Safe Sanctuary

RETREAT, REGROUP & REWARD

It's been a tough start to the year and it's time to pull back the troops from the front line, dress the wounds, heal and recharge the energy levels. 

Self Assessment

The most important thing I've learned about making life changes since starting on this new lifestyle from 1st Jan this year: Self assessment - ie. taking daily checks on any progress....schedules, goals and energy levels for making these good things happen. Without maintaining good mental & physical health - none of these positive achievements would be possible. Checking the status quo every day means any deviations from sleep/diet can be corrected and the energy levels can be kept in the green/amber rather than red zones. It's amazing how seemingly small things like skipping a meal or having one hour less sleep, can affect our productivity. Without regular assessments, we don't really pay proper attention to these energy dips until they manifest in physical/mental drops in performance - ie. injury & illness. 

Know your limits

When you're young, you have an amazing capacity to heal/recover/adjust to deviations from any sleep and energy changes. Your body's natural ability for healing means even sustained periods of general abuse/mistreatment can be corrected easily. This ability to heal, although still possible over longer time periods is not as easy to do and may not be a full recovery as we get older. 

The painful truth

I can remember feeling invincible at 26. I used to push my physical limits, always working and playing hard. I would always bounce back from overdoing it. From the early to mid 30's, there's been a change in appearance - greying hair, lines around the eyes and ailments popping up 'seemingly from nowhere' but I've been living the same lifestyle in my mid to late 30's that I did in my 20's and still thought I was 'bouncing back'. I've repeatedly dropped my energy levels into the red zone and the last few years have thrown up some clear signals that the body isn't 26 anymore. We don't want to face up to the fact, but once we do accept ageing and hatch a plan to manage damage limitation, we can adjust our levels of input/output and allow ourselves more quality healing time. This is essential if we want to keep doing the things we enjoy and stay looking and feeling vital/younger through to old age. 

This is why - although I have some major responsibilities on at the moment, I'm taking time by myself to visit my safe sanctuary in order to get my energy levels back on track. This will see me return fresh and ready for the next battles ahead.