Biorhythms — Your Biological Batteries
Have you ever observed that you feel bubbly and full of energy on certain days, and feel exactly the opposite and or in a dull phase on some days? You recall doing an astonishing amount of work when you are feeling high, but observe that you don’t feel like doing the same productive work when you are dull even though you are not sick or really tired. And you may have also observed that these high and low feelings can last inside you for several days.
So, what is this cycle of highs and lows that you experience periodically? And how come you see many people and leadership gurus claim to be always energetic, excited, and passionate about everything, every minute and every hour, while you feel lazy and unenergetic periodically? What is their superhuman secret that you are unaware of?
Secondly, with all the energetic individuals around how can you honestly blurt out that you don’t feel excited about that yet one more boring meeting on customer satisfaction when you are feeling low? Now, how do you prove to everyone that you can also be excited, energetic, and passionate like them about everything every day? Will special vitamin tablets, daily exercises, power lunches, or even some workplace productivity and enthusiasm-enhancing drugs help? Or is there some other magic to be always active?
If you are eagerly expecting me to share some golden solutions to eliminate your low productivity days, then you are going to be disappointed. What I am going to tell you is to do nothing, and simply learn to live with your highs and lows. Many would normally disagree with my above suggestion and proudly claim that they are always able to maintain a peak physical, mental, and emotional condition every day. But the unfortunate truth is, no matter what you do, the rich food you eat, the books you read, or the calories you pump out, you cannot remain excited, enthusiastic, or energetic every day.
Mother Nature has programmed everyone to undergo an endless cycle of active and passive periods in their physical, emotional, and mental states. Whether you believe it or not, you will feel highly energetic and enthusiastic on certain days (active phase) and feel bored, exhausted, weak, irritable, and uninterested in anything on certain days (passive phase). And this cycle of high and low days will happen throughout your lifetime.
The answer to why you feel high or low lies in a relatively unknown and often dismissed concept called biorhythms. At the beginning of the last century, a certain Dr. Wilhelm Fliess noticed identical rhythms in the case histories of his patients. He observed active and passive phases (curves) in the physical, emotional, and mental rhythms of his patients. Based on his observations, he derived the principle of biorhythms and observed that the physical curve extended spanned 23 days, the emotional curve with 28 days, and the mental curve with 33 days.
And Hermann Swoboda, a professor of psychology at the University of Vienna, while researching periodic variations in fevers, looked into the possibility of a rhythmic change in moods and health of people. Based on the data he collected in areas like pain, traffic accidents, outbreaks of fevers, illnesses, heart attacks, and recurrent dreams he concluded that there was a 23-day physical cycle and a 28-day emotional cycle. These curves are usually plotted as sine waves similar to an alternating current we studied in our high schools.
A cycle is said to be in a positive phase when above the zero line and in a negative phase when below the zero line. And there are also some mathematical formulas and free online tools that can plot the curves for you based on your birth date and other inputs. However, the core idea behind this chapter is not to make you become some sort of a wizard in plotting your biorhythms. Instead, this article is to teach how you can successfully exploit your highs and lows.
High days: Assuming that you are not suffering from any serious health problems or other personal headaches that can make you feel low, the trick is to utilize both your active and passive phases to your advantage. You need to become like an ant when you are feeling active (see previous article — Think Like an Ant). So, you should aim to do the maximum amount of important work (official and personal) on the days you feel great.
This could be anything like finishing off a report that is not due for weeks, attacking all pending workplace issues, organizing your finances, trimming the garden, repairing the roof, cleaning the garage, eliminating the clutter in your house and workplace, and anything that you have been putting off for weeks. On such days you can multitask to do an extraordinary amount of work and still be energetic. The challenge will be to avoid wasting such days for ‘nice to do’ things like picnics, or sports, or simply waste them by doing things that don’t help you in a true sense.
The question you should ask yourself is, ‘When you are feeling your best where should you first direct that energy?’ For example, do you use that phase to properly organize all your messed-up finances by visiting a financial consultant, or use this time for picnics, ball games, beach trips, and other ‘nice to do’ stuff, rather than tackle a ‘must do’ stuff?
Low Days: If you have entered your low phase you may feel guilty because you are wasting precious time without doing anything meaningful. And you may ask why you are unable to concentrate on any work now when just a few days ago you felt great and did a lot of meaningful work.
But now your mind and body are simply refusing to pump that vibrant energy juice you need to get things done. And for every effort to do some meaningful work, you feel some invisible force pushing you back. You start making minor and major mistakes, ordinary things will seem like drudgery, and the simplest of tasks will seem Herculean.
However, the key to tackling your low days lies in what you do during your high days. If you have done your best during your high days, then you should simply ‘take it easy’ during your low days. Just do only the things that you cannot postpone, avoid all critical activities if possible, and don’t worry about not having a productive day.
On your low days, you are better off listening to signals and resistance from your body and mind that tells you that you are running on low batteries rather than fighting with it. For example, it’s believed that some doctors plan their work around their highs and lows, and don’t tackle critical surgeries when are feeling low. And there have been some studies and evidence to prove that drivers meet with accidents more when they are in their low phase rather than their high phase.
So, if you are regularly experiencing high and low productive days now you know the hidden reason and need not feel guilty or worried at all. You are actually in good shape and your biological machinery is in perfect condition. You can proudly say you are a normal human being and not act artificially like many people do to impress others. The question is whether you can honestly admit that you are feeling low when you are indeed feeling low. To summarize, your biological batteries need to continuously charge and discharge. So, get used to accepting your highs and lows and use them to your advantage.
Some Famous Quotes
Our biological rhythms are the symphony of the cosmos, music embedded deep within us to which we dance, even when we can’t name the tune — Deepak Chopra
Men have mood swings. Women have mood leaps, mood swirls, mood loop-de-loops — Bill Pronzini
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~ 🤵 About the Author — Thejendra Sreenivas was a Technology Manager in the IT industry for nearly 30 years. He is now an Author and Book Publishing Coach and helps authors to Self-Publish their books Worldwide on Amazon and Non-Amazon retailers. He has written 30+ books on various topics. Visit his online cave — www.thejendra.com for more details.
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