{"id":4021,"date":"2019-10-21T13:46:29","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T13:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/?p=4021"},"modified":"2019-10-21T13:46:32","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T13:46:32","slug":"taking-a-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/2019\/10\/21\/taking-a-break\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking a break"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sometimes when you&#8217;re feeling overwhelmed with a project or a task, the best thing you can do is walk away for a moment and clear your head. I used to struggle with this because I have a hard time letting go when I want something to work a certain way (I can&#8217;t be the only one, can I?). When I do finally surrender and take a step back, things seem to practically solve themselves when I come back to the issue at hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s amazing how taking a break, giving yourself something else to focus your mind and energy on, can give you clarity on something that has been driving you crazy! When we&#8217;re working with tight deadlines or a really important project, the idea of taking a break can seem like crazy talk. There&#8217;s a lot to do and there&#8217;s no time to slack off and take a nature walk!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If there&#8217;s one thing I&#8217;ve realized, it&#8217;s that it&#8217;s often the things we tell ourselves we don&#8217;t have time for that we need to do the most! When I think about times in the past where I&#8217;ve spent far too long banging my head against a wall trying to figure something out, I realize it wasn&#8217;t time well spent. I think about the number of times I was advised to just &#8220;take a break&#8221; and chose not to because there wasn&#8217;t any time for that!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Taking a break isn&#8217;t something that we should avoid. I actually think we need to do it more often. I&#8217;m not talking about 6-month sabbaticals in a foreign land (but if you can, go for it!). I&#8217;m talking about giving yourself 20 minutes to do something that brings you joy, whether that&#8217;s going for a walk, cranking your favourite music and dancing like no one&#8217;s watching or just lying on the couch with your eyes closed &#8211; TAKE.A.BREAK. It&#8217;ll be okay \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I used to think that if I wasn&#8217;t doing something productive in my waking hours, I was wasting time. I would feel guilty for going the entire day without checking my emails or doing some kind of work, even on the weekends! It&#8217;s a bit silly to put that kind of pressure on ourselves. At the end of the day, there comes a point where you can be extremely busy AND unproductive at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m learning to take breaks without feeling guilty. I&#8217;ve run myself ragged trying to do too much and know that it always catches up with me, so I&#8217;m doing my best not to do that again. We have to practice kindness and compassion to ourselves the same way we do with others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can have a plan, be focused and take action. You will see the fruits of your labour. When you feel stuck, frustrated, overwhelmed or simply exhausted; hit the pause button. Take a break and come back refreshed and revitalized to continue doing the work you want to do. There&#8217;s not point in pushing yourself to reach your goal if you don&#8217;t have the energy or time to enjoy achieving it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes when you&#8217;re feeling overwhelmed with a project or a task, the best thing you can do is walk away for a moment and clear your head. I used to struggle with this because I have a hard time letting go when I want something to work a certain way (I can&#8217;t be the only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1891,792,1062,843,502,55,911,1890,280,537,1892,1888,1889],"class_list":["post-4021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thoughtoftheday","tag-avoid-burnout","tag-dealing-with-frustration","tag-dealing-with-overwhelm","tag-dealing-with-stress","tag-embrace-your-destiny","tag-meditation","tag-quiet-the-mind","tag-quiet-time","tag-reflection","tag-sandra-dawes","tag-sleep","tag-take-a-break","tag-taking-a-break"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4023,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4021\/revisions\/4023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}