Will pacing set you free?
In our first lesson on pacing last week, we looked at defining our activity limits, the amount we could do in a day without aggravating our symptoms.
In this week’s lesson, we’ll look at the two steps of adapting our lives to those new limits, so that our symptoms may ebb, and our sense of freedom and being back in charge of our life may increase.
Step 1: Design a “leaner” version of your life
so that it fits within your limits.
We make our life “leaner” by simplifying, eliminating, and delegating. We distill our lives down to those activities that give us maximum health and happiness for the minimum expenditure of energy.
One example of where I redesigned my life after finding out about my limits was how I went about writing articles. After a few instances of where I aggravated my symptoms by writing for too long, I decided to not write for more than 30 minutes at a time before I switch to another activity or rest. When I wrote for shorter periods of time, writing no longer triggered any CFS symptoms.
Even though your limits will differ from mine, the same principle applies to your situation.
http://www.cfidsselfhelp.org/library/9-pacing-strategies
Have a look at the above article and apply a few of the suggested strategies to your unique situation. Although fears of letting go may rear their heads when you think of redesigning your life, it’s worth overcoming these fears. You’ll feel a sense of being in harmony as you move toward a version of your life that you can handle despite your limitations.
In the next step, we learn how to live this new version of our lives.
Step 2: We learn how to live this new version of our lives.
Step two is all about how to actually act on our insights and good intentions from step one. When I know that I have to stop writing after thirty minutes, how do I actually get myself to do it?
For the longest time, I couldn’t figure it out.
I had found some help in Bruce Campbell’s article “Achieving Consistency” where he offers nine valuable ways of overcoming our resistance to living within our limits.
Still, despite his help, I struggled for years.
For a long time, I tried to master the art of pacing using will power. I thought that if I only tried hard enough, I would overpower my inner resistance to living within my limits, to stopping in middle of whatever I was doing, and to taking meditation breaks multiple times a day.
But it never worked.
Finally, last summer, when I took a course on unprocrastination offered on Zenhabits.net, a world famous blog covering how to live simply, well, and with ease, I found a technique that completely changed my life for the better. I explain how people with CFS can use this technique to infuse their pacing with ease in my article, “Why Is Pacing So Hard? And One Simple Technique to Make It Easy.”
Even after I discovered the technique, it took a bit of practice to master it. But now that I have, my life is filled with ease and joy. I no longer experience the limits imposed on me by CFS as a burden, but as a set of acceptable rules that I can live well with.
Recommended actions for this week
- Read “Pacing Strategies” by Bruce Campbell and use some of the ideas from the article to redesign your life in harmony with your CFS-imposed limits.
- Have a look at the article “Achieving Consistency” to be exposed to inspiration, mindsets and techniques that will help and motivate you to actually “do” pacing each day of your life.
- Still feeling resistance to living your life in accordance with your pacing limits? Then my article “Why is Pacing so Hard? And One Simple Technique to Make It Easy” may do the trick for you. Click here to have look.
I’m excited for you. This week, you have the opportunity to further improve your pacing skills, which is one of the most important steps on your path toward getting your life back. Good luck!
Best to your health,
P.S.
If you’ve got here without being subscribed to the free CFS Recovery Project E-Course, you’re missing out. This is lesson #6 on how to reach your maximum health and happiness potential if you have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromyalgia. If you’re not already a subscriber, click here to learn more about it.
