Reflections at 40 – Coping – 5/40

To celebrate turning 40, I’ve challenged myself to blog for each of the 40 days leading into my birthday. This is post number 5. You can read all the posts here.

Them: Oh Kelly, I just don’t know how you do it all!

Me: Casual shrug. Oh, you know, I just do.

By the time my son had turned one, from the outside looking in, I had it all going on.

Nice new house. Successful business. Tightly run household. Skinny as a rake.

The truth was:

We’d had to borrow money from my parents to finish the house.

I had to borrow money from our other business to keep mine in the black.

Healthy eating and exercise wasn’t the reason I’d lost all that baby weight – stress was.

Gold stars? They were in short supply.

So, I did what I’d always done in that situation. I did more.

Call it ‘diversifying your gold star portfolio’. If you’re performing poorly in one area of your life, no worries, you can ramp up another two. Or ten.

The more I did, the more people marvelled at how much I did.

(Ding!)

The more I did, the more poorly I did everything.

(Dong.)

The more poorly I did everything, the more I sought to diversify that gold star portfolio by doing more.

The cycle was vicious and the stress was crushing.

Like a hamster on a wheel, I was running my little heart out while failing to realise something important.

I had the choice to step off.

 

Image credit – Kristopher Roller