Listen to Your Body to Avoid Burnout and Long-Term Stress
A lesson that I’ve had to relearn over and over again is to slow down when needed and pay attention to my body.
I don’t know about you, but that is very hard for me to do, especially when I feel like slowing down isn’t possible. Or at least it seems that way.
But here’s the hard reality: if you catch yourself pushing past your limits, you need to intentionally slow down and rest, otherwise your body will force you to.
That’s what I ran into this past week. This last week was a lot. It was amazing in so many ways, but it was also very stressful and full.
I had my course launch, Black Friday sales, and on top of that my house was full of friends and family so I was hosting dinner parties every night. Plus I had an all-day Bible education Assembly on Saturday that I wanted to give my full attention to.
It was all good things, but it was a lot.
And part of the reason my body began protesting is not just because I pushed past my limits with all the things I was trying to focus on and accomplish, but I also set myself up for failure by eating and drinking all the wrong things on top of not getting enough movement or enough sleep.
I know better, but I ignored that inner voice telling myself to slow down and support my system.
At least this time the result was nothing catastrophic. I woke up Sunday not feeling well and like I might be getting a UTI. That’s usually where my body gets weak after years of struggling with infections.
So now I’m being forced to rest. I had to cancel my appointments early in the week and canceled meeting up with a friend to give myself more time to heal and recoup.
And I wanted to share this with you because we tend to do this not only short term, but long term as well. And when we do it long term, the crash that inevitably comes can take us months or even years to recover from. And I don’t want that for you.
This is why getting in the habit of stopping and listening to your body is so important. It’s giving you signals all day long, but too often we ignore them.
In this instance, I knew I wasn’t sleeping enough but I figured I could just push through the rest of the week. My gut and nervous system did not like how much sugar I was eating, but I kept reaching for more eggnog. (Why is it SO good?!) I wasn’t sleeping enough, so I overslept each morning and wasn’t doing my normal regulating habits. And I wasn’t drinking nearly enough water, especially considering everything else I was doing.
All of this added up to a perfect storm, so I wasn’t at all surprised to wake up Sunday feeling the way that I did.
Slowing down means getting more sleep, eating nourishing foods, drinking all the water, and going back to my normal habits that reinvigorate me.
But I’m kicking myself because needing days to recoup really wasn’t necessary. If I had just listened to my body throughout the process, I could have still enjoyed myself, but I wouldn’t need days to recover from the long weekend.
This is the other reason I wanted to talk about this:
It’s one thing to have short periods of time where we indulge more than usual. But I see far too many people trying to exist this way on a daily basis. And then they don’t understand why they’re stressed all the time, gaining weight, always tired, have a long list of symptoms like gut issues, auto-immune conditions, hormonal imbalances, etc.
If you want to change your trajectory, you have to change your habits. And the easiest place to start is by paying attention to the signals your body is sending you that you’re likely ignoring.
Here’s what that might look like:
Are you paying attention when you start to feel sleepy at night? Do you ignore that feeling and stay up longer than you know you should? Imagine how good you would feel in the morning if you listened to your body and went to bed when you felt tired.
Do you listen to how you feel after eating certain foods? Maybe you know that gluten or eggs upset your gut but you eat them consistently anyway. Imagine how good and energetic you would feel if you ate the way you know you need to. Avoiding the foods that make you feel sluggish and prioritizing the foods that nourish.
Do you feel stiff and achey but you aren’t making time for movement or stretching to keep your body healthy? Imagine how good you would feel if you actually took breaks throughout the day and just spent a few minutes doing deep breathing, or stretching. How would you feel if you took a short walk after dinner?
Do you know you need to drink more water but you reach for sugary and/or caffeinated drinks instead and then are angry at your headaches, slow bowels, and skin issues? What if you started your day with a big glass of water instead of coffee or tea? How would you feel if you were actually hydrated throughout the day?
It’s overwhelming to try and change all of our habits, but what if you only focused on listening to your body? Become very aware of what you’re feeling, and then following through on providing what it needs to be supported.
One of the benefits of doing this is you start to create a sense of safety in yourself. You become your own caretaker. Your nervous system isn’t on high alert as much because your needs are being listened to and taken care of.
If the idea of this is overwhelming, start small. First just get used to tuning into your body and how it feels. Maybe set a few alarms on your phone throughout the day to remind you to stop and breathe and just feel. Or every time wash your hands, tune into your senses and notice what your hands feel like as you wash them.
The more we get used to being IN our body, the more we’ll notice the signals its sending out.
And if you feel like you need extra help with this, this is something I cover in my course Regulate + Thrive. Self-care has a bigger impact on the nervous system than most people recognize. It’s one of the foundational pieces that I see missing from most people and why they continue to feel stuck in survival mode.
It’s difficult to create change in our lives, but it’s absolutely possible! I would love to give you the tools that made all the difference for me.
