When you fight tired, things go down hill quick. Pushing yourself when you are fully rested is a great thing, and highly encouraged. However, pushing yourself when you are tired, is probably a recipe of failure and potentially habit destroying. I have been learning this lesson lately.
I have a tenacity in which I will allow myself to be pushed to the point of exhaustion and then will keep going. That works when I was pushing myself in a desk job, or teaching role. However, as I get older and now that I am adding in over 10 hours of vigorous exercise per week, tired is just tired. I cannot maintain a quality experience when I physically, and mentally drained. I start falling behind in my work and other life activities. I end up eating into my sleep time to catch up on things and then I find myself in a vicious cycle, where my lack of sleep reduces performance, which causes me to get further behind.
So I need to stop fighting tired. When I am tired, I need to be good with that, get the rest I need and then attack the plan when I have recovered. Now of course, I cannot use tired as a excuse for not doing things, or not keeping commitments, but I can realize that if I do not make sure that I have adequate sleep and recovery time then I am going to have a problem.
I think many of us fight tired, and try to muscle through. This creates many problems, one of them being, that people grow to depend on what you are like when you are always available. The expect it, then you try to maintain the masquerade and keep up the level of performance. Not a good plan, unless you can afford to have serious downward performance cycles for a few weeks, while you ramp back up after catching up on rest. Since I am now consistent everyday, I can no longer rely on the periodic down turn for a few weeks. I have be good to go everyday, and that does not afford me the ability to run on fumes until I crash.
So, this blog is dedicated to me trying to give myself a valid reason for resting when everything in me is screaming, go. It is time to add rest, and quality sleep as a habit that I maintain everyday.
Guy Reams
