The Cure for Emotional Fatigue
Feeling fit these days? I don’t mean that in the way you think.
I’m not referring to the physical feeling of fitness but rather the emotional one.
When you workout, you challenge your muscles, then let them rest and recover. What if you never stopped your workout and just kept working your muscles ceaselessly? Not only would it be rather awful to experience, but your muscles would likely have a breakdown and you would end up injured. Muscular fatigue is good until it isn’t.
Life right now brings a near constant state of emotional fatigue. It is as if every day were an “emotional workout” all day, every day. And the deep emotional fatigue that ensues can leave you feeling hollow, dispirited, and perhaps less in the mood to workout (your muscles) than usual.
Funtensity to the rescue. You can work your body while changing your emotional state for the better. In a state of play, you feel the lightness return, you get more hopeful, and you feel more “emotionally fit” rather than emotionally fatigued.
Here are some ideas for keeping your mind at play while your body is at work; for keeping your spirit light while you get your body tight.
Mental Travel – Put a minute on the clock. Think of somewhere you want to travel to or a favorite destination you already have visited. Now spell it and for each consonant, perform a squat. For each vowel, get down and perform a push-up. Feel free to use other movements in place of these two and use more than one place to keep yourself going for a minute. Or start with a country, then name a specific city, then name a specific place in the city, etc.
Loved Ones Walk – Arrange photo frames of loved ones, a water bottle, or any other object as “cones” to mark off a rectangular space. Walk within that space to spell the letters with your steps using as much of the rectangular space as you can. Use the names of your grandchildren, children, pets, or even a favorite vacation spot, movie, or musical artist, etc.
ROX Plank Tap – my favorite find of the last year: ROX pods. Especially with home workouts now, these pods have been wonderful fun addition to our home workouts (I was using them in my Funtensity workouts before the shutdowns too.)
Catch and Release Row – use a dumbbell or just a water bottle. Grab whatever you’ve got and perform a row. At the top, let go and catch the object before it hits the bottom. (video)
Toss and Catch Lunge – like the previous exercise, use whatever you’ve got. Or use a Softbell or Sandbell like shown in the video.
Emotional fatigue doesn’t just suck, it sucks the life out of you. The emotional state of play is the remedy. Life feels heavy right now so make it feel lighter by bringing a challenge to your muscles while your mind is at play.
These ideas are just a small sample of what is possible. Do you have a good idea in this theme you want to share? See this post on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter and add a comment describing your contribution to the idea of “Body at Work, Mind at Play” concept.