I had to give up coffee a couple of months ago when my heart started acting out after weeks of over-training, over-filling an already full plate, and regularly missing meals. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. Six years ago my depleted adrenals and changing hormones urged my ticker to mount a similar intervention. Which it did, quite happily, in the form of tachycardia and a bulging artery that wouldn’t go away. There were all kinds of diagnoses and doctors and procedures and drugs, but ultimately the remedy required me to change my lifestyle and replace all my bad habits with good ones. After a year of self-care, I felt normal again. After two, I was in the best shape I’d been since having kids. Of course, my ego grew sturdier as well. Fast forward a half-decade and my steady descent down that slippery slope of imbalance, and here I am again. This time my heart presenting a new version of arrhythmia, but beating out that same deafening message: stop the fucking nonsense.

At 51 years of age, despite having been around the block a few times, I am still doing what I know isn’t good for me. Repeating the same behavior over and over, somehow convinced I will achieve a different result. What kind of result? I don’t know. But according to Einstein, I’m certifiable because I keep coming back for more despite the repeated negative outcomes. I guess the saying holds true–you’re gonna do what you do until you just stop doing it. Well, for the record, I want to stop doing it.

Around the time the symptoms showed up and my panic took hold (if you’ve ever had a cardiac issue you’ll know what I mean), a new acquaintance reintroduced me to a Celtic healer that I worked with 20 years ago. Back then, I was deeply grieving my mother and looking for relief. And though I have no memory of how I initially found her, the work she did was so effective and profound that once resolved I completely forgot about her. Actually, I think that might be her magic: to appear and disappear at just the perfect time. Knowing I was about to leave town, she graciously fit me into her tight schedule, and we talked for a long while about all that had happened in the two decades since we last met. Then she turned the subject to human suffering. I know, it’s a heavy topic. One that is indeed easier to dismiss than discuss. But having been a healer her entire life and having worked with so many people, she concluded that human pain and struggle boils down to one simple concept: we suffer because our needs aren’t met. Which at first glance seems like a no-brainer. Except that identifying your actual needs while moving a million miles an hour trying to control your corner of the universe, or while bingeing on too much of a good thing like food, alcohol, pain, work, exercise, sex, or, ahem, caffeine, is impossibly hard. Yet that’s what she instructed me to do.  Stop and ask yourself twenty times a day, “What do I need?”

It turns out that what I need is pretty simple. And while I haven’t come close to stopping even ten times a day to reflect on the question she posed, I have started meditating. Regularly. For someone like me who’s been almost phoning in a spiritual practice for the past few years, it’s not that easy. Frankly, there are times I would rather stab myself in the leg than light a candle and empty out my brain for 15 minutes, draining away all the compelling stuff going on in there. Still, I sit. And, eventually, my heart rate drops, the noise cuts out, and the stories drift away. At which point, my beaten down, sorely ignored intuition finally has the space to rise up. And do you know what it often tells me? Go drink a big glass of water. Make yourself a warm meal. Get a good night’s sleep. Kiss your husband deeply. Laugh, for god’s sake. And, please, please, allow someone to see you. Like I said, simple stuff.

Since the healing session, I have started stopping more often. Slowing down in order to find out what my body/soul/mind needs, not wants (like my black java brew all morning long). And even though my heart gets funky once in a while and I’ve had to cut out some favorite, life-long habits, I am grateful for the lesson learned on how to better listen to myself. But the story doesn’t end here. Because there’s a bigger kicker, a bigger takeaway from the whole experience, which is… When I care for my needs, I am better able to recognize the needs of the people around me. And when I fly through my conquer-the-world days at warp speed, I miss countless opportunities to appreciate what’s going on with someone else. Whether it’s my kids, my husband, my friends, or even strangers. Like the poor woman I swerved past the other day in a huff, believing her immovable car was a grand effort to screw me over instead of realizing that she was, in fact, stuck and in need of help. Something the person behind me easily determined as they pulled over, got out of their vehicle, and offered a generous hand.

Life is fast and complicated and there’s a world full of need. Need, I’m convinced, looks more like our own than not. So the next time you see me causing a commotion and blocking traffic, slow down, be kind, and remember, it could be you.