Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 347 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Nice to be with you guys as always!
I was running the other day, it was really hot and I had on my plan to do one of my high intensity sprint runs. That’s where I walk sprint walk sprint. But it was so hot and humid that I found myself overheating and I Thought “I’m going to have to walk the rest of the way, Im out of steam. But as I walked for a little bit, my energy built back up and I realized I actually could continue running and it felt really good to do it! But I pivoted my plan to a slow steady run which allowed me to continue to the end. The key thing you need to know here is that I was running outside. A long way from my house. Had I been running at the gym on the treadmill, I would have had the option to quit as well as rest. But when you’re 2 miles from the house, you don’t have that option. My brain would have probably chosen the quit option if it had been there, but it wasn’t and I ended up finishing a really great run, because I had allowed myself to rest a bit and then I changed my pace a bit so I could continue without overheating.
Sometimes our brains are so sneaky. It wants to take the easy road and of course the one that will protect us. It will have us justifying throwing in the towel when just a little bit of time off is what we need. It may not mean you need to quit it may just mean you need to rest.
Everything we do in life needs refuel in some way or another. Our phones, our watches, our cars. But we often forget that so do we.
We have no problem with plugging our laptops in daily or our whoop strap or our iPhone. We know the battery is going to go down after use…..That’s just normal, of course it needs to recharge, it’s been working hard. We don’t just throw our phone in the drawer when the battery is dead. Of course not. We charge it and now it’s just like new.
When we are driving along and we notice our gas tank is on empty what would happen if you just put a big smiley face over the gas gauge so now you don’t have to see it. Problem solved right? Wrong. It won’t be long until you’re on the side of the road wishing you had done something about the gas tank when you had the chance.
We do that with ourselves though all the time.
We go around with a big smile on our face like everything is peachy but we are waaaaay in the red. We may be putting on a great show but inside we are tired, anxious, and running out of steam.
A lot of us are there. We’re tired, we’re anxious, we’re grumpy. And it’s not that we need to quit. We really do just need to rest.
My whoop strap has a battery signal at the top of the app and it lets me know very clearly when it needs to be recharged. I know that it will just be a wrist ornament if I don’t charge it so I make sure I do that every time it gets to a certain level.
The thing about the whoop strap though is it kind of tells me where I am too because it has a recovery level I see every morning. It will let me know what level of strain would be optimal. Sometimes it says, you need to basically take the day off. But other days it will say you are primed for going full out. It’s not perfect but it has helped me a lot.
But it does make me think, what if we did all have a battery signal like the one our phones have? Where would your battery signal be right now? Would it be green? Yellow? Red? Would it stay in the red? Would you even know what to do to recharge or refuel? Would it make you realize that running in the red may not cause us to completely drop dead like our iPhone, but it’s showing up in other ways. Irritability, lack of energy and focus, weight gain, anxiety.
We think if we slow down, we will miss something but studies have shown it’s actually the opposite. We miss things when we are rushing and anxious, not when we slow down.
Sometimes we think in order to be at peace or joyful we have to quit and we know that’s not possible because we have to pay our bills or the Kids have to be fed so we just assume that we are destined to be tired, anxious and grumpy. But what if we don’t need to quit anything? What if just like on my run, we simply need to rest and maybe change our pace up a little? There will be times where you have to run hard but it’s not sustainable all the time and there will be times where its not even possible like me sprinting in the heat..
I know exactly where I keep my whoop strap charger that way when it’s dying I know exactly where and how to recharge it. Maybe we need to have that setup for ourselves. For me, my daily routine typically includes waking up, getting water, if the suns out getting sunlight on my face, while meditating and journaling and Exercise of some sort. The last thing Ive picked up is getting to bed at a certain time so that I get the amount of sleep I need. That is my go to protocol. I know exactly how to do it. And I can tell when I don’t. Think about it like you do refueling your gas tank, you can let it go so long but then you’re going to start having problems at some point, don’t let it get there.
When we slow down, it makes us realize it’s not quitting that we need, it’s rest and maybe a change of pace.
My challenge to you this week is to be honest with yourself about where your internal battery is? Are you putting a happy sticker over an empty gas gauge? And do you know exactly what you need to do to refuel?
Share this with 3 hard driving friends. I love you guys, Ill talk to you in a few days!
