Stop Overwhelming Yourself, You’re Allowed To Take A Break

At times life can begin to feel pretty hectic, and our natural reaction is building up this dense feeling of being overwhelmed, stressed, or exhausted.

We may allow for the feelings of pressure, stress, and/or anxiety to expand and grow until we reach that very peak of our breaking point. Burnout!!

Two weeks ago I was introduced to that breaking point. I was in tears and 100% ready to give up everything that was contributing toward that dense feeling of being overwhelmed. So I gave it all up…temporarily. I took a much needed mental and physical break.

Great value lies in identifying when you need to take a break from a task.

In my case it was my masters thesis. I was burnt out, and lacking motivation. I’ve been chipping away at writing the final pieces of my thesis, and letting that consume the majority of my life. I placed a large amount of stress on myself to meet deadlines that were not always realistic. As a result I gave up attending a family member’s wedding, I stopped going to the gym and I sacrificed sleep just so I had more hours in the day to work on my thesis.

There will always be moments in life when you need to come up for air. Take a break and let yourself relax. This break could last for 10 minutes, an hour, a day, a week, or even a month. It just needs to be enough time for you to step back and find ease again.

You’re allowed to take breaks.

Try working on identifying those moments of stress before you reach the peak and burst. Great value lies in understanding when you need to take a break.

Time away can also prepare you with the opportunity to refocus on the task at hand and return to it with a new motivation, perspective, or light. Maybe it’s something as simple as taking a moment to go for a walk, watch a couple of videos on Youtube, an episode on Netflix, or reading a book.

I was at the peak of my breaking point and decided that it was time to take a break. I made the decision to take a week off from doing any such thesis work and that allowed me to pause, enjoy life in front of me, recompose and find motivation to get back up again.