It was about 8:00 PM when I woke up to the cleaning staff and realized I had been knocked out cold. What got me there? How did it happen? I wasn't sure. Disoriented and craving a box of saltine crackers, I made my way to the restroom to gather myself.
I collapsed. My body gave out. In a simple word: stress. Stress is a feeling of emotional or physical tension. It can come from any event or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, or nervous. Stress is your body's reaction to a challenge or demand. Quite simply the demands over time on me became more than I could physically or emotionally handle.
I'm running a successful start-up. I'm a mother. I'm a wife. I'm a friend. I'm a neighbor. I'm a hurricane survivor. I'm a lot of things today. We all are. We live in more stressful times than ever. The net effect of 18 months of stress I chose to ignore quite simply ended with my body saying, 'enough'. I was very lucky. Some don't get warning signs. They just don't wake up.
In 2017, The American Psychological Association reported the most common sources of stress with 63% stressed over the future of our nation, 62% stressed over money, and 61% stressed at work. The top sources for stress at work are co-worker tension, bosses, and work overload. And the effects of stress are worse.
So while I am many things, what I learned in those moments when my body said NO and I collapsed was that I needed to change something. I needed to do more for myself. The only nourishment for a healthy body and mind is to take care of it. So in the past few months I've been removing things I don't need, relationships that needed to go, and focusing on what's important: my health.
Several years ago I watched this video. It had a tremendous impact on the path I chose to take to start Pink Petro and Experience Energy. No stranger to health problems, having battled cancer twice, the video reminded me that we are all on borrowed time. We must make that time count and that means taking the best care we can of ourselves.
April is stress awareness month. I hope you'll join me on Thursday April 11, 2019 with my Lean In Energy mentor, Jenny McCauley, SVP of Administration with Southwestern Energy who will tell her story of how her stress moment changed her life for the better.