Two words that I've tried to eliminate from my lazy lexicon of verbal litter are “busy” and “tired”. It all goes without saying that when people ask how you've been and you say “busy” they nod in sage understanding. The fact you could be busy watching daytime TV or washing the kitchen floor isn't really touched on.
We are alive, ergo we are “busy”. Then saying you are “tired” with accompanying empathetic agreement from others sounds like a done deal, a natural state of the human condition. The fact that busyness and fatigue naturally go hand in hand is a crisis that needs addressing with radical self-care and a good, hard look at what you are doing, if you need to do it and how to do less of it if it's draining your energy.
However, there is another cause for deep tiredness that often goes undetected and this is the debilitating slog of living inside our own heads. We exhaust ourselves by the very process of thinking and visiting daily battlegrounds in our minds which drain our souls and bring us to our knees.
We fight personal demons and desperately try to make sense of past hurts and issues. We are plagued by an overwhelming dread that we are not good enough, not doing the right stuff or are somehow falling short. Procrastination has us labouring over decisions that could take seconds but drag us through days or weeks of debilitating hesitancy.
We imagine the worst case scenarios in our brains creating a mindset of anxiety and worry even though few of these horror stories ever materialise or have any place in reality. Overthinking - a modern curse - is like putting your mind on a permanent fast spin as you go over and over doubts and fears and still come up with the foggiest solutions.
Our thoughts can simply exhaust us with endless negative chatter, suspicion, fear and harsh comparisons and yet fool ourselves that everything is fine. It's like we have a portable tinderbox of stress and doom that we assume was installed at birth or just how we roll.
We are alone with our thoughts except in the early hours when they sit like ghosts around our beds terrifying us with falsehoods and predictions of woe. But it doesn't have to be this way. Your thoughts should support you, be a well spring of health and happiness and give you the courage and hope to have the life you wish for yourself. Let's stop being our own enemies.
If you are plagued by negative or worrying thoughts you will feel tired and overwhelmed regardless of the pace of your life then know it can get better. Journaling each day and allowing your thoughts to free fall onto a page is one way of parking them and gaining perspective. Talking it through is a great way of clearing the mind and walks in nature and meditation help ground us.
Try looking for the silver linings, keep a gratitude notebook and decide to ask what is the best that can happen. Then when someone asks you how you are instead of saying “busy” or “tired” you could say “full of energy and loving life” wouldn't that be novel?
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