Recovery is a process. Whether I have biked 80 miles, walked 8 miles or put a new floor in the kitchen, the body has to recover. Training helps the body recover faster and more completely. Training reduces the soreness inevitably brought on by a physical activity. How do you train for a bad work situation? I realize many people would say that you find another job situation. In education that isn't always easy. I entered the profession at age 30, did my advanced degrees so I could earn a livable salary, but suddenly you are early 40's with no interest in totally leaving the classroom (I have written before about full time, career administrators and it isn't positive.) and it is nearly impossible to change districts. I was co-chairing the department where I found wonderful people to work with. We took care of each other, we worked hard, consistently changing our lesson plans to reach the ever-changing teenage mind. But twice monthly came those increasingly tense department chair meetings. The body recovers from physical activity, the mind is a more difficult muscle to train.
Being a person of faith I believed prayer could assist, it did. I believed spending time in creation could assist, it did. I believed riding my bike could assist, it did. But what I didn't recognize was that my recovery was never complete. Just as a physical work-out without proper training puts you in debt, mental stress without the proper time to heal accumulates mental debt........stress. This, in-turn, produces a negative attitude toward your superiors and that begins to wear down those who work with you.
Tony Swartz posted this "stress curve" in
http://www.theenergyproject.com/blog/stress-not-your-enemy. I can now see that I was beginning to operate more and more in the exhaustion section of this curve. More next time.
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