This was the Daily Om from a couple of days ago. It's not groundbreaking information, but it's a good reminder that we are responsible for our own well-being.
Cause, Effect, And Transformation
Feeling Depleted
There are times in our lives when it seems our bodies are running on empty. We are not sick, nor are we necessarily pushing ourselves to the limit-rather, the energy we typical enjoy has mysteriously dissipated, leaving only fatigue. Many people grow accustomed to feeling this way because they do not know that it is possible to exist in any other state. The body's natural state, however, is one of energy, clarity, and balance. Cultivating these virtues in our own bodies so that we can combat feelings of depletion is a matter of developing a refined awareness of the self and then making changes based on our observations.
A few scant moments of focused self-examination in which you assess your recent schedule, diet, and general health may help you zero in on the factors causing your depletion. If you are struggling to cope with an overfull agenda, prioritization can provide you with more time to sleep and otherwise refresh yourself. Switching to a diet containing plenty of nutritious foods may serve to restore your vigor, especially when augmented by supplements like B vitamins or ginseng. Consider, too, that a visit to a healer or homeopath will likely provide you with wonderful insights into your tiredness. But identifying the source of your exhaustion will occasionally be more complicated than spotting a void in your lifestyle and filling it with some form of literal nourishment. Since your earthly and ethereal forms are so intimately entwined, matters of the mind and heart can take their toll on your physical self. Intense emotions such as anger, sadness, jealousy, and regret need fuel to manifest in your consciousness, and this fuel is more often than not corporeal energy. Conversely, a lack of mental and emotional stimulation may leave you feeling listless and lethargic.
Coping with and healing physical depletion will be easier when you accept that the underlying cause might be more complex than you at first imagined. A harried lifestyle or a diet low in vital nutrients can represent only one part of a larger issue affecting your mood, stamina, and energy levels. When you believe that you are ultimately in control of how you feel, you will be empowered to transform yourself and your day-to-day life so that lasting fatigue can no longer gain a foothold in your existence.
There are many ways to deal with depletion, and finding productivity skills is one of them -- the more efficient we are, the less time we have to spend working.
The Ririan Project offers a lot of useful information on productivity, creativity, working with emotions, and so on. It's a great resource for finding ways to avoid or overcome depletion.There are probably a lot of other resources out there, but these are the ones that I read on a regular basis.
Steve Pavlina also offers a wealth of information in this area -- some of it can be a bit too New Age for my taste, but some of it is also quite insightful.
Zen Habits is another site that offers information on achieving goals and increasing productivity. Some of it is Zen-based, as the blog name might suggest, and some of it is just nuts-and-bolts efficiency information.
However, I think the bottom line for fighting physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual depletion is mindfulness. If we can be more mindful of what is going on inside of us, we can begin to see the warning signs of depletion before we end up sick, depressed, or worse. And we can begin to choose alternate ways of being.
Although mindfulness training comes out of Buddhism, it need not be a religious practice or something esoteric. It simply asks us to stop for a moment, take a few deep breaths, and tune in to what is going on inside of us.
We can tune into our bodies and be aware of stress or exhaustion. When we can be present to our physical selves, we can learn a lot about how we are functioning in our lives. Many of us treat our bodies like machines, but a machine that isn't properly attended breaks down. Our bodies offer warning lights, the same way our cars do, but we have to listen for them and slow down -- even for a moment -- to become aware that something is out of balance before we break down and need to go to the doctor. Stress contributes to a whole range of physical illnesses -- as does poor nutrition and a lack of exercise -- so, it's worth our effort to pay attention to our physical health.
The same thing holds true for emotions. Many of us -- especially men -- tune out emotions or otherwise try to avoid them. But if we aren't aware of our emotional states, we can act out inner frustrations in our daily lives, and it will be our friends, family, partners, and co-workers who suffer because we are unconscious. But we also suffer. If we are not happy in our life and work, but we refuse to look at those feelings, we can never change the situation. Becoming mindful of our emotions is the best way I know of to avoid acting out destructive emotions -- like anger or frustration -- on those around me. When I can stop, tune into my anger, and take a few deep breaths, I am far less likely to yell at someone, suffer road rage (a hard one for me), or blame other people for what I am feeling.
Of course, this applies to our spiritual lives as well. When we are out of tune with our deeper purpose -- whatever that may be (and many of us have never bothered to look seriously at what that may be) -- our souls will suffer. When we are miserable at such a deep and important level, everything else in our lives, no matter how happy we are in some ways, will lose its luster. I can have all the things I want -- nice possessions, the perfect partner, and a great job -- but if my soul isn't getting its needs met, I will be unhappy. The hard part is that this unhappiness is hard to see unless we really learn to tune in to ourselves in deeper ways -- and this is where meditation or contemplative prayer is so useful. Even ten minutes a day can make a difference if we do it on a regular basis.
Mindfulness need not be work -- it simply asks us to be more present to ourselves in our daily lives. Instead of being on auto-pilot as we go through all the responsibilities we have each day -- in our jobs, our friendships, our relationships, and so on -- we can tune into to ourselves. We can ask, gently, "How do I feel right now?" We can develop a mental check list for our body, our hearts, our minds, and our souls. Even if we only do this while we are in the shower in the morning, or as we go to bed in the evening, we will begin to become more aware of what is going on inside of us -- and this will help us avoid depletion of all kinds.
Please don't think I have mastered this -- I still struggle every day with being aware and being mindful. It's a lifelong practice. It's hard at first, and we may feel discouraged, but the more effort we give it -- and NOT as another responsibility we have to deal with , but gently and compassionately -- the more we can become aligned with who we really are as human beings.
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