The feeling of tiredness and exhaustion are not quite the same. I might feel tired when I get up earlier than usual, or I had broken sleep. I might feel tired because I have started running or taken up any new exercise. Exhaustion, in comparison, is something you experience if you do something for a prolonged time. Let’s say you go on a multi-day hike, at the end of the trip your body might be exhausted (mostly because you haven’t adequately prepared or not fuelled your body correctly throughout your hike). You might feel exhausted if you run from one appointment to the next. Whilst you just make it or you are somewhat late, you can’t even enjoy being there because you are already rushing off to your next engagement, for which you are also late. In contrast, getting up earlier over several weeks, is not something that leads to exhaustion, as your body will get used to it. What it comes down to is beyond what most people think.
I know getting up earlier in the morning means that at some point during the day we feel it. We feel a drop in energy in the afternoon or early in the evening, but if we push through it and do so over several weeks, the body has been conditioned to a new time. It has a new body clock. If we however only sleep three hours a night, every night, for weeks, we will feel exhaustion. Whilst this may not be true for everyone, I would argue most people would feel exhausted at some point and there is plenty of science and data that support the fact that three hours a night may have negative consequences. We see this phenomenon of exhaustion often with new parents, where in the first few weeks they get only little sleep and the signs are written all over a new parent’s face without them having to complain about it. We could tackle the science of what type of physical activities, food, lack of sleep and other factors could contribute to exhaustion, but this post is not about that. It is also not about any mineral deficiency or any medical reason as to why we may be exhausted. This post is about the difference of knowing and differentiating between tiredness and that part of exhaustion that a lot of us feel where we don’t know why because there is no ‘apparent’ reason.
We get to the weekend and think we need to sleep more because we are mentally and physically exhausted. We end up watching shows on the couch after a ‘big’ day in the office, or we think little catnaps on the weekend will do the trick. Unfortunately, without realising, we partook in the nap roulette, where you hope to nap for 20 minutes and feel refreshed but instead, we slept for three hours. By the end of the weekend, we feel more tired than before and we already start dreading the next week. We are filled with feelings of guilt of having wasted time, but yet we are feeling drowsy and still exhausted. And even if we really needed to rest, which we sometimes actually do, more often than not this is not the case. No amount of sleep will actually make us feel better and our mental state is worse than it was before and we have no idea why. If this is you, I would argue you are exhausted by how your life plays out day in, day out. I know, you are strapped for time but we all have the same 24 hours in a day. And so the time excuse does not work for me. It just comes down to how we use all the time within a day.
Exhaustion comes from doing stuff that drains us; the stuff that we feel obligated to do when really, we dislike doing them. We may dread our jobs, but we do it because we have a mortgage and there possibly couldn’t be a more fitting job that could also pay the bills. We may dread hanging out with the people we have nothing in common with but we do it anyway because otherwise we have no friends. And, what does that say about us? We eat things we don’t like but we do it anyway because we signed up to some fad diet even though our body is screaming at us to stop. Whatever it is, we feel more and more exhausted and our weekends are never long enough. We lead a life that is full with things that don’t inspire us.
Deep down we know we want to change that because we have already realised that we need to change in order for your outside world to change, but there are hurdles. Hurdles can come in all shapes, forms and sizes. Hurdles might be the people-pleasing part within us that struggles to say “no”. Hurdles might be attachment issues to things, people or unhealthy behaviour. Whilst we could discuss attachment in a complete separate post, and I probably will do so, this post would not be complete it. There may also be reasons why we struggle to let go of certain behaviours, even though we know they are not helpful. Sometimes, over time, we have acquired a behaviour because that very behaviour at the time helped us to get through something. Take binge eating for instance. Binge eating can be a form to numbing our feelings or trying to escape reality and not having to face something. The same could be said about smoking. We took up smoking at a time when we felt vulnerable and stressed that we just wanted to get some reprieve from whatever it was. In some ways the behaviour helped us cope better. Unfortunately, when the stressful event is over, we are not able to let go and our once ‘useful’ behaviour has turned into addiction. This is obviously a very simplistic view of the world and it is way more complicated than that, but this is the whole point, if we wanted to let go of something, we need to understand that at some point in our life this unhealthy behaviour served some protection mechanism, and it is time to let go because we don’t need that anymore. Another attachment hurdle can come in the way of us being attached to our current situation, even though it causes us pain. We are somewhat attached to our own suffering That pain is still not large enough; it still doesn’t outweigh the effort that comes with change and as such staying in painful situations are easier than change; or so it seems in our heads.
Even if we are not held back by hurdles, and there could be many more than mentioned above, we feel too exhausted from our life that we feel like we have no energy to really change anything and so we keep living the same life and feel more and more exhausted. We rest more but it feels like there is no amount of rest that can cure this exhaustion. We put it down to age, to stress at work, to running around socially. But what really happens is that we feel exhausted because none of the things we do inspire us. We go back to numbing ourselves and trying to survive and hope that something will happen that gets us inspired. But what are you hoping to happen? Are you waiting for some magical inspiration to appear? Some magic-sprinkling unicorn to cross your way? Even if it actually existed, you would not see it because you are too busy repeating the past and sleeping off the exhaustion that no amount of sleep can heal . What is even worse about all this is that on any given Monday or Tuesday we say to ourselves: “I just need to get to the weekend where I can rest and thankfully it is the weekend soon”. When we book a trip overseas, which certainly is something to look forward to, we want to be there already, even if it is months away. In essence, what we are doing is wishing time away. We wish for time to speed up all our life to get us to some ‘good’ or ‘pleasant’ feeling, thing, or event, but we don’t want to experience the other stuff. In fact, we through everything and the kitchen sink at it, to not live and to avoid experiencing our mundane daily life. It is only when someone close to us is about to die, or has passed away, that we want time back.
If only we took the time that we spend doing useless things, and instead did stuff that we liked, stuff that inspired us, stuff that makes us feel like we have a new lease on life, we would feel less exhausted. As much as it sounds counter-intuitive, going for a stroll when we are tired, writing when we feel like we have nothing to say, reading about some topics we are interested in when our mind was challenged all day long in the office, would give us back time. Over time, even though it seems like hard work, we would feel less exhausted and more inspired. We would have more energy to love, to be less agitated, to have better relationships with others and ourselves. We would rush around less, we would be more present and we would realise that our exhaustion comes from things that we undertake, not from external environments.
If you really want to know why you are exhausted, take a look at your life and all the things you do that you can’t stand and change something about it. Love yourself enough to take a hard look at yourself, at your circumstance, and what you can do about it. Love yourself enough to say “no” to the easy, yet detrimental items in your life, and say “yes” to life that is meant to be lived every day. Say no to exhaustion and start living by doing something that inspires you. And no, you don’t need to make radical changes, you can start small and do something for 5 minutes a day. A five-minute-deep meditation can feel like eternity.
No one is going to save you from your own exhaustion. No amount of sleep or time off work. The only person that can cure this exhaustion is you by doing something that inspires you. And if you don’t know what that is, start doing things that help you explore it. Don’t waste your time being exhausted and wishing time away, but start living the life that you dream of by starting to make small changes. These small changes will have a ripple effect beyond what you were expecting.