Reflections

Permission

• By Abel
• February 16, 2015
• No Comments

I have a type “A” personality but yesterday I decided to take a break. It was hard for me to do, but I needed to. Sometimes I get something in my mind to do and I have to do it. Like reaching my fitness goal on my activity monitor every day for the rest of my life or else, I’ve taught myself to believe, I’ll gain all my weight back despite the fact that on most days I exceed my goal by 50%, sometimes more. So one day of not meeting every once in a while won’t hurt. But I keep pushing myself.

I can obsess over things like this. I think because I feel it is something I can control. This is important to me, because I spend 40 hours a week doing my job. It’s not a bad job, but it’s hard to find meaning in it sometimes. And when it comes down to it, the work that comes across my desk, I have to do, whether I want to or not. This can be particularly painful when I get pulled into fighting someone else’s fires. I try to plan my work in order to complete it with a high degree of quality, but when a fire erupts from a smoldering email string that someone has ignored (on purpose or because of the inundation) the alarm sounds, all hands are on deck, and I do what I can to help though it irritates me.

So I feel accomplished when I’m managing my goals, the ones I set and have complete control over. But yesterday the high was 25°. My morning walk at 8 AM in 7° temperatures (a wind-chill of -5° below) was not happening. As I lay in bed relishing my excuse, exhausted from poor sleep from the week that had just ended, I questioned the sanity of my goal – walking four miles daily or the equivalent in other activity. And I decided I was not going to exercise yesterday and I was going to be completely okay with less than 100% flashing from my activity monitor.

It was easy to say, lying in bed early yesterday morning warm beneath the covers. But as the hours spun by I did get antsy. At around 4 PM it was still light out and I could get a short walk in. The temperature had risen to 25° and the wind gusts had all but subsided. Then I caught myself and I stopped, telling myself, You deserve a break today. Take it.

Now that I think about it, if I’m truly honest with myself, the real reason I’m obsessing over my level of activity is my fear of backsliding. Of gaining back again all the weight I lost twice. The fear of not disappointing acquaintances who when I see them after several months are surprised (and probably a little jealous) to see that I’ve kept the weight off. This is the real reason I’ve become preoccupied with this goal.

I’ve felt this same pressure before, during my first semester of college almost thirty years ago. I felt overwhelmed and unworthy to be at a college with such smart women. I thought that I wouldn’t be able to cut it and so I studied all the time. I passed all my classes that first semester but I didn’t enjoy myself. And, I did worse that semester than I did in subsequent ones when I was working an off-campus job to make ends meet and so couldn’t spend all of my time studying – a forced break of sorts.

This morning it was warmer, but still bitterly cold. But I was back on plan, walking – inside on the treadmill however. I was more energized today. And, the world did not come to an end because of my brief hiatus from activity; I hadn’t fallen off the wagon as I feared I would.

I’m learning, slowly, that planned breaks are as necessary to sustaining myself as is staying active. The beauty of this scheduled break was that I gave myself permission, permission to not only take a break, but to trust myself and my resolve. I took my break but had a plan to get back on track when break time was over. And stuck to it, still in control, refreshed, and guilt free.

Photo Credit: Patrik Jones