Hello, how are you feeling these days? Today I want to talk about well-being across all its dimensions – physical, mental, emotional. We are not going to delve into how to achieve and maintain excellent well-being, that is not my specialty. But I have been in a situation not long ago where I lost a lot of my well-being (probably more on that in a separate post), and the thing is I could totally have prevented it. My biggest mistake is that when I was in the ‘orange zone’ I let it go way to long and eventually it led it me into the ‘red zone’ which is much harder to get out of. These days I see some of my colleagues, girlfriends…clearly in the ‘orange zone’ but in denial or not aware of it. And I really want for all the women in this situation to stop and change things before it gets too late.
So if you are in the ‘green zone’, you are flying: you happily get up in the morning, have no health issue whatsoever, you have great energy from morning to night, get plenty of sleep and are not really stressed in general. Good on you, keep it up and share with people around you who might need some of your advice.
Now unfortunately the ‘green zone’ can look like an utopia for a lot of us. Throw in a child or more, a highly demanding job, crazy traffic, a jam-packed social agenda on WE’s or some financial challenges and guess where we end up – in the ‘orange zone’. That’s where most of us live, sometimes nearly permanently. We only unplug when we take holidays, which usually means we take a week or so to detox from the ‘orange zone’ and be able to re-enter the green zone which feels so foreign to us (sadly).
Now I want to get very real here about the signs of the ‘orange zone’. I am not a health expert or pretend to be, but I can tell the clues when I see them. So here is a quick dump of what symptoms look like: you’ve got an illness or a rash that does not seem to really go away or comes back and forth; you get increasingly reliant on your coffees in the morning and on alcohol at night to unwind; you forget things, have some memory gaps; you get sick the minute you stop or start something new & exciting; your hair & skin don’t look flash despite regular care; your appetite and weight fluctuate both ways like a yo-yo; you loose your temper at small things quite unwillingly; the lack of self-care is status quo; you are restless; you’ve given up being on top of your messages and phone calls. I will stop here, but these are only the main ones.
The point is, these symptoms all look pretty small and minor in isolation, it’s easy to oversee them or find a simple, quick rational explanation for them. And that’s where we end up staying in the ‘orange zone’ and fast-tracking our way to the dangerous red one. And that is what I am witnessing regularly around me. Because we are high achievers or very driven, very optimistic or we dislike having any sort of focus being put on ourselves, we dismiss any discomfort and push on. We have that niggling in our mind but we push it as far at the back as we can, and think that anyway ‘we don’t have a choice but to keep going’.
That’s where we are all wrong. The society and others make us feel like we don’t have a choice, but we absolutely do. So choose well. If you are in the ‘orange zone’, first of all acknowledge yourself for realising it and accepting it. That’s a great place to start. Then look at what could be triggering it, and what changes can be made. It won’t happen overnight but as long as you are in the process, you won’t go in the red zone.
One of the best things to do is ask for help – at work, at home, with friends. This would probably be last on our list but it works wonders. And the more we ask for help as women, the more others will ask us too. Then secondly look at yourself and where you are bringing forth the behaviours of the ‘orange zone’ – what lies underneath in your beliefs, expectations of yourself, fears – so that you can start letting go of that and feel lighter. It may seem like it comes from your external world, but quite often it comes down to how you react to it.
The main thing is, you know from your inner voice when things are not quite right, so don’t let yourself keep going. Do this as the most loving thing you can do for yourself, and it will flow on to others. The minute you see a bit of ‘green zone’ back in your life, you will love it and want more of it – so just get started.
