Have you ever observed that you feel highly energetic, bubbly and full of energy on certain days, and feel exactly the opposite on some days?  And you may have also observed these high and low feelings can last inside you for several days. But, wait a minute. Doesn't your company mission and vision statement make it mandatory for every employee to be always excited, energetic, and passionate about everything, every minute and every hour?

And can you dare to disagree with all those motivational gurus or the inspirational posters plastered all over your workplace? Or accidentally blurt out that you don't feel excited about that yet one more boring meeting on customer satisfaction when you are feeling low? But internally your wretched low phases are making you feel guilty because you are unable to portray a picture of an "always excited, energetic and passionate" individual. Now how do you go around proving to everyone that you can always be excited, energetic and passionate about everything everyday? Will vitamin tablets, daily exercises, power lunches, or even some workplace productivity and enthusiasm enhancing drugs help? Or is there some other magic to be always active?

If you are eagerly expecting me to tell you some golden solution to eliminate your low days then you are going to be disappointed. What I am going to tell you is to do nothing, and simply learn how to live with your highs and lows. Many would normally disagree with me to falsely claim they are always able to maintain a peak physical, mental and emotional condition everyday.  The unfortunate truth is, no matter what you do, the rich food you eat or the calories you pump out you cannot remain excited, enthusiastic or energetic every day. Mother Nature has programmed everyone to undergo an endless cycle of active and passive periods in his or her physical, emotional and mental states. Whether you believe it or not, you will feel highly energetic and enthusiastic on certain days (active phase), and feel bored, exhausted, weak, irritable and uninterested in anything on certain days (passive phase). And this cycle of high and low days will happen throughout your lifetime. The answer to why you feel high or low may lie in a relatively unknown and often dismissed concept called biorhythms. At the beginning of the last century, a certain Dr. Wilhelm Fliess noticed identical rhythms in the case histories of his patients. He observed active and passive phases (curves) in the physical, emotional and mental rhythms of his patients. Based on his observations he derived the principle of biorhythms and observed that the physical curve extended spanned 23 days, the emotional curve with 28 days and the mental curve with 33 days. And Hermann Swoboda, a professor of psychology at the University of Vienna, while researching with periodic variations in fevers, looked into the possibility of a rhythmic change in moods and health of people. Based on the data he collected in areas like pain, outbreak of fevers, illnesses, heart attacks, and recurrent dreams he concluded that there was a 23-day physical cycle and a 28-day emotional cycle. These curves are usually plotted as sine waves similar to an alternating current we studied in our high schools. A cycle is said to be in a positive phase when above the zero line and in a negative phase when below the zero line. And there are also some mathematical formulas and free online tools that can plot the curves for you based on your birthday date and other inputs. Nevertheless the core idea behind this article is not to make you become some sort of a wizard in plotting your biorhythms, but to see how you can successfully exploit you highs and lows.

High days: Assuming that you are not suffering from any serious health problems or other personal headaches that can cause you to feel low, the trick is to know how best to utilize your active and passive phases to your advantage. You need to become like an ant when you are feeling active. Ants collect food throughout the summer, as they know winter will set in fast. So they collect the maximum amount of food and other useful material to survive the winter. They know when winter sets in they will not be able to move out or get food easily. Hence they do not waste their summers by enjoying the sun and loafing around. When winter sets in they enjoy the fruits of their summer labour. Similarly you should aim to do the maximum amount of important work (official and personal) on the days you feel great. This could be anything like finishing off a report that is not due for weeks, attacking all pending workplace issues, organizing your finances, trim the garden, repair the roof, clean the garage, eliminate the clutter in your house and workplace, and anything that you have been putting off for weeks. On such days it is quite possible for you to multitask to do an extraordinary amount of work and still be energetic. The challenge will be to avoid and wasting such days for "nice to do" things like picnics, sports or simply waste them by doing things that don't help you in a true sense. The question you should ask is, when you are feeling your best where should you first direct that energy? For example, do you use that phase to properly organize all your messed up finances by visiting a financial consultant, or use this time for picnics, ball games, beach trips and other "nice to do" stuff, rather tackle a "must do" stuff.

Low Days: If you have entered your low phase you often feel terrible as you think you are wasting precious time without doing anything meaningful. And for every effort to do some meaningful work you feel there is some invisible force pushing you back. You start making minor and major mistakes, ordinary things will seem like drudgery, and the simplest of tasks will seem Herculean. Your mind and body will simply refuse to pump that vibrant energy juice you need to get things done. And you may ask why you are unable to concentrate on any work now, when just a few days ago you felt great and did a lot of meaningful work. However, the key to tackling your low days is to know how to use and exploit your high days. If you have done your best during your high days you should simply take it easy during your low days. Do only the things that you cannot postpone, avoid critical activities if possible, and don't worry about not having a productive day. On your low days you are better off listening to signals and resistance from your body and mind that tell you are running on low batteries rather than fight with it. For example, it is believed that some doctors plan their work around their highs and lows, and don't tackle critical surgeries when are feeling low.  So if you are regularly experiencing high and low productive days then you need not feel guilty or worry at all. You are actually in good shape and your biological machinery is in perfect condition. You can proudly say you are a normal human being. The question is whether you can honestly admit that you are feeling low when you are indeed feeling low.

So get used to accepting your highs and lows and use them to your advantage. Finally it is up to you to believe in them or not.

Thejendra B.S is an IT manager for a software development firm in Bangalore. He is also a freelance writer and writes humour, technical and some serious management stuff. He has also authored a business humour book called Corporate Wildlife (available on www.amazon.com) and two technical books on ITIL and Disaster Recovery in UK. The DR book is available from http://www.itgovernance.co.uk/products/605 and the ITIL book is currently getting published from the same publisher. The views and suggestions expressed here are his personal opinions with no warranties or guarantees of any kind. If you want to reproduce the article elsewhere contact the author on This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Copyright -Thejendra B.S. All Rights Reserved.

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