Tired and Crazy

Tired and Crazy

I am always interested in trends I notice in conversations around me. Lately, I’ve been hearing two things: People are tired, and things feel kind of crazy.

Those are two telling topics. On the one hand, the first one lets me know that people aren’t feeling present in what they are doing. Up here in Minnesota, it could be some cabin fever, although that’s the same thing as not being present.

On the other hand, the second one tells me that people aren’t feeling present in what they are doing.

Oh. Heh.

It’s been very wintery here lately; bitter cold, ice, snow. As soon as we say, “I don’t like this.” we stop being present. We start resisting, and that causes all sorts of stuff to happen.

We clench, for one. We clench our emotions. We clench our thoughts. We clench our joints and muscles. Ow.

We start our thought-loops; “Why does this always happen to me?” “I hate this. Why can’t I do what I want?” “Why am I always so uncomfortable?” etcetera.

Everyone who noticed the bad creative questions, hooray for you!

Clenching takes a lot of energy. It’s harder for your system to circulate your blood when it’s trying to get through clench. Clenching is like trying to swim upstream. Clenching makes it harder to keep our balance on icy sidewalks and streets. We fall down.

We get mad, and that starts releasing stress chemicals in our bodies. Oh, and enough of those and we get sick. Hmm.

Resisting, not being present, means that we miss stuff. We miss turns in conversations, we lose our train of thought, we don’t see details. So, we start to feel like things are a little crazy, especially when the folks around us are in the same boat.

No wonder we get tired. Except that tired is about not being present. When we are tired at times we usually aren’t, we are saying to ourselves, “I don’t want to be here.” It usually has nothing to do with how much sleep we’ve had. (Remember being in love, and so excited that it didn’t matter how little sleep you got, you were full of energy?)

So what do we do? We get into our bodies, for one thing, breathing deeply as we can for a bit. We start asking good Creative Questions. We seek out people who will support us being present and cheery, and avoid the moaners and whiners. Why do I love to be present? What makes me have fun in the now? How am I in the moment?

How have I changed from fighting it, to going with the flow?