If you’re at all like me, getting sick for a week is a bit like being in a coma for a year. Being sick or injured in a way that means you’re down for weeks, if not months? Unimaginable for most people. I think we all live with this vague concept that it could happen to us somewhere in the backs of our minds. But when it happens, we’re very rarely prepared for it.
I’ll admit, I’m not very good at slowing down. I have so many passion projects on the go at any given time that not working on them feels… weird. But I also know that rest is important. So, how do you slow back down to allow yourself time to recover when life decides for you that you need it?
Ask for help - From delegating tasks you can’t do right now, to making sure you find the proper therapists and practitioners to help with your rehabilitation, get vocal about what you need help with. Let other people carry some of the weight for a while.
Triage - Illness and Injury have this great way of helping us figure out what’s actually important to us. It can also be a great catalyst for learning to delegate. You can come up with lots of creative solutions for getting work done by farming it out to willing volunteers. The stuff you refuse to hand over? Those are the things you likely love more than anything. Feel free to keep those.
Experiment - There are always multiple ways to get anything done. Can’t run anymore? Can you swim instead? Bike? Yoga? Maybe high-intensity exercise isn’t what you need right now. Maybe bowling and painting classes are the things you’ll fall in love with next. Point is, using this opportunity to explore your options means giving yourself the chance to discover all kinds of new things that fit who you are now. And that might just mean sofa and netflix for the next little while, but have you binge-watched the OA yet? If not, go do it now.
Mourn - Don’t forget to throw yourself a pity party for a day or two. Totally allowed. Life handed you a rough go of things. You’ll have some emotions about that. Not processing those emotions will just backfire in the long run. So how can you make your pity party the most loving, supportive pity party ever? I mean, just cause you’ve got to feel sad for yourself doesn’t mean it can’t be fun to do.
Learn from it - Illness and injuries are great barometers that something in our lives just isn’t working for us. So going right back to the same workload and stress levels that led to this event are just asking for a repeat of it. Use the downtime to really think about how you want to reconfigure your life so that, when you return to it, you can better manage the stress. Have you been neglecting self-care? Maybe it’s time to re-instate that meditation practice and get back to eating healthier. Taking on too much? What are the things you delegated that you are least looking forward to taking back? How can you get rid of those things for good?
Slowing down doesn’t mean giving up. It means getting to let go of the things in your life you don’t really love so you can focus only on the things that bring you the most joy. Take the Universe’s handily crafted excuse for getting out of whatever doesn’t fill your heart with glee anymore and move on to the things that do.