Recovering
As I was lying in bed recovering from surgery a couple of days ago, I noticed that I was feeling more miserable than I had been before. My back hurt from being in bed so long. I was bored. I was judging myself for my lack of activity. I was lethargic and had no energy.
It occurred to me that what I aught to do is get out of bed for just a little while and do something - anything - else but lie there. But what I really wanted to do was wait until I felt more energetic and motivated. I didn’t feel like getting up!
My inner response to that was surprising to me. It was pure resistance. I knew (in that funny way we just know) that it would help me to get up and out of that bed, but I didn’t want to do it. For a few minutes, I just lay there wrestling with my inclination to do nothing and my desire to feel better.
It didn’t take too long for me to reach an agreement with myself and decide to get up and walk around just a little bit. I’ve gotten accustomed to feeling good, and my tolerance for feeling otherwise is not what it used to be. Sure enough, an hour or two up and out of that bed matched with the simple action of sitting on the porch with an iced tea and a novel did the trick. Even though I became very tired and was forced to go back to bed after only a couple of hours, I felt noticeably better. What’s more, the next day, I more than tripled my time up and around, and the fatigue and achy feelings were much improved too.
As it happened, the most uncomfortable part of this entire process was the lying in bed feeling my resistance to getting up, and dreading how that expenditure of seemingly non-existent energy would feel. Once I made the decision, the actual getting up was virtually painless. (It does not take much energy to get up and pour a glass of tea, after all!) In return for my tiny output of energy in the direction of something I knew would be good for me, I felt a little better. The next day, I had a bit of that energy I’d been craving the day before. I also had a little momentum. So getting out of bed was just that much easier.
Many (if not all) of us have a little voice in our head that tells us that we cannot, or that tells us that it won’t work, or that tells us any number of other things that contrasts with what we know will make us happier. I guess the point of this writing is to say that this voice is truly worth ignoring.