[Nfbk] "Happy Exhaustion"

[Joey Couch]

"Happy Exhaustion"

In a hospital emergency room, a team of surgeons was urgently called.
Four passengers in a car accident had just arrived by ambulance, and
their injuries were life threatening. Running on adrenalin and focused
on their demanding task, the doctors worked around the clock,
mobilizing others around them to give all they had to save the lives
of these four people. Afterward, the doctors shared embraces of relief
and joy, worn out but elated that their patients would survive.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, “Look at a day
when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you
lounge around doing nothing. It’s when you’ve had everything to do,
and you’ve done it.

Work that seems beyond our capacity is often a blessing and brings us
a happy exhaustion. It obviously doesn’t need to be performing
life-saving surgery on accident victims to fit this description.
Hikers atop a mountain after a strenuous climb, athletes who willed
their way to a difficult win, or parents who collapse on the couch
after a day full of sacrifices of time and energy for their
children—they all know what it feels like to be spent but smiling. In
such moments, we discover what we’re made of, and we find that we are
capable of much more than we thought. We might be physically tired,
but we are emotionally renewed.

It’s a myth that the key to a satisfying day is to relax, put your
feet up, and sip cold lemonade. The real way to feel joy at the end of
the day is to have achieved your goals, to have pushed yourself to
accomplish your tasks. When our day is filled with unexpected
challenges, instead of seeing them as obstacles that interfere with an
easy schedule, perhaps we can reframe that outlook and see them as
opportunities for fulfillment and satisfaction—the unexpected rewards
for a job well done.


-- 
Joey Couch
phone 606-216-8033.
email ki4vjd at gmail.com
twitter.
 http://www.twitter.com/ki4vjd
facebook.
 http://www.facebook.com/ki4vjd