Lessons from My 7-Day Water Fast (Bonus 2 of 3): Day 11, Beating “Busy”
It’s now Wednesday of my first week back at work. Monday was great. It was slow, flowing, responsive… everything I wanted a day to look like after my fast with all the good I learned from it coming to bear on my work rhythm. And then Tuesday happened. Tuesday is a typically busy day on my calendar because it holds all of my weekly executive syncs, which usually means it’s the day I deal with a lot of hard stuff in rapid succession.
Yesterday was no exception and included one additional meeting that ended up being challenging. By 2:00, I knew I was no longer operating on happy flow mode. I could feel the old way reasserting itself into my life. By the end of the day, I was emotionally exhausted.
I felt like after an amazing week of learning and growth, it took all of two work days for me to get beaten by Busy. It is my one of my oldest companions, so I shouldn’t expect it to go easily. But two work days!? It’s easy to get depressed about that. And yet, I remind myself that this is a process and a war, and wars are made up of lots of smaller battles, and that was just an early loss that I will learn from. I’m adjusting my Tuesday schedule to reduce its intensity starting next week, as a tactical example. The key is that I’m willing to make adjustments now that I’m committed to a new flow.
There’s no doubt that I’m also carrying fear that my pre-fast fever episodes will return. I awoke with a sharp neck ache, this morning, which has been an early risk sign of a fever episode. I’ve just decided I cannot spend any energy thinking on it. Instead, I will focus on fully adopting my new normal and deal with things as they come. I have a lower tolerance for sources of stress in my life now. I have greater resolve not to let the unimportant stress me. But these are all habits and new normals that I have yet to fully occupy.
I will wait to write the final entry in this series for awhile so I can give a broad review of it and the results experienced. Maybe a few months down the road.
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