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Learning to “Say When”
We are too good at running on fumes…
There comes a time, no matter how much you have on your plate — work, family, chores, community, bills, charity, friends — when your body, your brain, your heart and soul says “ENOUGH!”
There are always signs along the way, clear points at which saying “when” would be appropriate, but often, we miss them, or blow them off without a thought. We continue moving without considering the potential effects, sometimes running on fumes, in order to do more, frantically attempting to keep up the illusion that everything is OK.
Spinning as fast as we can is common practice in our world, so normalized that we may negatively perceive the person who stops for a breath. For a multitude of reasons, we are incredibly good at ignoring the signs and symptoms that we are reaching the limit of our endurance… societal conditioning, more is better, quantity over quality, doing over being, peer pressure, guilt, the “shoulds,” the belief that other people’s needs are more important than our own, the fear of what it would mean if we do need to stop, and a variety of other well-rehearsed arguments.
If you deny yourself the right to say “when,” there will be consequences; the extent of those consequences will depend on 1) how long you refuse to accept the signs and 2) your own system’s key…
