Are You Exhausted From Traversing Your Landscape?

Recently someone said to me that they were exhausted from traversing their landscape. That phrase really stuck with me because we really don’t notice the amount of energy or the number of steps or the degree of effort it takes to get through a typical day. So many people say to me that they can’t change anything about their lives even though they are exhausted from their lives.

I want to give you a suggestion. Sit down in a chair, alone, in silence and try this exercise. Close your eyes and envision yourself from the moment you get out of bed in the morning and trace every step you’ve done through the day …. brushing your teeth, going up and down the stairs, laundry, errands, work …. then look at how much energy each thing took. How did you feel? Was there anything you dreaded doing or facing? How tired were you at the end of the day? How tired were you at the start of the day?

Let me give you a couple of examples. If you have a lot of clutter, boxes, piles of paperwork, how do you feel when you have to lay your hands on one particular piece of paper? Or meet a deadline? How easy is it for you to do things in your day? Are you stepping over things, moving things out of the way? Are you constantly sorting, shifting, carrying, shoving things in anyplace possible?

Another example is one many people are all too familiar with. In the morning you open your closet to decide what to wear and are overcome by the volume of clothes hanging there that you never wear. Many are the wrong size, some are nostalgic, some are for occasions you never have anymore (like the green velvet ballgown or the blood red tulle floor-length voluminous skirt). What you actually wear, like or even look good in, could probably fit in 2 feet of your closet.

The point is that we fill our lives with so many obligations, material possessions and nostalgic, breath-stopping memories that all our energy is drained just walking through our daily life path. So our days require so much more energy just to move through them that we are compromising our health every single day. We wonder why our systems don’t work as well, why our joints ache, why we have symptoms, when without realizing it, we have made it so difficult to have enough resources, energy and vitality to get to the end of our day. We are actually stealing resources from our future, by compromising our health to get through our day.

Every thought = every action. In other words, both require nutrition, oxygen and energy. We don’t even realize that sitting still takes energy, even sleep takes energy. If we are constantly filling our landscape with boulders to climb over, whether physical or mental, then we are making our lives so much more difficult than they need to be. If you can clear your path, even a little, each day, then gradually you will not only be able to traverse your landscape with ease, but you will reach the other side still ready for more.

This is definitely something I need to think about more given that I walk into one room looking for something, forget exactly what it was, go back into the other room, remember, walk back to the other room to get it, then return to the first room only to realize that now I need something else. I am constantly up and down, one room to another, even driving a mile down the road before I realize I had to get gas before I went anywhere. But we’re not talking about memory … or are we?

Don’t get lost in the weeds … mow your grass, weed your garden, repave your path, move the stones. Create your landscape instead of simply accepting your landscape. It can make all the difference…