9:00AM
It’s very loud. The furnace kicked on because for some reason in May, the temperature dropped below freezing outside. I think it’s about 32F right now. OK, it stopped.
I think about how often something like that will be happening and I ignore it—the environment overwhelms me with sound, distracts me, confuses me, wears me out, or even angers me, and yet I continue to move on as if nothing were happening. I was going to do that when I started writing this—I had an idea in mind and I was going to chug forward, conditions be damned.
I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad I stopped and paid attention to the environment and how it was impacting me instead of just focusing at the task on hand. I think so often I’ll prioritize what I’m doing over what I’m feeling, only later to realize the toll that this takes on my body.
I often have these realizations after going to conferences. I’ll be at a conference for a few days, completely immersed in conversations with participants, trainers, and presenters, talking with as many people as I can, helping in as many ways as I can. I’ll then stay up and party with the people late, because that’s where the real networking happens, over beers, informal chats, little games, etc. I’ll give speeches in Egypt, run workshops in Cyprus, or have heart-to-hearts with people in Germany. And then when I get home, it hits me: I feel exhausted. I am utterly sleep deprived, my legs feel tight from all the traveling, my eyes heavy, my soul ignored.
Almost every time I come home from one of those events I say to myself: “I need to take better care of my emotional health.”
Even now, at home, away from those distractions, I keep focusing on how I can help other people, how I can build new tools, how I can share the ones I’ve already built. I keep focusing on others and again get to a point where I remind myself that I need to focus on my emotional health.
I said the to myself again this morning and my body immediately relaxed. I noticed that I became aware of the current surroundings, my attention drifting back to the here and now.
If the goal of my work is to help people be emotionally healthy, then one of the best ways is for me to be emotionally healthy first. How I feel others are likely to feel. If I feel calm, others are likely to feel calm. If I feel stressed, others are likely to feel stressed. So on and so forth.
I think many of us prioritize the feelings of others over our own. What if we didn’t?
9:10AM
