If you’ve ever been to therapy, chances are you’ve spent some time thinking about life balance. It’s an idea those of us in the mental health field often cling to as both a goal and measurement of life satisfaction. In a recent interview, Danielle Strickland observed that people who are out there changing the world rarely talk about balance. Rather, they seem to gravitate toward establishing regular rhythms of self-care.
Perhaps you didn’t set out to change the world in 2020, but most of us find ourselves dealing with a world that is changing by the hour, leaving us to hold back a tsunami of impact in our daily lives. At CrossRoads, we find ourselves making a shift from the concept of balance to rhythm. This requires a focus on the replenishment cycle, a term that has its roots in supply chain management (a topic that has surely crossed the mind of anyone who’s tried to buy Lysol in the last nine months). For those of us who are rusty on our economic theory, the term “replenishment cycle” refers to “the process by which stocks are re-supplied from quantitative-based inventory models.” Supply chain thinking invites us to examine what we require as a regular rhythm to restore our reserves so that we can be available for those around us. It’s important that we think of replenishment holistically – our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual selves are designed to work together systemically, and neglecting any one of these will inevitably impact the others. So, when assessing the current state of your personal supply chain, consider these questions:
- What are you legitimately called to offer those close to you?
- What do you need to replenish within yourself to continue offering this? (physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually)
- What signs inform you that you don’t have the energy you need?
- What practices do you engage in that you think of as restful or taking a break, but that don’t actually replenish your energy?
- What practices do replenish your energy stores/supplies?
- What replenishing practices have you done in the past or what new ones might you try?