Are you feeling as though you are always tired? Are you always saying that you are so tired you cannot seem to get anything done? Do you worry out loud that fatigue is causing you to fail in life?
I believe fatigue is a well-disguised avoidance technique. Are you willing to entertain the possibility that fatigue is trying to tell you something – and that ‘something’ is what you are trying to avoid? If you have mastered the art of using fatigue as an excuse, it is time to get real with yourself and stop the self-deception. As I am fond of saying, ‘you can make excuses or you can achieve your goals, but you cannot do both.’ Which do you really want to do?
Imagine for a moment that fatigue is an invitation to become more aware and not the thing that is actually keeping you from attaining your goals. Think of fatigue as a symptom trying to teach you something.
- Fatigue demands you pay attention – you are feeling something — fatigue – why?
- Fatigue is an invitation to take care of yourself. Self-care is a crucial part of self-love. I know and teach that self-love grows all love.
- Fatigue causes you to not do things you think are supposed to do. It actually helps you eliminate the ‘should dos’ on your list. It feels good getting rid of those, but you can pretend it really bothers you!
- Fatigue demands you ask ‘why am I so, so tired? Am I not sleeping? If not, why? Am I eating or drinking things that are keeping me awake?”
A good trick we allow fatigue to play on us is overscheduling. Do you overschedule yourself, causing you to feel you never have enough time to get everything done? When you don’t get everything done, it feels as though it is impossible whereby making it impossible to achieve what you want because you feel so tired all the time.
I know of which I speak. Years ago, I had one of those “how dare you say that to me” moments during a conversation with my then personal trainer. The situation went like this: I constantly complained about being tired. I mean constantly. At the time, my go-to technique to combat fatigue was to eat sugar. Obviously, if I had a personal trainer and I was eating a lot of sugar to stay alert, I just might be wasting my money working out because I was not going to lose weight if I was eating sugar every day. When I was being kind to myself, I would just say I was being counterproductive. Not a goal.
During one of my complaint sessions, about being too tired, eating sugar and being so frustrated at myself for 1) knowing the cycle; 2) knowing the cycle is not productive; and, 3) being seemingly helpless to stop the cycle, my trainer Wayne said, “That is so interesting, when I am tired I just take a nap.”
Really? Yes, really! And that is when I started experimenting with the possibility that taking a nap might be a solution to 1) my fatigue at the moment and 2) my habit of eating more sugar than I wanted to consume.
The bottom line? You cannot flourish in business or in life if you feel tired all the time.
Dr. Success Challenge: So now it is your turn. For the next 7 days, catch yourself when you say, “I am so tired.” 1) Make note of why you just said that, what you were about to do, what you were doing. 2) Immediately shift your language from “I am so tired” to “I am feeling tired.” 3)how Then ask yourself why you are feeling tired.
Awareness is the first step to understand what action you might need to take. Let fatigue be your teacher.
