On Saturday came home from seeing friends and drank tea and ate biscuits on the couch while watching Gossip Girl reruns until 3.30am.
Today I’m working from the aforementioned couch, dressed in Bloody Good Chap’s track pants (they’re even more giant and comfy than mine), a hoodie and even his giant socks, surrounded again by tea and biscuits. I’m “working” by writing this, but I suspect I will not get a huge amount done in this position until this evening when I’ll be coaching my awesome Bloody Good Life groups. Better put on some makeup before then!
After a month of constant work, no weekend or evening left unturned, I have inevitably swung my all-or-nothing self to the other end of the spectrum. Now, I want to do NO work, not ever.
But I don’t feel guilty for it, I realise now that life is all about riding the pendulum.
There will be times when I exercise a fair bit and drink green smoothies and bone broth, and there will be times that I lounge around in trackies, do no exercise and allow myself to sleep in (when I can).
Just like the seasons, we can’t stay at either extreme of the pendulum for long before we start to swing the other way.
The dance of life is to walk somewhere down the middle, not swinging too far to either extreme – but when life requires an unbalancing swing like it has for me in the rush of my recent launch, the best thing we can do is allow ourselves to let things play out and naturally allow life to bring us back to equilibrium.
Same goes when we find ourselves binge eating magnums – if we allow it rather than resisting it, our body will naturally make itself sick of all the sugar (eventually) and we’ll find ourselves back on a health kick.
Eventually.
Winter is a great time to allow ourselves to scale the socialising back a bit, relax, drink tea, eat biscuits, recharge our batteries. Especially gluten free gingernut biscuits dipped in decaffeinated English Breakfast. (The coeliac/ caffeine sensitive guide to being a sloth!)
For females we also have a mini four seasons every month – I find that in the first couple of weeks of my cycle I’m energised and motivated, it’s like spring and then summer, I can get a lot done and I feel amazing. But then comes autumn, I start to socialise and run around less, and by the time I’m in the last week of my cycle (winter?) I just need to slow everything right down, sleep more and go out less. And eat chocolate.
Before I was observant enough to watch my changing moods and energy levels, I’d get pissed off with myself when I slowed down or procrastinated, which added stress and anxiety to the mix, which cause exhaustion and up and down moods. Now that I know my patterns well life is so much easier!
Here in my slothy state, I’m allowing. I don’t feel guilty, in fact it feels good to hibernate for a bit, to recoup and not feel bad about it.
Start observing your patterns, your swings of the pendulum and see what happens when you stop meddling in the mechanics and just let the pendulum do its thing.
