It’s Good To Take a Break.

And don’t feel guilty about it

You are human (unless this blog is being read from the future by an AI machine, in that case, hello). You can’t do everything all the time at full speed without breaking down at some point. Pushing yourself past your own limits for too long means your body will rebel and make you take a break.

Have you ever thought about “not having time” to deal with something, but then something happens and you end up taking more time to deal with the consequences than you would have if you’d just dealt with the thing up-front?

When you’re feeling run down and ragged, that’s the time to take a break, step back, and identify what’s really going on. Taking a break lets you breathe. It lets you see without the blinders on and realize just how hard you were driving yourself into the ground. Until I let it all go, I didn’t realize how much pressure I’d put myself under.

Stepping back from the chaos gives you perspective. It helps you see what’s important, and what was pretending to be important. When you’re inside the bottle, you can’t read the label. When we’re in the thick of it, it’s so hard to see what’s really going on in our lives.

You know how you can always tell if someone’s struggling, or you know they’re hiding something whenever they smile because it doesn’t reach their eyes? Others can see the same thing when they look at us.

Realizing and accepting that there’s a problem is the first step to overcoming the problem. You can’t wish problems like that away — it takes time to address and work through them. You’ll also have a lot of questions to ask yourself about the future.

Taking a break will not kill you, but if you don’t take purposeful breaks, your body will take one for you — and you probably won’t like it when that happens. Burnout is real — and it’s only as real as we make it with how we think, feel, and act.

Imagine what your future could look like if you took purposeful breaks every week — if you made it part of your routine. You could prove to yourself that not only do you deserve to take a break, but your family and friends will also understand and encourage you to take care of yourself.