Check Your Vital Signs

Imagine you are walking down the street, it is a regular Monday afternoon and you are late. Suddenly you experience an abnormal shortening of your breath. Your heart begins to race and you experience discomfort and pain in your chest. As you gasp for breath, the pain is increasing and you fall to the ground, a bystander calls 911..

Pain, shortness of breath, and discomfort in your chest are all warning signs of a myocardial infarction, AKA le heart attack. Not so fun fact, Every 34 seconds someone in the US has a heart attack.. Umm that little nugget of information is crazy in and of itself and I could probably write about that for this entire blog post... but all of this talk about heart attacks is really all about the warning signs.

As summer has been revving up, so have my plans.  I feel pulled in a lot of different directions and sometimes that can result in me feeling a bit harried. This past week I had a realization about the warning signs I exhibit when I am close to taking on too much.  

My symptoms/warning signs include but are not limited to:

Showing up late to appointments ---> this is a BIG pet peeve of mine

Sleeping through alarms... (How is two alarms not cutting it??)

Drinking copious amounts of coffee.. This isn’t too far from “normal”

Going to Whole Foods/ Central Market for too many meals #guilty

Okay, okay, I am sure I sound a lot like the saddest twenty-something girl on the planet right now.. “OMG too many trips to whole foods for coffee??? You poor thing!”  #firstworldproblems 

But that is exactly who I do not want to be. I know that I am not being the best version of myself when I am missing sleep and my cooking and eating starts to slip (among other things).

This week I am committing to grounding myself in balance and I have increased my awareness of my warning signs. There is power in knowing yourself and knowing when to say "no". 

Happy Monday!