April 26, 2026

We all have commitments and responsibilities, jobs, hobbies, family, friends, service clubs, and other community involvement. These things enrich our lives, provide us with a social framework and allow us to feel meaningful. Under normal circumstances we are quite capable of dealing with the different things that demand our time and attention. Sometimes however we find that the demands we are asked to meet become more than we are able to manage. There are a number of reasons for this including illness, uncontrollable circumstances, unreasonable demands, difficult people, and many others.

If you are familiar with the story of Milo of Croton you know in the story Milo trained by carrying a bull a certain distance every day. As the bull grows Milo gains strength and is eventually able to carry a fully grown bull. Sounds reasonable right but when people train to get stronger they discover that it doesn’t exactly work this way. The human body doesn’t have the capacity to progressively do more and more like in the story. In reality you have to use different strategies, maybe work up to a peak and then come back down and work up again. We need to provide the opportunity to rest, recover and rebuild stronger than before. If rest is that critical to your physical health and development, what do you think about your mental health? As life circumstances change we may find more and more to deal with managing takes a certain amount of mental resilience. In the progression toward mental resilience it’s not a workable strategy to just add more and more every day. So what can we do?

Be realistic about your ability: people have different capacities for stress. Not all people have the genetics to be an Olympic Athlete, in the same way we all handle stress and mental fatigue differently. Some are almost unflappable while others are more reactive. We all want to get better at keeping our heads above water and we can. We may not all become Michael Phelps but we can all become better swimmers. Based on this we need to know ourselves and know the signs that we are getting to a place that is less than ideal.

The Bible offers some encouragement:

• Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God
• Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved
• Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light

We owe it to God, ourselves and our families to stay physically and mentally healthy because we want to continue to be effective in life and in service. Start small, I recall a physiotherapist commenting that he was seeing a lot of extra stress (physical stress) injuries during the quarantine. Everyone had decided to take up running and people would go from little or no activity to trying to run 5K. Instead, they should have started slow with manageable distances. The same is true for our stress level. You or I may have the capacity to work as an air traffic controller (one of the highest prolonged stress occupations) but we need to start slow and build up to it.

~ Kevin Cleary