Listen to Your Body

Last night I went to bed knowing I had a clear schedule today -- no sessions, no appointments, and no trainings.

The intention was to gain significant momentum in new projects I needed to focus on, and I found relief at recognizing I had such a significant span of time to get multiple things accomplished.

In the heat of the night, I awoke to the awareness that my period was taking my body hostage and that the day I intended to "beast mode" through actually needed to be spent resting. This inner conflict created tremendous tension within me as I dragged myself from bed this morning. Tension between my pride wanting to feel accomplished and my body asking for grace.

As I popped Advil and turned my heating pad on, I cried about the weight of this discomfort and my body pleaded with my pride to understand rest was not equivalent to laziness. My pride listened reluctantly at first, then softened as it remembered just how much I had gotten done the last few weeks.

The compromise my pride and my body agreed to was that I would make a clear, reasonable, checklist of what I wanted to knock out today with rest being the first thing listed and checked off before moving on to other tasks. With this agreement in place, the tension in me dissipated for a moment.

But then something shifted, as if the need for rest was overshadowed by a conflicting demand for self-accountability. Despite my pride having appeared to step aside, I started working on tasks I had listed from a anxious place of not wanting to be disappointed in myself.

My subconscious seemed triggered into remembering all the times I let imposter syndrome manipulate me into procrastinating on tasks I was intimidated by, and that triggered-state bulldozed over my body's adamant request for rest.

For 7-hours I didn't lay down once.

I was incredibly productive.

I taught myself what I didn't know how to do by leveraging YouTube University, ChatGPT, and by reaching out and asking others who could share insight. I completed tasks I had been intimidated about and everything on my clear, reasonable, list was checked off.

That is... everything except rest.

Rest had been the first thing written down and had been the last thing I made time for.

I felt terrible. Not only was I physically exhausted, but I also felt emotionally neglected by the person who I was asking to keep me safe: me. And just like I began the day in tears, I ended it in tears, apologizing profusely that I would have ignored such a sincere request on a day that I had nothing I "had" to do.

It took a moment to regulate myself as I processed what happened between me and me, but then I understood. I saw more clearly the need to be accountable to work on intimidating, new, tasks was driven by anxiety and simultaneously saw the need to rest and heal was driven by sincere self-awareness.

It would have been easy to judge myself for letting anxiety in the driver's seat of my day, however, I was so tired of being at odds with myself that I just wrapped me in my arms and soothed this body that was doing her best to meet a wide range of needs.

Simply acknowledging that my fatigue had been misinterpreted as procrastination allowed me to apologize and accept the lesson while releasing the guilt for mistrusting my body's very clear request for rest.

As I write this before bed, I go to sleep in harmony with me, and share it with you because we all fall prey to mistrusting our bodies. We all fall prey to mistrusting ourselves. We fear we haven't outgrown certain behaviors from the past so we don't truly connect with what we need in the present. Stop holding who you were against you. When you sit yo ass down long enough to truly observe and learn the lesson, the guilt and mistrust can be released, and you can fully embrace the brilliant work in progress you are.