Rest Days for Your Mind

I recently had an experience that reminded me of the importance of a little self-pampering.  You can find the story here, but here’s the relevant part: a few days house-sitting that were supposed to be days of solitude turned into chat-fests and non-stop mental stimulation.  Now, I am both extremely introverted and highly sensitive.  My brain gets overloaded really quickly with stimuli – from conversation to noise to even smells.  For four straight days, I was interrupted constantly both by the dog at this house and by their cleaning lady, and by the end of it, I felt so incredibly haggard.

My brain ceased to function normally.  The connections it normally makes between thoughts were flickering out before they were even fully-formed.  I had a headache for a solid day afterwards.

Having the Courage to Start

"The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start."
-John Bingham 

I remember what running was like before I became a runner.  We used to do “the mile” once a year in school, and every year I dreaded that day.  I wasn’t even able to run the whole mile, and in the short stretches where I did manage to run, my throat burned and my legs felt heavy and sluggish.  I didn’t understand how some people in my grade could finish in six minutes.  I especially didn’t understand the few people who seemed not just unfazed by this relatively short ordeal, but actually seemed to enjoy it.   

Planting Seeds

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant.”            

– Robert Louis Stevenson

These are words to live by.  It’s easy to live each day under the microscope, judging every event.  I would argue that we not only all have “off days,” but we have “off moments” every single day.