To the Rescue: One Extreme Self-Repair Tactic to Try Now

Exhaustion, overwhelm, burnout — they're all signs your delayed-maintenance schedule has been delayed too long. Here's what to do ...

If you feel like you are falling apart, it’s probably because you have not been putting yourself back together the way your body-mind would like.

It’s that time of the year, folks. That time when our too-packed schedules and our too-stressed nervous systems collide, creating a hot mess of frustration, resentment, self-doubt, and despair.

Sure, we could blame it on the holidays (popular news peg!), but we all know this problem has been building for a lot longer than that — perhaps for years or decades in a row.

It’s been building because most of us don’t have (or don’t believe we have right to reclaim) the time and attention required to maintain our own body-mind health and well-being.

So I want to talk to you today about a Healthy Deviant strategy I call Preemptive Repair.

It involves regularly replenishing, restoring, and strategically reinforcing our depleted systems before they render us dangerously vulnerable, oblivious, or reactive.

Because I realize it may be a little (or a lot) too late for preemptive action, I’m going to offer you one key tactic to help you jump start later-stage repairs.

This emergency tactic is aimed at preventing things from getting worse. Which, unless you interrupt the Unhealthy Default Reality’s regularly scheduled programming, they almost certainly will.

First, a quick definition of Preemptive Repair, which is one of three Nonconformist Competencies I present in my book, The Healthy Deviant: A Rule Breaker’s Guide to Being Healthy in an Unhealthy World.

👉 Preemptive Repair is the art of getting ahead of the damage that is done to you just by virtue of living in our inherently unhealthy society.

As you’ve probably noticed, we live in a culture that generates a near constant supply of inflammatory stressors —a culture that massively undervalues rest and recovery.

Due to our compliance with our society’s unhealthy norms, defaults, and demands, both our vitality and resilience are constantly being depleted.

So, it’s inevitable. Unless you actively prioritize Preemptive Repair …

• Your body’s delicate tissues will get irritated

• Your nervous system will get overloaded

• Your biochemistry will get imbalanced

• Your moods will become destabilized

• Your healthy priorities and choices will be undermined

• Your energy, attention, and resources will be drained at every turn

All of which makes you a sitting duck for the Unhealthy Default Reality’s nefarious plans.

To avoid that, you gotta get ahead of the damage being done to you on a daily basis.

This requires resting before you are exhausted, replenishing your reserves before you get seriously ill, and proactively repairing and rebuilding your body-mind while you still have the wherewithal to do so.

Daily strategies for Preemptive Repair include a lot of things you probably already know that you “should do” — but struggle with because our culture makes most of them extremely challenging to embrace. For example:

• Sleep, rest, relaxation

• Recovery days

• Ultradian Rhythm Breaks

• Mindfulness practices and meditation

• Peace and quiet

• Good nutrition and hydration

• Detoxification

• Deep breathing

• Moderate activity

• Bodywork

• Creative outlets

• Time in nature

• Self-care

• Laughter

• Time spent with loved ones

• Healthy sensual activity

• Good integrative health-care support

Let’s assume you are not doing as much Preemptive Repair as your body-mind requires, and have therefore already begun the breakdown process. What then?

Well, then it’s time for more aggressive and creative measures — the kind aimed at snatching you from the jaws of what I call the Vicious Cycle of the Unhealthy Default Reality.

To that end, I teach a variety of methods through book, podcast, Healthy Deviant U experience, and other programs, but since it is the holidays and all, I shall now deliver unto you — as a gift — my all-time favorite late-stage Preemptive Repair tactic:

👉 Take a heaping spoonful of tough-love medicine.

Look in the mirror, friend. And when you speak to yourself, be kind — and true.

Here’s how:

• Put down your devices and to-do lists.

• Go take a long, slow look at your reflection in the bathroom mirror.

• Take a deep breath.

• With clear-but-soft-eyed compassion, acknowledge that you have, for some time now, been ignoring, cheating, and/or bludgeoning some very important parts of your own body-mind.

I know that might sounds harsh, but so be it. Tough-love medicine rarely tastes sweet.

Next, before you go beating yourself up about any of that, please take another moment to acknowledge that you’ve been pursuing this self-abuse in large part because that’s precisely what you were taught to do.

Overworking, over-striving, and over-perfecting yourself is probably what you had modeled for you from an early age. And it’s probably what you were told (explicitly or implicitly) would earn you approval, monetary rewards, a place in heaven, or at least passing acceptability of some kind.

Take moment to consider and let the truth of this sink in. Take a moment to assess the damage this way of living has done to you. Apologize to yourself for having allowed that.

I think you might owe yourself an apology, friend. Most of us do.

Then swallow hard and identify one self-damaging thing you feel called to cease doing — even if you do not yet know how. Write it down on a Post-It or scrap of paper and stick it to your bathroom mirror.

Pay regular visits to that mirror and that note on a daily basis — especially whenever you are feeling freaked out.

Ask yourself: Am I ready to stop now? Am I willing to do anything — to take even one small step — toward stopping?

Your answer that that question will provide your next dose of tough-love medicine. I suggest washing it down with a nice, cool, glass of water. And stay tuned for next week, when I will share another of my favorite emergency interventions …