I was playing in my first curling tournament.



It's a micro niche sport in this country, in fact there are only 3 purpose built sheets in the whole of England, and I was delighted last year to find that they are only a 40 minute drive from me.

I knew I was playing against better players than me, with years of experience, but I was looking forward to learning from the experience and having fun.

I did have fun too, for the first 90 minutes.

Then, completely from nowhere I felt the first symptoms of a migraine, as my eyes were unable to focus, and there were large areas of my vision which were ?missing.?

For anyone that doesn't suffer migraines, think yourself lucky, because you wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy, it really is most unpleasant.

I always have my pills with me, but the delay between the first symptom and taking the pills was too long, and I knew that the full symptoms were coming my way, with a 3 day stretch until recovery.

This was on Friday night, with the curling tournament scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.

I had no option but to explain to my team mates that I wouldn't be playing, and to set off home.

I had hoped to get home before the vomiting started, but only got half way, having to drive the remaining 15 miles stopping every mile to paint the pavement.

My artistic approach could be described as ?scattergun?, if you get my drift.

There were plenty of ?splats?, a couple of ?splodges?, and even the odd ?kerblam? as I eventually made it home.

I could do nothing over the weeend except let the illness take its? course, feeling ever more guilty about wrecking the tournament for my team mates. There was an entry fee to play so I felt quite bad.

Here's the point of this article though - was I right to feel guilty? Was it really my fault?

Yes, the team's weekend had been mucked up because of me, but was it a situation I could control?

Most migraine sufferers have triggers, and mine include sharp lights and too much cheese.

If I had sat staring at the sun while munching on half a pound of cheese and then got a migraine, it could be argued that it was my fault, but since I hadn't done anything of the sort, I was wrong to feel guilty.

To be honest I just don't like letting people down, but whereas I *felt* guilty, the *facts* really didn't back that up.

It's exactly this kind of taking a feeling as fact which stops us achieving many things in life.

We feel that we can't do something, and turn this feeling into a fact.

Once we recognise that we do this, we can step back and separate what we have as a feeling from the cold hard facts.

It is amazing how much clearer everything seems, how much more is possible when you do this, so make sure that when you next declare a fact about yourself, be certain that it *is* a fact, and not just a feeling.