Reflections by Good Fellow Drew McLellan of AMI

In March, you shot into action. You were unstoppable because you had no choice. Either you were fighting to save your agency or you were so slammed you were struggling to get the work out of the door.

You chased clients. You soothed employees and came up with all kinds of crazy ways to support them. You approached your bankers with dogged tenacity to get financial support. You clung to every penny and squeezed a nickel’s worth of value out of each one. You were ON.

As things stabilized, you scrambled to delight the clients old and new, dealt with medical surprises, and fought to cross the 2020 finish line in the black.

Your adrenaline kept you fueled for those ten months. You were relentless in your efforts and it paid off. But you drained the battery dry.

You shifted into a lower gear throughout the holiday season and then, as January arrived, instead of being refreshed, focused, and fired up — you were the total opposite. I’ll bet you thought you’d come out of the holidays raring to go, with boatloads of energy and focus. But instead, those adrenal glands that have been working all three shifts for ten months, appear to be on strike.

See if you recognize any of these symptoms:

• Fatigue, particularly when you first wake up, with episodic crashes throughout the day
• Poor stress response
• Challenges with regulating your moods
• Brain fog/difficulty focusing for any length of time
• Cravings for salty and sweet foods
• A reliance on caffeine and other stimulants
• Apathy or struggles to rise to the occasion

Many of you have described it as struggling to find your “mojo”. Since you don’t have the luxury of taking a month off or cruising to a remote island, you’ve got to identify some techniques to replenish your adrenal glands so they can give you the boost you need when you need it.

I don’t even play a doctor on TV so I’m not going to prescribe specifics beyond saying that several medical sites suggest upping our intake of:

• Vitamin C
• Vitamin B5, B10, and B12
• Magnesium

They also suggest adding more water, more sleep, and avoiding too much sugar and caffeine. Nothing earth-shattering — but all good ingredients for replenishment. I think the most important recommendation is recognizing that you need to re-fuel.

The sprint is over. I’m not saying everything is rosy but the crisis has passed and you have survived it.

We’re now in the marathon stage of working our way through a recession and getting back into our groove. Now is the time to slow your pace a little, fuel your body, and re-boot your adrenal glands.

I’m sharing all of this with you because many of you have been pretty frustrated that you can’t just “snap out of it.” I want you to see that you’re not alone in experiencing this and it’s not just in your head.

Stop beating yourself up and go give your adrenal glands a spa day!