Rest when must, but don’t quit

Whenever you feel like you’re moving at a faster pace in life, just running behind your goals, stop for a minute, and take a rest.  You need to learn when to take a break. Remember you have to rest when must, but don’t quit  We get caught up in our ambition a little too much, that we deny seeing our fatigue. This fatigue, tension gets converted to anxiety and depression in later stages which sometimes leads to a state where we consider quitting as an option.

But why do we reach that stage? Is it not worth it to stop for a while and discover what our mind needs at certain time intervals? The human brain is the most powerful machine, but it too requires little rest to continue its functioning to work more efficiently. What is the need to work for longer hours when the productivity is far less than the input given?

Our brain’s grey matter needs a break every ninety minutes. Our prefrontal cortex is a massive energy-hungry organ. It represents just 2 % of our body weight but requires much amount of energy to function. If breaks are avoided the brain gets foggy and productivity decreases.

Learning to focus your attention and fully immerse yourself in your work is crucial. If you only bring 80%  in you, the amount you can accomplish will be severely diminished. In order to practice this, you need to enhance your mindfulness. Meditating daily can drastically help you become more mindful.

Thus, learning your body is so important. There are going to be times where you really want to keep going and push to your limits, but you have to know where to draw the line. If you put yourself into a state of pure exhaustion that you may suffer. I’ve seen myself get to this point of feeling “burnt out”.

It is ideally impossible to stay calm when we are put through a huge storm in life. But to train our minds to remain calm in those tough situations also, we need to put ourselves through those storms. And with continuous practice, you will able to manage the entire situation.  I know how important it is to put yourself in those situations where you may fail at first because you will learn so much from your shortcomings. Eventually, you will just be able to bask in the tension, and just soak it all in. By this time you will have dominated yourself to a point where you are unfazed by the things life will throw at you.

Once you can gauge this, and you are leaning into your edges, but not overstepping, it is very beneficial. At times we do need to push ourselves to the limit in order to grow past our threshold. But we also need to know not to do it too frequently, which can lead to unintended consequences that can leave us severely fatigued or on verge of quitting due to total burnout both mentally and physically.

Next time you thought of quitting ever crosses your mind, don’t even think about accepting it. Just know that you have to protect yourself at times and remind yourself to take a rest when needed.

If you get tired learn to rest, not to quit. –Banksy

Also read, Breaks – useful?

One Life. Live Boundless