Hello, I'm Mervi!
An artist, nerd and business sorcerer, dedicated to make world more beautiful and strange with art, illustrations and logos + to help you figure your sustainable business out.
Slow Sunday: Having a break
Sometimes I skip a scheduled post on my blog. Or maybe I don't send the weekly email to my list. I may not get on Pinterest and pin my heart out, or I refrain from Tweeting. I even take breaks from running my new Facebook group. I'm a big believer of taking breaks from stuff. Scheduled, preset vacations. Unscheduled, spur-of-the-moment, pauses. Longer time recesses. Short time breathers. There are people who take pride of never taking vacations or always being busy. I call them idiots. Without having breaks you go down with a burnout. Without having a break you will break yourself. Hey, I've tried that, so that you don't have to.
We have an inbuilt break system in ourselves. It's the need for sleep. During sleep our brains reset the connections. This is important for learning and creating memories. Sleep is important for keeping your brain healthy.
There's a reason why there are breaks between educational lessons. It has noticed that people pretty much stop learning if we have to study for too long and if there are no breaks between the studies. As a matter of a fact, healthy adults can only concentrate on one thing for about 20 minutes at a time. The focus can be repeated, but after a while it becomes a strain. That said, a break can mean many things.
Working after a long time of non-employment can feel like a break. A good, sweaty exercise could feel like a break after sitting for a long time. If you have been in bed rest for a long time, you probably want to get up and about sooner or later.
Having breaks is part of taking care of yourself. You can use the break in relaxing. Sometimes it's enough of a break to just concentrating on something else than what you were doing before. For example, if you have spent a long time in writing a new blog post and writing starts to feel less than smooth, you can decide to concentrate on creating the Pinterest image for your blog post for a while. That's a sort of a break, which lets your brain to rest from the writing task. That said, I recommend purely relaxing breaks too.
Having a break isn't only for the "non-fun" stuff. While you obviously need breaks from work or learning, there are times when you find yourself need break from hobbies or other stuff you enjoy. Sometimes you need a break from the most relaxing thing you do, or something you really love to do. That's quite okay. It doesn't mean you have to completely give up on that thing. Nor it means there's anything wrong with you. You don't have to always enjoy everything you have enjoyed before.
Sometimes you need break from being around other people. Other times you could use a break from yourself and your buzzing mind. After having been reading many books in a row I tend to require a break from reading any books. A break can be very helpful. Stepping away from the task at hand gives you a fresh viewpoint. If you are stuck, rather than persistently trying to push through, see if a pause helps instead. And hey, you may need to take a break from having a break.
How do you take a break? Do you schedule breaks? When was the last time you had a good break from the everyday stuff?
Slow Sunday is a series about slowing down, dealing with depression and anxiety, soothing your stress, relaxing, and getting over yourself. Do let me know if you have a specific subject you'd like me to write about. And please, share your personal thoughts and feelings about the subject in the comment area of the article.
