Health

I honestly don’t think this particular challenge could have come at a better time; today was a hard day. The challenge was to book in a massage with the aim to rest your body and your mind, balance your hormones, reset the system and get some sort of relief.

So bearing that in mind, how are my stress levels right now?

Stress level (rating of 1-10; 10 being worst)? 6 right now, but it reached a peak of 8 today. I’m constantly re-evaluating my past ratings as the days go on and I realise how severe it can get (to make sure I’m keeping the ratings in perspective).
Notes: Today was a tough work day, which for obvious reasons I can’t disclose what happened. I’m proud of myself for making myself leave on time however, and also that I haven’t resumed working from home this evening. Instead I’ve enjoyed dinner with my fiancé, hung out the washing, and I’m now relaxing before bed. On a positive note I started the day off with a nice walk along the beach with my dog with a stunning sunrise, and then a boot camp following that. Exercise is definitely helping to keep more serious stress levels at bay, and I’m looking forward to a morning run tomorrow.

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Today’s chapter was an interesting one. Obviously committing to the challenge is a must, but this really opened my eyes to what would happen if I did or didn’t work my way through. When things get hard later down the track, or I’m completely uncomfortable with the challenges I face, through working through this chapter I can help keep things in perspective.

The chapter asked four important questions, which I’ve documented below. I expect that I’m going to be re-reading this post quite a few times during the course of the month.

But first, my summary:

Stress level (rating of 1-10; 10 being worst)? 6
Notes: I returned back to work today so I actually expected to be a lot higher. I made an effort to focus on listing out the things that were stressing me and that I needed to think about later, “parked it”, and got back to the business at hand. I don’t think that’s a long-term strategy, but it got me through today. I ended up canning my plans for the evening (a meetup group) so I could spend the night relaxing at home, focusing on getting in some good work/life balance habits. So even though my list of stresses has grown, I’ve made a concentrated effort to leave it at the door, go home on time, and chill out – all of that resulted in a maintained level of 6.

Now to get down to business with the questions for the day!

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I know I’ve been a bit AWOL from my blog recently, and there’s a reason for that.

I’ve just been through one of the most stressful periods of my life, and in a nutshell it has affected my health physically. I got to the point where one day I was sitting in my car and didn’t want to get out. I wanted to go home, climb into my bed and put the covers over my head. I forced myself out, and got on with things. The next day I struggled to get out of bed. The day after that, I called in sick.

I spent the entire day lifeless on the couch, and it wasn’t until I looked at my fiancé that it clicked in my head: there were other people in my life being affected. My stress pushing me to the point of feeling sick physically wasn’t the only issue, it was also bringing other people down. On top of that, if I ever wanted a family (which obviously brings a lot of challenges and stress with it) I had to sort it out. On the plus side, while it was a serious problem, it wasn’t severe. Yet. I had to fix it before it got any worse.

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