Body Budget
We all only have so much to give, are you keeping track?
During a recent recording for “The Bullied Brain” podcast Dr. Jennifer Fraser used the term “Body Budget”. I’m not sure if this was a term she made up on the spot, or if it should be credited to someone else, but it resonated with me. So much so that I didn’t want to wait until the episode airs to expand upon it (the episode will air in a few months).
It reminds me of “Spoon Theory”, which has been used as a metaphor for those with chronic illnesses. The premise is we all only have so much energy. As your day goes on your energy level (or bank) gets depleted. For example, you may find yourself worn out and ready for a nap by the early afternoon if you’ve had a morning full of stressful meetings and/or you were called upon to make a lot of decisions.
In my case, my computer crapped out on me between meetings. I had to scramble and ended up using my son’s laptop. This meant I had to find the password to log in to his computer, add my password manager to the browser (I don’t know any of my passwords), and get set up for the rest of the day.
At the time it wasn’t clear if my computer had successfully backed up to the Cloud, so I wasn’t sure if I had lost everything or not. This would have been devastating because my laptop’s hard drive not only had all the content I’ve created over the years, but it also had all of my legal documents (articles of incorporation, EIN, etc).
To say I was a little frazzled would have been an understatement. I hadn’t had enough time between meetings to see if I had remembered to make sure to set up automatic Cloud backups. I was pretty sure I had, but I wasn’t confident enough to be comfortable. Despite my best efforts, the stress affected me and my meetings.
Jennifer suggested we cancel the podcast discussion, but I felt it would be a good learning experience for everyone. After all, many of us don’t have the luxury of calling out sick when we get overwhelmed. The recording went great. Below are some of the key takeaways.
