In doing the physical work to help improve my health, I’ve noticed that it’s created additional physical issues—well, different physical issues.  With balancing all of the hats I’m wearing, I was left with little choice but to wake up at 3am daily to work out.  This would be fine if I had been able to counteract the time I go to bed.  I quickly developed awful stomach issues which was from a combination of eliminating crap in my body and a messed up circadian rhythm.  I gave myself a single day of reprieve and realized that I still needed to maintain a work out early in the morning.  While 3AM was disruptive to my body, the working out itself felt amazing.  So, how do we balance it all?  There comes a point where we have to realize that doing something good for our body doesn’t do any good if we have to disrupt another essential function—like sleep/digestion.  It ends up counteracting the work we are trying to do in the first place. 

So where is this happy medium?  Where is the middle ground?  I know I do my best work first thing in the morning whether it is working out or writing or making decisions for my 9-5—so what becomes the priority?  Something has to give at a certain point because the body can’t keep up like that.  There comes a time we have to respect where our body is at—and our mind.  I always want to do it all and I have a tendency to overcommit at times, but the things I’m trying to do all need to be prioritized. Health is important, keeping a roof over our heads is important, productive work is important, creativity and expression is important.  I hadn’t learned how to separate those priorities and it got overwhelming.  I’ve said it before and I’m the first one to acknowledge that we can’t drive three cars at one time.  The key is to move one car at a time but to not get too far ahead of the others so we can’t make progress there too.       

Sunday was a great example of being in rhythm. I woke up at 5:30, took some medicine for my stomach, came down and worked on what I had to.  I felt the exhaustion so I slept for a couple more hours, I got up, took care of my son’s registration and some bills, called my parents and got to speak with my dad (mom was sleeping), we went to our event for the business (and learned some things about gatherings/stepping in time), went shopping for some things we had forgotten, talked with my mother, came home, I wrote, we went across the way for dinner with friends, we discussed books, history, nature, came home and went to bed.  It was a lovely day.  That was still a lot of stuff but it was nice.      Honestly even Saturday was good and I feel like this is an entire lesson on rhythm.  So if the body feels so good in rhythm why do we do so many things outside of what feels right for us?  Out of some perceived obligation?  Out of fear of not knowing what to do instead?  There are choices we have to make and until we do, life will feel overwhelming.  Things feel off when we aren’t listening/acting on what we need to do.  So take the time to find the rhythm and trust our instincts, no matter what.  It will take us exactly where we need to go.