Law of Health
Law 3: Climb
Lesson 2: 10 Steps to Climb from Fatigue to High Energy
You often think you are tired when you are simply bored or depressed.
You will look with boredom and fatigue at the books that hold the knowledge that will better your life or at the work that will express your love; then wake up to watch the hypnotic poison of mindless T.V. or listen to numbing music. That’s when you know you were not tired, simply bored.
But, sometimes, you know real fatigue and fear (not boredom that feels like fatigue).
If you wish to awaken, then you must conserve the energy that powers the engine of your mind and spirit, for each awakens the other.
Here are Ten Commandments that have worked for me for replenishing nerve energy.
Disregard even one of the ten and you may find yourself supine as if covered with a heavy fog that pins you to the bed and chokes the air from your chest–I know from breaking every law on the list.
But, I also know the energy of following them.
Law 1
Rest.
If you fight a long battle or enjoy extra pleasure (and I will be disappointed if you do not do both), then spend extra hours in bed.
Have a day per week of rest. GOD rested one day per week.
The honeybees do not rest; they work every day. But the honeybees gather nectar mechanically and store methodically.
The GOD in you wants to create the nectar of Love that human bees gather to their hive. For that, you need rest.
Law 2
Play.
All animals play.
Watch the dolphin that jumps from the sea. Does he arrive sooner for going vertical, skyward, rather than horizontal?
Watch the dog that circles chasing his tail. Do you see the smile on his face?
Only people seem to think that their role becomes so important that they cannot play.
Work without play becomes drudgery and uninspired. Play without work becomes a denervating vacation from nothingness and brings no pleasure.
If work becomes drudgery, play. If play becomes boredom, work.
Every day, work. Every day, play.
Today you may work 20 hours and play for 10 minutes. Tomorrow you may play for 8 hours and work for 30 minutes; but, everyday work and play.
Every day work before you play, or your play laughter will be muffled by thought of work undone.
Law 3
Enjoy.
Enjoy everything.
Enjoy your work (which is Love made Concrete) or find new work.
Enjoy and find gratefulness for the water that washes across your hands and face when you wake, for the taste of the first liquid to pass your lips and cross your dry throat when you start your day, for your lover’s kiss, for your morning prayer, for the air that passes down the pipe to your lungs to give you the ability to think about the morning sky.
Enjoy sorrow for sorrow is the vision that allows you to see joy and the possible sorrow of tomorrow is the timekeeper that encourages you to grab joy today.
Law 4
Look.
If you direct all your thoughts to your career, your family, your self, then you develop a tunnel vision that leads to numbness and boredom. Everything relates to everything. Stop directing all your thoughts toward yourself and look away from your private concerns to the universe outside the people and concerns in your mental world.
By looking outside yourself, you gain awaken to new worlds and new possibilities and new energy that you then import back to your world to make it larger. You also take what’s in your world and find new ways to contribute to the universe around you.
Develop and study new interests. Study literature, dance, marital arts, music, gardening, or flowers-you decide. But, pick something new and study and you will find yourself looking outside yourself and your circle.
When you look outside your circle, you awaken to what’s outside your circle.
Law 5
Sweep.
Sweep your mind of the poisons that will dull you to an anesthesia of despair and fatigue.
Take time to list every worry, every anger, every resentment, prejudice, and jealousy.
Then, find an action for each. Do something toward a solution for every worry, even if it does not completely solve the problem. Do an act of kindness toward those for whom you feel the poison.
Law 6
Eat.
Eat least 5 servings of fresh fruit or vegetables every day. When you bite the apple with seeds still able to grow a new tree, you bite into life and swallow vitality. No need to fear food that is not still living, but make sure you swallow life daily and adequate amounts of life.
Except for days of fasting, eat a minimum of 5 servings per day (a serving is one cup).
Law 7
Walk.
As much as possible, dress for the weather and walk 3 to 5 miles daily in the fresh air (for a total of 21 miles per week). If safety or other problems dictate that you walk inside, then use and elliptical trainer and still go the distance. But, at least go for a short block or two in the fresh air daily.
You will find more magic and health than is widely known in the meditation and movement of walking. Add other activities if you wish. But, if you ignore walking, you will see more valleys and miss more mountains.
Law 8
Release.
Release responsibility for the results; take responsibility for doing your best at the most important thing you can find to do.
Work with your head and hands and not with your emotions.
Do not worry that the most important thing does not seem important enough to you. More important things will come to you if you do what is in front of you with excellence.
Do not worry that you may not see the result you intended. If you learn from that result to adjust to something more important or more constructive, then you did not waste your efforts.
Do not release effort and focus. Use your strongest effort and your most narrow focus to do your work. Survey the promises made to you and to others, decide the best action, then focus and work.
Do not dash from one activity to the next. Decide the most important thing to do and stay with it until you reach your predetermined stopping point.
Then go to the next thing.
Law 9
Ignore.
The only opinion that matters is your opinion while connected to GOD. Worrying about the opinions of others is a huge drain of your energy.
You will make enemies and endear lovers with the same action, no matter your action-good or evil, constructive or destructive.
Connect to GOD, then enjoy the rest, peace, and energy that comes from doing what you perceive to be right and best and ignore the inner voice that whispers the intrusion, “What will people think?”
Law 10
Stop.
Whatever you are frantically doing (thinking that the world will end if you stop), stop doing it.
At least for the time it takes to do the first 9 laws-stop and know that the world will keep going without you. Though you may think that you are the superhero that must save your family, your business, and the world, if you do not care for yourself, you cannot help.
And, when you are gone, the world will keep going without you.
Peace & health,
Charles Runels, MD
1-888-920-5311
P.S.: These 10 Laws are a modification and expansion of ideas found in a book published in 1954 by Edward Spencer Cowles, Conquest of Fatigue and Fear. I have used these ideas with great benefit since picking up a used copy of the book at a library sale 38 years ago.
These laws were further modified into the following pocket book…
© 2009, 2020 Charles Runels, MD