
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that. And so for me, that means putting the sticker on the mirror. It means looking at the sticker
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then looking behind the sticker at my face, then looking at the sticker, then maybe looking at my toothbrush
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So I'm moving my eyes all around or different exercises like that
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So when I'm doing an activity that I'm going to do no matter what, I stack on a vision exercise with that
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Same with like weeding my garden, driving, all of those different things, brainstorm
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How can you take what your optometrist is asking you to do and then apply it to those exercises
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So that is the big idea, right? You're going to have to take this and apply it into your, and figure out how it's going to work for you
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because what works for me isn't necessarily going to work for you, but these concepts will work
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That's choosing something manageable, right? Choosing a manageable goal, something that's realistic
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and then pivoting and keeping on moving. Keep moving towards something, and eventually you're going to get off on the right path towards your goal
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So keep trying different things, keep making adjustments, and I think you're going to see a lot of success
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Now, if you don't have any idea, what all of this is about and you want to know more
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about vision therapy or Strabismus and you're wondering if you're able to use both eyes
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go to learn.stribusolutions.com and take the free quiz called Do My Eyes Work Together
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And this quiz will help you understand how your eyes are or are not working
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so that you can make some plans to figure out how you can get your vision even better
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I'll see you in the next video. Be sure to like and sub-ebusy So you don't miss any of the future updates
#Vision Care
#Eye Exams & Optometry
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