If you’ve been feeling more tired, more anxious, more inflamed, or just not like yourself lately, it’s not you, it’s your body’s response to overwhelm.
We live in a world of constant stimulation of phone pings, emails, news, social pressure, busy schedules, late nights, decision fatigue. Over time, your nervous system can start to treat everyday life like a low-grade emergency.
That often shows up as:
• Low energy
• Not breathing (taking short, shallow breaths)
• Brain fog
• Increased cravings
• Poor sleep
• Mood swings
• Burnout
• Or feeling “wired but tired”
One science-backed signal of this is Heart Rate Variability (HRV) which is a measure of how well your nervous system can shift between stress mode and recovery mode. I did an in-depth post on this a few weeks ago if you’re interested in a deeper dive. Lower HRV is often linked to chronic stress, elevated cortisol, poor sleep, and reduced resilience. You can measure your HRV with tools like the ŌURA ring or WHOOP.
In simple terms: When cortisol stays high for too long, your body stays in fight-or-flight and it becomes harder to rest, digest, heal, focus, or feel motivated.
So if you’ve been thinking: “Why can’t I just push harder like I used to?”
The more compassionate (and accurate) question might be: “What does my nervous system need in order to feel safe again?”
Often, the answer isn’t doing more, it’s doing less, more consistently like:
1. Walking outside – you will be so surprised how much better you will feel overall
2. Stopping what you’re doing and noticing your surroundings – admire the breeze, the sun hitting your face, listening to the birds, watching (and listening to) the waves in the ocean, or water running down a creek. My own health coach calls this the “art of noticing” and there’s so much power in it.
3. Stabilizing blood sugar with protein and real food (eating less junk and sugar)
4. Getting morning sunlight even if it’s for 5 mins before your commute or before sitting in front of the computer
5. Creating small pockets of stillness in silence or if needed, there are many tools like Calm, Headspace, and Open apps to help you find stillness
6. Going to bed a little earlier and putting on Calm app (my favorite sleep story is Journey to the Stars by LeVar Burton) – this is my favorite night time routine
7. Letting go of perfection and praise the things you have done well – I love acknowledging 3 things that I’m grateful for daily
You don’t need to fix yourself. You need to support the system that’s been protecting you! And you can’t build habits or build a weight training routine when your body is begging for less and for safety. Everything has a time and most of us need to slow down/start slow rather than throw more onto the plate!
If your body could send you one message today, what do you think it would say it needs more of?