Are You Actually Sick Of What You're Doing?

Written by a human, for humans, always.

Have you ever felt like you're sick of what you're doing?

Considering whether you are on the right path?

Or perhaps if you should just start completely over, doing something completely different?

I know how it feels.

I feel like that sometimes too.

Even today, as I inch closer to my 1,400th daily article (which I will reach on October 31st)...

I feel sick of writing.

But here is the thing...

I actually love writing these daily articles.

I love all the work that I do.

But some days...

Even some weeks...

And there have been times when it's lasted over a month...

When I just felt sick of what I was doing.

But...

The reality is that the reason that I was feeling that way...

Was not because I was actually sick of doing it.

See...

Many people believe, wrongly, that when they feel "sick" of something...

It means that they should no longer do it.

That's the wrong attitude...

Because at some point in your life...

You are going to feel sick of everything.

Usually not at the same time...

But you will feel sick of it.

Feeling sick of doing something is not always an indicator that you should stop doing it.

It can mean that, of course...

But there are equally, and perhaps more likely, probable causes of why you feel sick of doing something.

I actually have a list of 8 other possibilities.

What are they?

The first is that you may simply be lacking energy (Mg-ATP).

Magnesium Adenosine Triphosphate (Mg-ATP) is the energy source that the body uses to function in life.

When you have enough energy, life feels much easier (but not always "easy").

But...

When you lack enough energy in the body...

Whether it is due to not eating enough, damaged mitochondria, oxidative stress buildup, or any other reason that may exist...

Life becomes significantly harder.

One of the mechanisms of our bodies is that when energy is low...

Our bodies, often subconsciously, push us to do less in the hopes of preserving energy.

One way that this can play out...

Is feeling sick of doing something.

It may actually be that you have an energy deficit that the body is trying to resolve...

By getting you to stop doing things that burn through energy.

This does not mean you should stop doing what you're doing...

It would mean you need to fix your energy (Mg-ATP) challenges.

The second potential challenge...

(The one that I am experiencing now as I write this article, as I have just returned home from a 2-week trip to Japan for my 5-year marriage anniversary but am experiencing the backlash of jet lag.)

Is sleep.

Whether it is because you are not getting enough sleep overall...

You have had recent changes in your sleep patterns (like a 14-hour time difference)...

Or you have an irregular sleep schedule (some of which may be unavoidable, such as working night shifts, or having a newborn)...

Sleep has a lot of potential impacts on how we experience our lives.

When our sleep is off...

It can disrupt many different parts of the body...

Such as brain function (due to buildup in the brain), or messy circadian rhythms (which tell the body when to begin going to sleep and begin waking up)...

And one of the results is that we may struggle with our work.

Sleep challenges can have a lot of downstream consequences...

Like hormones being produced at the wrong time, or not being produced when we need them...

Which may cause us, internally, to feel like we should not be working when we are working.

That sick feeling may have nothing to do with the work itself...

It may be that your sleep is off, and your body is struggling to understand whether it should be awake or asleep, causing you to not want to work.

A third potential factor at play could be...

You're bored.

As humans, we have a natural desire to grow and cultivate our skills.

Here's the thing...

For most people...

They begin to do something...

Feel great doing it (because they are growing and cultivating themselves)...

And then they reach a level that is "necessary" for whatever they do...

Causing them to stop developing themselves further.

The result...

Is that their body begins to become more efficient at doing that skill...

But...

It may become too efficient for the brain...

Creating boredom...

Which the brain hates...

And the brain may determine it is sick of doing the same boring thing.

Here is the thing...

If boredom is the challenge...

Then the answer is that you need to drive your skills further.

It may not be that you need to stop doing what you're doing...

But actually push yourself to get to a higher level of ability...

Whether that is mastery of that...

Or you have to actually begin to go further and reach toward Sageship.

But if you are not bored, then you may be reaching into our fourth potential reason you feel sick of doing something...

You may actually be reaching too far, and the task may be too difficult.

One thing that happens for many people...

Especially in the early stages of doing something new...

Is that they will overestimate their abilities and capacities to do something.

Look at all the people who start New Year's Resolutions...

Who fail to maintain their resolutions.

Even by the second Friday, officially known as Quitter's Day...

About 80% of people have lost momentum or officially quit.

(Some estimates say that the 80% mark is at the end of February, but this typically marks official quits. The reality is that when we begin to lose momentum and consistency on something, we will most likely fail to maintain it, scientifically speaking. Some people are not ready to accept defeat at the second week, and that is great, but the loss of consistency tends to lead to what we will continue with.)

Now, the question is "why"?

What happens for most people...

Is that they overestimate their abilities or capacity...

Either doing something at a level they cannot maintain...

i.e., the person who tries to lift too much and their body is too sore to go back to the gym consistently, or worse, they hurt themselves...

Or at an interval they cannot maintain...

i.e., the person who says they are going to lift at the gym 3 days per week for at least 2 hours, but then they get stuck at work or are in traffic, and cannot stay at the gym for 2 hours, assuming they make it at all...

And they end up failing as a result.

Here is the thing about failing...

We, as humans, hate to fail.

We actually hate to even "feel" like we are failing (even if, in reality, we are actually succeeding).

When we fail, or feel like we are failing, our bodies will attempt to avoid what is causing us to feel that way.

The more often we fail...

The harder our bodies push us to avoid that.

So...

You may feel like you are sick of something...

Because you are doing it at a level that is making you feel like a failure...

And your body is pushing you to avoid it.

The key here...

Is that you need to find ways to accomplish the goals that you can consistently succeed at.

For instance...

If a form of exercise is too difficult...

Use less weight, or find a variation that works the same muscles but with greater ease.

If you are struggling to get to the gym...

Do workouts at home, or switch the activity to something you can consistently do, like jogging.

Here is another aspect of this one...

When we struggle too hard...

We end up in a physiological state of dis-stress...

And our bodies do not like this either.

On top of this...

Dis-stress, or too much struggle in the moment, will block us from the psychophysiological state where we feel our best and perform our best...

Flow states.

If you are constantly moving into dis-stress...

You are also actively preventing yourself from feeling Flow states...

And you may be feeling sick both because you are feeling the impacts of dis-stress and because your body really wants to be experiencing Flow.

The key, just as before, is to lower the difficulty level...

So that you lower the dis-stress...

So that you can struggle "just enough"...

To find the "release" point into the Flow state.

That point is a moving target that will change day by day...

Which can be another reason that you feel sick of what you're doing.

For many people...

They may have attained some level of success at something at one point...

Then they begin to add other stressors to their lives...

Causing them to go into dis-stress...

Blocking them from the Flow state...

Which then the body registers as a problem...

That may cause you to feel sick of doing something.

Instead...

You need to find the release point daily...

And some days that may be at a "lesser" level than previous days.

That is alright and normal.

Let go of your pride, and reduce the stress for that day so you can hit the Flow state.

For our fifth potential reason you feel sick of something...

Is that you are actually lonely.

Here's the thing...

As humans, we are interdependent.

What this means is that we "need" to be in community with others.

Not just in the same space as others...

But genuinely connected with other people.

When we are not feeling connected...

There are many psychophysiological problems that begin to occur...

One of which is that we lose a zest for life.

That loneliness can cause us to stop caring about all of the things we are doing.

Here, our bodies are trying to tell us that we need other people.

So the work itself may not be the problem...

It may be that our bodies are registering (correctly or incorrectly)...

That the work may be getting in the way of having genuine connections with others...

So our bodies may cause us to feel sick of doing the work as a motivator to go do something else...

Like socialize.

Our sixth factor...

Is a Connection Drift.

Now, as humans, we have certain things psychologically that we are connected to...

Specifically, in this case, are our Identities and our Values.

We like to feel connected to our Identities and Values.

But here is the challenge...

Sometimes...

We lose sight of these in our work.

One small step over the line here...

Another small step there...

Then suddenly we are not living up to the Identities and Values that we want to have in life.

This is known as a Connection Drift.

You felt connected when you began...

But as the work drifted away from the Identities and Values we started with (either literally or perceptually)...

We begin to feel ourselves drift away from the desire to do that work.

Here...

We either need to do a quick and easy reconnect with our Identities and Values (especially if the drift is only perceptual as opposed to literal)...

Or...

We need to realign how we do our work with our Identities and Values.

This brings us to our seventh potential reason we feel sick of what we are doing...

Nervous System Memory Capsules (Or Trauma Capsules).

When we experience something going wrong...

Even if it's just "perceived" as having gone wrong...

We will begin to store "aspects" of those events in our nervous systems.

Here's the challenge...

Any time we run into something "similar" to that aspect...

The capsule triggers...

And our nervous system activates.

Now, there are a few ways that the nervous system can activate...

One of which is feeling sick of doing something...

Especially if we have ignored activation signals over time.

If this is what is happening...

The key is to retrain the nervous system to say that the capsule is no longer needed.

There are a few ways to go about this, but the key is that it has to be a "nervous system" method.

Where many people go wrong here is they try to solve the nervous system problem through a "brain" method...

Such as talk therapy.

Brain methods work great...

When the problem is occurring in the brain...

But they become virtually useless when the problem is in the nervous system.

There is one final reason we may potentially feel sick of what we are doing...

HRV Incoherence.

This one is a little bit tricky, but follow me.

Our hearts change how they are beating from beat to beat.

The measurement of the change from beat to beat is known as HRV...

Heart Rate Variability.

Now, HRV is commonly used as a measurement for overall health...

Which it is...

But that specific measurement is a specific type of HRV measurement, which I call HRV-Total.

Generally speaking, higher HRV-Total is healthier than lower HRV-Total.

However, there is a different type of HRV measurement...

Which looks at how smoothly our HRV changes over time.

This is known as HRV-Coherence.

If it transitions smoothly from higher HRV to lower HRV and vice versa, this is known as being Coherent.

On a graph, this would create a sinusoidal-like wave (it is not a perfect sinusoidal pattern, but looks similar).

If the transitions are chaotic and inconsistent when going from higher HRV to lower HRV and vice versa, this is known as being Incoherent.

On a graph, the ups and downs become inconsistent and jagged, with sharp rises and falls.

Now, when we are in Incoherence, we tend to feel what we interpret as "negative" emotions...

Such as panic, fear, anger...

Or a sick feeling.

Now, this is what is further important to understand for this article...

Our HRV-Coherence can be influenced, directly, by the HRV-Coherence of others around us.

As our hearts beat...

They create the body's largest electromagnetic field...

Which can be measured anywhere from 3 to 15 feet away from us.

This electromagnetic field transmits our current HRV-Coherence as a signal.

Then...

Anyone else who is within the area of that electromagnetic field...

Can receive that signal in their heart.

This is why you may sometimes feel something is "wrong" when you walk into a room, even if you have no logical reason for why it feels that way...

Your heart may be picking up Incoherent HRV signals in the area.

Further...

If we remain in the vicinity of others' HRV electromagnetic fields...

Our hearts will begin to communicate back and forth with the hearts in that area...

And over time...

Our HRV-Coherence can become "Entrained" with the others, or vice versa.

What this means...

Is that if we are Coherent, and someone else is Incoherent...

Over time...

Either we will pull them into Coherence with us...

Or...

They will pull us into Incoherence with them.

The problem...

Is that most people have not trained their HRV-Coherence.

They have not trained how to become more Coherent in the moment...

And they have not trained how to prevent themselves from becoming Entrained into Incoherence.

The most likely result, therefore...

Is that we will become Entrained into Incoherence over time.

So here is the thing...

If whatever you are doing requires you to be "around" other people...

And those people are in Incoherence...

Then you may be feeling sick because of HRV-Coherence environment you are currently in.

You may not actually have a problem with what you are doing itself...

Rather, who you are doing it around.

Worse...

You may actually "like" the people you are around...

But if they are in a state of HRV Incoherence...

It may actually make it more difficult for you to do what you're doing.

This has nothing to do with whether we like or dislike the people we are around (though it tends to be worse around people we dislike)...

It has purely to do with the physiological mechanisms of the current state of people's HRV-Coherence.

The solution we need in this situation...

Is to train our HRV-Coherence...

So that we do not become entrained into the Incoherence of others.

This is vastly easier if the group you are around is also training their HRV-Coherence...

Because more people in the same area trained in getting into Coherence spreads out the responsibility and pressure of Entrainment in the group.

So there you have it...

If you feel like you are sick of what you're doing...

You may now realize that the reason you feel sick of it...

Doesn't actually have anything to do with what you are doing.

There are other culprits that may be at fault...

And if you find the right culprit...

You may actually be able to find enjoyment in what you are doing again.

(That is how I know that, even if I may feel sick of writing today, when I fix my sleep from the jet lag, I will find my regular enjoyment of writing!)

So if you feel sick of what you are doing today...

Do not be too hasty to wonder or believe that you need to stop doing what you are doing to begin to pursue something else entirely...

Especially if you have loved doing it in the past.

The solution you may need could be something else from this list.

Evaluate the other factors that are at play...

So that you are sure to make the right decision for your life.

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