If you are feeling tired all the time, that is a good sign you are feeling tired for an unhealthy reason. It is healthy to feel tired after working out, going on a run or participating in an extracurricular activity. It is unhealthy to feel tired after sleeping for 10-hours and not exerting yourself throughout the day. If you are feeling tired all the time, you may have noticed your productivity or ability to focus suffer. In this article, let’s discuss some of the most common reasons you feel tired and how to fix it.
1. Not Taking Care of Yourself
Feeling tired all the time could be a sign you are not taking care of yourself. Think of yourself as your favorite luxury vehicle. To keep your car running optimally, you need regular oil changes, to use high-quality fuel and to keep up with the regular maintenance schedule. If you don’t replace your oil on a regular basis, your car won’t efficiently. When you are feeling tired all the time, check to see if you are getting the proper amount of sleep. Are you sleeping the recommended 8-hours a day? If not, that could be the easiest change you can make in your life. Much like a car, the quality of fuel you put in your engine impacts your performance. Are you eating food that is full of nutrients or are you eating empty calories? All energy is not created equal. Even if you eat the same number of calories, you will get more energy from fruits and vegetables than you will from cake and ice cream. If you don’t feel you are ready to change your diet just yet, a good place to start is by taking more vitamins. Lastly, consider what your ideal weight should be and if you are not there, make a plan to get there. If your body is carrying around extra baggage, studies show it can negatively impact your sleep, joints and organs.[1]
2. Pretending to Be Something You Are Not
Let’s just rip the bandage off and get at the heart of the discussion. If you feel tired shortly after you start working, then you may be exerting a significant amount of mental energy with your coworkers. Much like your physical exertion can exhaust you over time, mental exertion can exhaust you too. Most people start feeling tired around the end of a long work day. This is normal. You have used a hefty amount of mental energy making various decisions throughout the day.[2] If your decisions are limited to work, you will likely make it through most of the day before feeling tired. If you are feeling tired all the time, then you are not being honest with yourself and others. When work is overly political, you have to cautiously calculate every step you take. That is adding a significant amount of decisions to your daily count. The same can hold true with relationships in your personal life. If you have a family member who is very sensitive, you are walking on egg-shells to ensure you don’t offend them. Whether in your professional or personal life, if you are forcing yourself to act in an unnatural manner, you will be feeling tired all the time. In a way, you are living a lie and you don’t want to be caught. And like most lies, you have to pause before each interaction to make sure you haven’t exposed yourself. It takes less energy to be true to yourself. When you do what comes naturally to you, it is like you are operating on autopilot. A good example of this is the energy you apply when driving home. It is so natural to you that you could daydream while driving and still make it home safely. When things are so natural to you that it can be accomplished by your subconscious, you are saving your mental energy for the important decisions. Ideally, having a conversation with a coworker or a family member would be as natural as blinking or brushing your teeth. You say what comes to your mind and there is nothing for you to consciously consider.
3. You Loathe Something About Your Life
Stress is a real thing my friend, but keep in mind that all stress is not bad. Much like feeling tired, you don’t want to feel stressed all the time. Some common causes of acute stress are losing a job, going through a divorce or the death of a loved one. As you see, these examples are unique circumstances that should not happen on a regular basis. However, when stress has you feeling tired all the time, then you are dealing with stress related to activities you perform on a daily basis. The most common of these triggers are being unhappy in your job, feeling insecure in a relationship or having a heavy work load. There are two ways to deal with chronic stress in your life: You can remove the stress and you can manage the stress. Ideally, when an aspect of your life causes you to feel stressed on a daily basis, you should remove it from your life. Understanding you may not be able to eliminate the stressful aspects of your life overnight, you may be better suited to start by managing your stress. Whether you are talking about work or family, they didn’t always cause you so much stress. By focusing on what excited you most about your job when you accepted it, you can reduce the stress your job creates. Are you grateful for the ability to provide for your family or could the friendships you built be a bright spot? In those strained relationships with your family and friends, reflect on a time when things were better. What about your spouse caused you to say, “I do” and when was your friend supporting you when others didn’t? If you are among those who genuinely cannot recall a time when things were better, then you need to manage your stress by limiting your interactions until you can eliminate them altogether.
4. Progress Has Stopped
If your future is not more compelling than your life today, you can’t help but be feeling tired all the time. One of the most beautiful and motivating things about life is growth. Of all the differences each of us have, the desire for growth and progress is something we all share. Feeling stagnant in your life is exhausting within itself. It is unlikely you are feeling stagnant due to a lack of effort. You are most likely exerting a lot of energy to change your life, but for one reason or another you have are no closer to your goal. You feel like a hamster running on its wheel. Even though the hamster is not any closer to its goal, it did exercise the energy to do so. If you deal with this feeling long enough, you won’t just stop running on the wheel; you will stop running altogether. As mentioned, there is little more deflating than the feeling that you are not growing. Especially, if you are putting in the effort to achieve the results you desire. As simple as it sounds, the life you have is the life you know how to create. The actions and decisions that created your life today, will not be able to create the life you want. You must change the rituals and habits you employ each day to change your life. A bodybuilder has a different set of eating rituals than a sumo wrestler. Yet, if you are not sure about the rituals of either of them, you cannot change your life to match theirs. You must research and learn how a body builder chooses the food they eat, when they wake up, and how often they work out. If your goal is to create the results of a sumo wrestler, then it does not benefit you to mirror the lifestyle of a bodybuilder. The same holds true with your life goals. If you are not progressing toward the results you want, implement the tactics of someone successfully living the lifestyle you want. Learn the 6 Ways to Make Progress Every Day (And Realize Your Goals).
Final Thoughts
If you are feeling tired all the time, you need to take a step back and recognize what is making you feel so tired. Once you know what is causing the problem, take small steps to change your life overtime. If your lack of energy is tied to you taking poor care of yourself, then make the necessary adjustments to improve your health. However, if your exhaustion is internally driven, you must take the steps to align your internal purpose with your external actions. Being yourself is the easiest person you can be. Attempting to be anyone else can be exhausting to say the least. When you are feeling tired all the time because you feel as though you are not making enough progress, review your daily actions and adjust accordingly. The more you learn about yourself, the better equipped you will be to successfully change your life.
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Featured photo credit: Lily Banse via unsplash.com
