I will be the first one to stand up and tell you that my personality has some flaws. A glaring one in particular is what I call “The Eager Beaver Complex”. My husband thinks that may be putting it a little too nicely.
An Eager Beaver is a go getter, a man or woman of action. This can be a good thing. It means you take initiative, get things accomplished. It can also be a bad thing when done to the extreme. Like when it’s 2:00 am and I am in bed wondering where I left my phone. Most of the time I am physically unable to sleep unless I find it right then. I can not wait until morning.
In the same vein, when I start something, I go full throttle. When I am given a task, I want to give everything I have right then and there. What usually happens is I run out of gas within the week. Before my transformation this meant I would give up in frustration and move the project into my unfinished business of failures box.
A good example of this would be my running. When I started last year, I would almost sprint full speed for the first lap around the park. If I even made it to the end of my run, I was slogging around the final turn. I was o excited to go and get something accomplished that I put all my effort and energy into the start. As was evidenced in my, that kind of behavior is unsustainable. In my running I had to learn to pace myself.
In my eating I had to do the same thing. If I was losing weight on 1500 calories a day, then 1000 calories a day would make me lose even more! That worked really well until I had no energy to hit the gym and kept pulling muscles because my body didn’t have enough fuel to operate. So I had to find a balance.
Still working on that in my regular day to day life. Finding a moderation. I want to finish the task I’m given and do the best I can. However, I have to pace myself or I will burn out before I have the chance to succeed. Part of the Eager Beaverness is an associated tunnel vision and obsession. Nothing in my life matters except this one thing. My family calls it an obssesive trait. I call it focus. Tomato/ tomahto. But they’re right that when you have tunnel vision, you can’t see the truck about to side swipe ya.
There are times to run and times to walk. Sometimes it’s a steady jog. The wisdom is listening to you body and your spirit and finding your inner balance. It won’t do me any good to run the fastest five miles of my life if I peter out before I hit the finish line. Or worse, I’m looking at my feet so I miss a turn and run off course.