Warning signs
The price of not paying attention to ourselves is just too high in the long run. We need to heed our warning signs. Even, and especially if we are overstretched right now.
I lost my entire computer hard drive in December 2020. Ev-er-y-thing was lost. (Yes, a whole conversation about data saving and back up is needed, but I don’t want to talk about that now.)
What I do want to talk about is warning signs… The crash did not suddenly happen one day. There were warning signs for several weeks beforehand.
All of these warning signs happened in a very crazy busy time in my life. I simply told myself I had no time to pay attention to warning signs, because after all the computer did actually eventually work. Until one day it just didn’t.
And by then, it was too late to go back and prevent the crash. I could only get assistance to mop up and try to preserve what I could (not much).
The crash was preventable. I noticed the warning signs early on. This is not about beating myself up, I am fully cognisant of the pressure I was under at the time, doing things I had never done before, working at full tilt, full time mom, full time wife etc…
But I did learn this; pay attention to warning signs, even and especially, when you are overstretched.
Our bodies are designed to give us warning signs when things are not as they should be. Warning signs are our being’s way of telling us that we have unmet needs, whether they be emotional, physical, cognitive, or relational. Pay attention to your headaches, your patterns of behaviour, negative coping such as over-eating or over-drinking, your moods, your cravings.
What has changed for the worse in the past 6 months? What do you think you need to pay attention to, that you have been sweeping under the carpet? Sometimes our warning signs are so subtle, we don’t even give them a passing thought.
All of these are warning signs that you have an unmet need, that you are at your capacity in some way and you may either need more of something (connection/love/time) or less of something (this may mean you saying “no” to someone or something).
A need is something that we quite naturally have as humans that helps us to be nice people. Hungry people are angry people. Undernourished people are dissatisfied people. Unloved people are deeply lonely people. We can live with a few unmet needs for a while, this is called delayed gratification and self control. Sometimes it is necessary to forego our own needs to meet the needs of those around us; welcome to parenthood. But we cannot ignore or suppress the meeting of our needs forever. We need to heed the warning signs.
Today, pay attention to your body. Listen to your heart (Roxette wasn’t wrong, people). Check-in with yourself; how are I doing? What do I need more of? What do I need less of?
The thing about my computer is that I am still paying the price of losing all my data. It has made me feel scattered at times as I gather the bits of information I need from different sources. It’s not impossible, but it’s a pain. It’s an unnecessary hurdle to get over at times so that I can get to do some work.
We are much more important than computers. The price of not paying attention to ourselves is just too high in the long run. We need to heed our warning signs. Even, and especially if we are overstretched right now.
