Staying in Tune

photo by Hamed Saber

We are very happy to have Dana back with us sharing her wisdom on staying in touch with yourself and knowing when you need to slow down. Enjoy!

I run to stay balanced. It helps me manage my stress, stay healthy, and get some all-too-precious “me time.” I was recently reminded, however, that it is possible to get too much of a good thing.

I recently trained for and completed my first half marathon. I have been a recreational runner since grad school, and I started running again about a year ago after a few years’ hiatus. Because I am goal-oriented by nature, my slow twenty minute jogs gradually turned into speedy hour-long excursions, and then on a whim I decided to sign up for this race. Unfortunately, about two weeks before the big day I caught a bug that I couldn’t seem to kick. I finished the race, but my performance wasn’t what I had hoped, and the incessant rattle in my chest made it hard to breathe – which can make a thirteen-mile run seem interminable! It took me two weeks of complete rest to beat it. This experience got me thinking about how we know when we are out of balance.

I am very rarely ever sick, and when I do get sick, it is usually a briefer and less severe version of what is going around, so for me to be ill so long was a clear message to me from my body that I had gone astray. In my quest to meet my goal, I had bulldozed my way through rather than heeding my body’s requests for me to slow down. Paradoxically, being so focused on my goal that I ignored the signs of imbalance deprived me of the ability to achieve my goal.

I imagine that the average reader of this blog is seeking life balance strategies because they have a tendency to do too much versus too little. I envision people who are possibly over-achievers or Type-A personalities (in other words, people like me). The external world rewards us for achievement, so it is easy to lose sight of the need to slow down from time to time to tune in, take stock, and adjust where necessary.

Unfortunately, I think we can easily become like the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water – we don’t realize how off-kilter we have become until things reach a boiling-over point. Any time we take on too many responsibilities or activities we risk spreading our energy too thinly, which has the potential to lead to physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and behavioral consequences. Getting sick, feeling run down, and experiencing recurring muscular tightness or headaches are often your body’s way of trying to get your attention. Mental signs of imbalance may include being forgetful, or having a hard time disengaging from certain thought patterns (e.g., worrying, list-making). Emotional signs might include feeling irritable, anxious, or blue. Or maybe you find yourself wanting to retreat from family and friends, or being uncharacteristically being snappish, argumentative, or grumpy. Other people find that they eat or drink too much and stop carving out time for healthy activities like exercise or meditation. Self-awareness allows us to appreciate the subtle signs that we need to adjust before getting “out of whack.”

Once I tuned in (ok, so I had to be hit over the head with it), I realized I would need to focus on self-care for a while to set things to right – to let the pendulum swing far in the opposite direction in order to get back to a healthy state of equilibrium. I got a massage and spent my time going on slow walks with my family instead of waking up before dawn to run. I talked about my experience with friends. In the end, I was grateful for the experience, because it reminded me how wise my body is – how powerful it can be when I listen to it and treat it kindly. I was also reminded that although it is satisfying to set and achieve a goal, sometimes life intervenes to foil the best laid plans (or training schedules), and it isn’t the end of the world. The most important part of the race was seeing my family there to meet me at the finish line.