What fills you up?

What fills you up? What activities or situations feed your spirit and give you the energy to cope with the pressures of life? What are the things that bring you joy and you hang onto in your mind when you are in a dark place?

Everyone has times in their life when the pressure mounts; it might be a stressful job, or a difficult personal situation or general day to day busyness that, if we don’t have a break from, will eventually crush us. Imagine your life as a bath tub with all of your energy and creativity flowing out of the bottom as you give of yourself. When you come under pressure that outflow pipe becomes even wider and if you don’t do something to replenish the bath it will soon run dry. This might even be to the point of mental breakdown.

So how are you going to fill that bath again? For me, when I was working full time, the things that filled me up were riding my bike (and I was able to combine that with my daily commute, which was a win-win), spending time on our narrow boat on the canals, being part of a team and importantly, time spent with my family.

Sally will tell you that one of the things that sets her up for the day is tea in bed in the morning – a joy that is largely denied her these days because, even if I get up to make the tea I can’t carry it upstairs to her. Well I could, but there wouldn’t be anything left in her cup and she would have to spend the rest of the morning trying to get the tea stains out of the carpet.

You will have your own list – why not pause for a moment and think about yours? And while you are doing that, if you live with someone else, consider what fills them up and see if there are ways you can serve them to be built up as well.

Now, here comes the rub. When we are under pressure and there are not enough hours in the day to do everything we need to do, the things we tend to drop are precisely those things that make life bearable. However, rather than dropping those activities, in the midst of our periods of greatest stress we should do more of them. It sounds counterintuitive, but in reality if we don’t, we will burn up. A very good friend of mine who was going through an excruciating period of pressure at work gave up her involvement in amateur dramatics because she needed every waking hour just to stay on top of the to-do list. The bravest, and wisest thing she ever did, at the time of her greatest pressure was to sign up for the next production. The lifeline it gave her was, possibly literally, a life-saver.

All this is teaching that I have shared with many groups over the years but which came back to me with a jolt the other day. You see, those things that were on my list are no longer available to me. I can’t ride a bike anymore, we had to sell our narrowboat because I am not safe around water and my opportunities to work in teams is severely diminished. To cap it all, lockdown has meant it is difficult to spend time with family! So now I am having to re-evaluate what fills me up.

The obvious one is that Sally and I love spending time on the beach. Molly (my electric wheelchair, see earlier posts) has given me a freedom to have fun with friends, to play chase with the grandchildren and to enjoy sunsets in a way that I never dreamed possible (we never get up early enough to enjoy sunrises 😬). We go other places too, but Sally and I are rarely happier than when spending time on the beach.

I have also found myself with one foot back in the world of work, having taken on a volunteer role with the Diocese of Bath &Wells. This is giving me a chance to experience again the joy of working on something alongside other people. It will be even better when we can meet face to face rather than enduring the tyranny of Zoom.

If there was ever a time to re-evaluate how we spend our time it is now, as we contemplate emerging from a locked-down world in 2021. Let us actively seek to invest our time in things that build us up and not get sucked down the emotional plughole of stress and anxiety.

(If you enjoy following these blogs and want to be notified of further posts fill in the contact details in the comments section above. Why not leave a comment too?)