With zero exaggeration, I woke up abruptly from this dream recently…
I went for my regular morning run only to realize I ran the day before (I normally run on alternating days). I thought to myself, “I was going to do strength training today. What am I doing? I guess I should walk to prevent a running injury.” As I slowed down to walk, I turned a corner to be met by a large chicken flying toward me. I fell to the ground, and the chicken began to attack me. Then I woke up in a panic (also to my alarm going off and my poor wife trying to stop my disturbing her attempt to sleep!).
I’ll let you dive into the symbolism of chicken dreams on your own time, but this is some subconscious manifestation of stress.
You see, stress manifests itself in many ways, but increasingly rarely in our always-on world as “feeling stressed”.
I hear team members at clients’ offices regularly tell me they’re worried about their leader’s or owner’s health, how they’re handling stress, and sharing some form of their worry about them. If the manifestation of stress is so obvious that it results in this level of concern from those around us, we must wonder what we’re doing to ourselves.
Yes, our world is increasingly overwhelming, hyper-connected, with plenty of real and plenty of imagined worries to confront. But the signs and signals through which this manifests itself are critical for us to recognize and act on.
People joke with me often about how rigorously I protect my early morning workout time. Yes, I love to eat, and yes, my sleep-deprived wife is a fantastic cook. But a tremendous amount of my morning workout time is about offloading stress onto the pavement and working out the various mental concerns in my life and work. I don’t want that to bleed over the edges into my work with clients, my volunteer activities, and my time with family, friends, and loved ones. So, I take it out on the concrete.
If stress finds ways to manifest in our lives and we don’t listen to those warnings and develop and act on appropriate coping mechanisms, it’s going to find another outlet. And that’s probably going to be severely detrimental to our health and lives.
Recognize your stress, deal with it head-on, and listen to the worries and concerns your mind and peers are expressing. If you don’t do so healthily, you might find yourself avoiding an attack bird…
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