This is a longer blog (and a bit more personal) than usual on a topic I’ve been pondering. How do we sustain ourselves in body, mind and spirit in the work we do? Please join me and send me an email on your thoughts about this, too.

If you feel like you need more immediate help with stress and overwhelm, take the time instead to register for my upcoming Room to Breathe Mindfulness eCourse, starting this Thursday March 10th. Click Here to Read and Register.

Of course, you can do both. 🙂

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The summer of 2003, I was about to become a shipwreck.

At the time, I was straddling two jobs and a new rigorous training program. One job was secure but, full of the angst of managing an outpatient pain management clinic. The other was a not secure (very small) grant at a large New York City medical center, offering a guided imagery program preparing patients for surgery. At some point, I’d have to choose.

In my “spare time”, I trained obsessively 35 hours a week as a burgeoning Pilates instructor, while religiously drinking powder power protein drinks on a strict vegan diet.

Fit, fast-paced and fanatical, I thought I was at the top of my New York City game.

But something else was brewing. A slow growing, but powerful storm of exhaustion.

With symptoms of emerging chronic fatigue, I could barely walk the 6 blocks from the subway to my apartment without stopping several times to rest. Climbing the stairs to my 4th floor walk-up, I was completely out of air. Like a sailing vessel out at sea with a broken mast and torn sails, I had no way to power myself.

I laid down on the floor and cried.

The next day, a colleague told me to see Dr. Frank Butler, a Traditional Chinese Medicine physician. At our first visit he said in a stern and grave tone “your boat is so full of leaks, you’re in danger of sinking”.

I started to protest.

“I know 80-year-old men with more energy than you!” Frank said. Feeling my pulse and looking at my tongue he asked, “Are you intending to get another certificate or degree? What are you still looking for?”

I stared him down.

I had, in fact, been thinking about taking a graduate course in exercise physiology. I thought it would make me a better Pilates Instructor. I never admitted that to Frank.

While my lifestyle was contributing to my condition, this wasn’t the source of my leaks, but rather a manifestation.  And Frank was calling me on it with his final words that day, “You need to start taking care of yourself or that inner-driver is going to kill you.”

Frank sent me home with a prescription for Chinese tea and the orders to drink one cup warm, lie down on my couch for 2 hours in my pajamas and do nothing. Nothing. Not read, not listen to music and not sleep. Nothing.

If his diagnosis and tea concoction was correct, I would break out in a fully body sweat and begin my road to recovery.

At exactly two hours, the sweat poured out.

When I gave myself the time to think this all through, it was clear. In addition to taking care of “my boat” with Frank’s prescription of acupuncture, Chinese teas, red meat, no alcohol (really Frank, no alcohol and red meat?!) and reduce the excessive exercise regime, I needed to understand who my “inner driver” was and why she was heading me straight for the rocks.

What surfaced, beyond the fact that I was physically over-taxing my body, was my striving to prove myself to some invisible judge. Take the road well-traveled, so I would be seen as perfect, good and respectable. 

But the main channel in health care wasn’t my path. Though I loved being a nurse, it wouldn’t be in the traditional sense.

The Power of Purpose, Your North Star and Your Horizon

In quiet moments, I didn’t need to search long to know what I could wholeheartedly embrace. Whenever I imagined following the “wrong star home”; my body informed me immediately broking out in a cold sweat.

Learning to chart my own course now, I needed what all good sailors know before they leave the dock. The shape of their vessel, their destination and what their purpose is.

Florence Nightingale calls your bigger purpose your “must” (Dr. Barbara Dossey). It’s the power generator for what you do. Your inspiration. The wind for your sails.

The North Star, is one of your coordinates that keeps your course steady, especially during the dark times. When you feel lost, you know there is still a guiding principle for all that you do and through all the rough seas.

The horizon is your current destination. You keep that in mind, even when your ship is on a different tack. The funny thing about horizons, is that on the round earth, it keeps moving while simultaneously you are on it.

1. How solid is your ship? Are there things you can do that would nourish your body? Rest, adding or eliminating something from your diet? How about some plain old fun!
2. What’s the best course for you to set right now? Perhaps it’s to stay steady or do you need to look toward a new horizon?
3. Where is your North Star? Is it somewhere out of sight? What would you need/want to do to get aligned?