Mindy’s Monday Motivation – Blog Post #22 – Listen to your body and give yourself a vacation

Last Sunday morning, I woke up with a wicked sore throat. I knew I have been running myself ragged the last few weeks, but I kept telling myself it was okay because I was planning to take a vacation soon. There was always one more load of laundry or one more load of dishes. As for work, there was always one more item from my check list that I wanted to cross off before I closed my laptop for the day. Then, the sore throat came. It hit me hard. I was thinking I had strep throat or even worse, I worried that I had COVID. However, I didn’t have any other symptoms. By Tuesday, I headed over to my doctor to get myself checked out. The results: negative for Strep and negative for COVID. My doctor sent me home with Chloraseptic drops recommendation. It was expensive but was well worth it as the numbness to my throat lasted longer than any lozenges could offer. During this past week, I could barely attend work meetings. I had to type my responses in the chat during meetings to avoid talking. I could barely sleep at night due to the sore throat, which resulted in massive headaches the next day due to lack of sleep. As I slowly recovered from this brief but debilitating illness, I was reminded of a fact that I knew well and had previously advocated in my prior posts– I should have been taking care of my body as well as my mind.

We all know that we need to do this, but sometimes it’s a matter of getting the job done. So, we ignore the signs. What end up happens is what has played out this past week: I get sick and my productivity goes down. I couldn’t accomplish a lot of the things that I had planned out last week. So, that extra hour or so each day the few weeks before ended up costing me more hours this past week. Is it worth it? No, because time is of essence and a lot of things that got delayed this past week will result in further implications than just a one-week delay. Therefore, I strongly advocate for all of you to maintain a healthy balance between work and personal life. For example, I was trying to finish something for work and ended up working late into the evening. This resulted in me rushing to make dinner for the kids as my husband was out that evening for his work. This elevated my stress level, which resulted in me rushing through dinner making and then dinner itself. One evening of such situation might be fine but imagine continuous nights of such over longer period. You can see where that leads.

I am going to take a vacation next week and give myself an opportunity to reset my balance, bringing it back to zero, by tipping my stress level back down with some much-needed relaxation. I also plan to turn off work emails because who knows if that one email will result in me working 2-3 hours while I should be trying to lower my stress level. I recommend for everyone to rethink vacation this year as well. Most of times we try to do family vacation, but all the planning and decision making regarding the trip and activities can be stressful. My husband and I have previously done separate vacations – where one of us took one child and we focus on what that one child wanted to do. Amazingly, these trips tend to be quite stress-free as only one adult made the decision and one child got the full attention on either side. No child got upset because he didn’t get to do what he wanted to do. We have also done individual vacations as well – where my husband would go for a ski trip with the local ski club and I would go for a hiking trip on my own with another group. I mean, what’s the reason you took a vacation in the first place – to get some R&R, but if all you got is stress instead, is it still a vacation? It’s not to say that we don’t do family vacation, but we do break off for these mini vacations to help get us re-centered.

The main idea is to reduce your stress, so give yourself a break by removing yourself from your source of stress and if the source includes your family as well, then don’t hesitate to ask your significant other for help to give you that extra time and space. You will thank yourself and your significant other later.?

I might not post a blog next week since I will be on vacation. Until next time, take care and have a great week, everyone!

Mindy