I flew into Thailand just over a month ago with a wishlist. You know the type. A neat little document, colour-coded, titled something painfully optimistic like "Get Shit Done." David had rented a house in Koh Samui for a month so his adult kids, who live in Perth, could come and stay with us together. The perfect halfway spot to catch up. And somewhere in my head I'd decided this was also going to be the trip where I finally got ahead. Batched the content. Cleared the backlog. Emerged glowing and productive.
Reader, I ticked off precisely none of it.
Lol.
And for a good few days, I sat with the very entrepreneurial question of: is that a good thing or a bad thing?
I've landed on good. Because what I actually learned this month was worth more than anything sitting on that list, and it's the kind of thing you can't tick off anyway. I learned that I don't need to rush. I learned that I need to listen to my body far more than I do. And I learned, properly this time, that nothing is worth getting done if it costs you your physical and mental wellbeing.
Let me tell you how my body forced that lesson on me, because it was not subtle.
When your body sets the schedule
I arrived in Samui with my shoulder already wrecked, and then, in a moment of pure genius, I hauled my luggage into the overhead compartment and made it considerably worse. By the time we landed I couldn't lift my arm above my head. Not ideal for a woman with grand plans of productivity and, more pressingly, a villa pool she'd like to actually swim in.
This is where I found Master Jet Lee. And before you picture the action star, this Master Lee is a different kind of legend, a practitioner trained in a whole lot of different modalities, including reiki, which I'd never had done before, plus Chinese medicine and acupressure.
Now, this whole business of my body doing weird, inconvenient things is not new to me. I've recently been diagnosed with HSD (hypermobility spectrum disorder), which came at the end of a rabbit hole that started with my ADHD diagnosis three years ago. One answer led to the next, the way they tend to. And it's honestly handed me answers to years of strange symptoms that doctors had waved away. If you've ever been told "it's probably nothing" while your body loudly insists otherwise, you'll know exactly how validating a real diagnosis feels.
After my first session with Master Lee, he freed up my arm to the point where I could tread water without any pain. Perfect timing too, because my brother and his family were about to arrive at the villa. For a moment there I thought I'd cracked it.
Then, about a week later, I could feel the whole thing jamming up again.
I should say, Master Lee isn't the only one who's helped. Part of what's shifted for me lately is finally finding practitioners who actually listen. Back home in Melbourne I've built a little team I trust, including the Melbourne Functional Medical Centre and Ashton and Dish at Alpha Sports Medicine. When you've spent years being dismissed, people who take your body seriously are worth their weight in gold.
What the right side of my body was telling me
Here's the part that really got me.
The entire right side of my body is a bit of a disaster zone. An old ankle ligament injury, whiplash, all stacked up on the same side. Those of us who are hypermobile tend to be more prone to these injuries, because we've got loose ligaments but tight, overworking muscles, a combination that quietly sabotages you.
Master Lee mentioned something that stopped me in my tracks. In Chinese medicine, he said, presentation on the right side of the body points to too much heat. So naturally I asked him what causes that. His answer: it's often triggered by chronic stress and repressed emotions.
Well. Nothing like a reiki master gently telling you that your body is holding onto everything you haven't dealt with.
And the thing is, he was right. My body wasn't being difficult for the sake of it. It was sending an invoice for months of pushing, gripping and ignoring. The stiff shoulder wasn't the problem. It was the messenger.
The thing I keep forgetting
All of this made me reflect on how important it is for me to slow down, to meditate, and to actually check in with myself. And here's where the HSD piece clicked into place again, because one of its lesser-known symptoms is poor interoception.
Interoception is your brain's ability to sense your internal state. Pain. Hunger. An elevated heart rate. The quiet signals your body sends before things go properly wrong. When your interoception is poor, you miss them. I regularly forget to eat. I don't clock that my heart is racing until I'm already frazzled (hello, dysregulation, my old friend). I'll sail right past "you are exhausted" and only notice when my shoulder physically stops working.
So when I say I need to listen to my body more, it's not a cute wellness slogan I picked up on holiday. For me it's a genuine skill I have to practise, because my wiring doesn't hand me the information for free. I have to go looking for it.
Why this matters if you run your own business
If you're a service-based entrepreneur, especially the introspective, do-it-all kind, I suspect some of this is landing a little too close to home. We are exceptional at overriding ourselves. We treat rest as the reward we'll allow once the list is finished, except the list is never finished, so the rest never comes.
Entrepreneur burnout doesn't usually arrive as one dramatic crash. It creeps. It shows up as the tight shoulder, the skipped meals, the racing heart you've stopped noticing, the holiday you spent working. Your body keeps score long before your calendar does.
The reframe I'm taking home is this: rest isn't what you earn after the work. Rest is part of the work. It's what keeps the person doing the work functional, creative and, ideally, able to lift her own arm.
So no, I didn't get shit done in Thailand. Not one line item. Not even my overdue BAS!
But I learned a great deal about myself on this trip, and it was so needed. My body had other plans, and for once I'm grateful I was made to follow them.
If you take one thing from my very unproductive month, let it be this: check in with yourself before your body checks in for you. It's a far kinder conversation to have early.
