When we were young we thought we could do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. Our energy seemed limitless. Some people manage to continue into adulthood and old age with this kind of energy. My mother-in-law, for example, had more energy at age 70, even though she was struggling with cancer, than my entire young family put together. Still, even she paced herself: she always took a power nap in the afternoon, and enjoyed her down time as much as her “on” time.
Most of us don’t have that kind of energy, though, especially if we are suffering from some kind of illness or chronic pain, or if we are recovering from physical or emotional trauma. For those of us who fall into this category, the notion of pacing can be a hard but important lesson to learn. Ironically, the lesson can be even more difficult when we’re feeling good: on days that I wake up feeling great and full of energy, I have to monitor myself more than ever. My instinct on good days is to take advantage of my energy level and get things done. But I always end up paying for this later in the day when I find myself exhausted or in pain. I literally have to treat myself like a child, and say to myself, “OK, I know you feel you can continue to work, but why not sit for half an hour before you start the next activity?” Or, “You can work in the garden, but only for 5 minutes today. If that works out well, tomorrow you can try 8 minutes.” Usually I don’t want to listen to my “inner adult,” but now, after learning the hard way, I realize I have to. I think when you pace yourself your chances of getting stronger and building up your energy reserves for those days when you have no choice but to expend a lot of energy are much higher than they would be if you pushed yourself to the limit all the time.
Acknowledge that your resources are limited. You can build up your resources, but you can also deplete them. Balance is the key. If you don’t refill your car gas tank, it will run out of fuel and leave you stranded on the highway; if you don’t change your oil and maintain your car regularly, it will break down and be that much more expensive to repair. Humans are no different. Human maintenance includes eating well, sleeping well, exercising, resting, and replenishing by regularly doing things we enjoy. When we are well maintained we function better and last longer. If we deplete our resources we begin to break down, and if we ignore those signs of breaking down we run the risk of not being able to fix ourselves so easily. Maintenance is replaced by repair, which can be costly financially, time-wise, emotionally, physically, and so on.
I’ll end with a couple of examples of how I’ve adapted my daily life to this lesson. On Mondays I get up at 6:00, leave the house before 7:00, commute to work, teach from 8-11, and meet with students or do other work-related activities from 11-12. By that time I’m usually quite tired. If I need to stay at work for some reason I do, and if I don’t, I’m usually gone by 12:30 or 1:00. When I get home I may go for a walk and/or take care of household business. Sometimes I can continue to run errands or deal with correspondence and so on until my kids get home at 3:30 and 4:00, but if I find I’m yawning a lot and having trouble thinking, I force myself to lie down and take a 20-30 minute nap, because I know that I’ll need the energy I get from my nap to deal with the evening routine of homework and my adolescent son who recently has decided to push all the limits I try to enforce, including going to bed at a reasonable hour. I can’t deal with him effectively unless I’ve replenished my energy and centered myself during the afternoon, between work and the second shift.
Last week was particularly stressful: not only was I dealing with a limit-testing adolescent, but my younger child had stomach aches that made him cry every single night before going to bed. After a few days of that, you can imagine that I started to fear the worst (it turned out to be nothing, of course). On top of all that my husband needed an emergency root canal. By Friday I was quite a disaster: stressed, panicky, anxious, and full of tension. I said to my husband, “So much for all my meditation and deep breathing, I’m totally unable to deal with this.” He responded with wisdom, “Imagine if you hadn’t been taking care of yourself; at least now you have the resources to get through these few stressful days.” So true.
Remember, your resources are limited, so you have to pace yourself, which means always balancing the demands you make on yourself (or that others make on you) with activities that replenish and restore.
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