Today I should be sitting pretty having just passed my last Board exam. After studying like crazy for a month I should be rewarding myself for a job well done and taking some time off to relax. But I’m not, because in the 11th hour I decided to push back my Board for a few weeks. Was this an act of laziness or procrastination? No. This was me saving myself from having a complete melt down.

Before I go any further let me fill you in on some logistics. In order to get your Acupuncture License in the state of Florida you need to take and pass two Boards exams. I have already taken these required boards and passed them. So technically as far as my License goes, I am good to go as soon as I graduate in 10 weeks. There is a third optional Board exam that you can take to receive Diplomat status. It does not affect your License, just your title. Now if you haven’t been able to tell from my previous blogs, I’m kind of the typical Type A achiever. I want the Diplomat status which is why I opted to take this third Board exam in the first place.

Now I first began this testing process the last week in November with my first Board. I then strategically spaced out the remaining 2 Boards to be a month apart giving me ample enough time to study, or so I thought. In reality what happened was that I got sick from stressing and studying so much for my first Board and just never fully recovered. Over the course of the past 2 months, I’ve gone from a cold, to random fevers, this weird cough thing, the flu, headaches, back to more coughing and fever, and then finally this past week ending up with a urinary tract infection. And during this entire time I didn’t take one day off (not even Christmas) to recuperate. I slept on average 5-6 hours a night and never more then 7. I had too much work to do to sleep more then that, and I developed insomnia anyway due to my constant anxiety. Clearly my body was breaking down over being in constant state of stress. But I just kept ignoring every sign my body was giving me, telling myself that I’m an achiever, I push through, and I don’t quit when the going gets tough, and a bunch of other bullshit like that.

So I found myself just one week out from taking my final Board trying to deal with a urinary tract infection and completely behind on my studying. I knew that in order for me to have any chance at passing this exam I was going to have to cram all week. I decided that I needed to take advantage of every free moment I had to study, even if that meant staying up all night. Now at this point I had been dealing with this infection for a few days and still had not gone to the doctor. I had too much studying to do to take the time to get some antibiotics. I would just do my best to deal with it naturally and hope it clears up. I ignored my body and kept pushing along, that is until Monday night when I couldn’t ignore it any loner. I woke in the middle night with stabbing pain and aching in my low back. Being in the health profession I knew that this meant that the infection could be spreading to my Kidneys. Not good, in fact that’s really really bad. So I started to flip out of course, debating if I should go to the emergency room. And then it all hit me. I have been so freaking crazed about getting this Board exam done that I was willing to sacrifice my health, and possibly my Kidneys! What the hell was wrong with me?! I’m too busy to go to the doctor?!

It seemed in that moment I was able to see all the insanity of my own behavior from the past few months. I was constantly rushing, constantly stressed, all for the sake of an exam that I don’t even need to do for my License! I knew in that moment I had to push it back a few weeks. I needed to give my body some time to recover and give myself more time to study at a reasonable pace. It also helped that the next day my girlfriends and classmates basically had an intervention on me telling me that I need to slow the eff down! So my decision was made, I rescheduled my exam for a month later.

You would think that after making this decision I would immediately feel relaxed and relieved. But I didn’t. I felt anxious, sad, and depressed. The achiever in me felt like I had let myself down. You see when I commit to something I follow through. I hate to procrastinate and put things off. I’m the type of person that likes to tackle all the hard stuff first and get it out of the way. I had this false perception that when I finished my last Board I would finally be able to relax. But knowing me I wouldn’t relax, not one bit. Cause then I would go into business planning mode, and after that it would be starting my business, then running and growing my business, and on and on. You see if I just let the achiever in me have its way it will run me ragged. The achiever in me doesn’t care about being tired or sick, or wanting to take time off to spend with friends and family. The achiever  just wants to be productive constantly. And if I haven’t checked off every item from my to-do list, it’s disappointed, and I go to bed with this feeling of guilt and shame for having not done enough.

Now don’t get me wrong, my Type A personality has served me very well. I am super productive and I get a lot of shit done. And I certainly wouldn’t be able to start and run a business without this achiever part of me. But I am realizing that sometimes I just have to tell that achiever part of me to shut up and let me be. Let me sleep in occasionally, let me read a magazine for the hell of it, let me stay up late watching the same Sex and the City episodes that I’ve seen hundreds of times before. And maybe at the end of the day I’m not going to get everything done. Maybe I’m going to have to slow down and take some projects off my plate for awhile.

What I learned this past week was that from now on I am going to have to keep my Type A personality in check, and stop letting it run the show. I figured out that one way for me to do this is to actually schedule time off to relax. Seems silly, but for me if I don’t schedule it, it won’t happen. I also need to re-prioritize some things in my life. For the past year school and my business have been my number one. And in all honesty my health really needs to be my number one. You can have all the success in the world, but if you don’t have your health you won’t enjoy it. Plus I am going to be a health practitioner! Hello?! What kind of example am I going to set for my patients if I am burnt out all the time?

So this is officially the start of a bit of a slower and more gentle pace for myself. From now on I’ll be listening to my body, not ignoring it. And yes this probably means that not everything is going to get done as fast as I would like it to. But thats ok, I’m not Super Woman, and I’m tired of pretending to be.

Can you relate? Have you got caught up in the Type A craziness? Take a look to see what your top priorities are in life. Are you taking time to nourish yourself? See if there are areas in your life where you can slow down a bit and feel free to share in the comments below.