How To Give Yourself A Break

“Oh, come on, man, just give yourself a break.” This common phrase someone uses when he/she wants to tell you to stop being stressed or scared about specific topics. 

Honestly, I don’t like it. 

Mainly because I can be pretty hard on myself and because I don’t know how to ‘give myself a break.’ Although the sentence is pretty straightforward and direct – allow yourself a break, step aside from your goals and fears. 

We live in a world where a significant percentage of people is living in constant stress. I wanted to back up this sentence, so I’ve googled it. The results were pretty shocking to me. You can see it for yourself – Mental Health Foundation claims that in 2018 “in the past year, 74% of people have felt so stressed they have been overwhelmed or unable to cope.”

Could we lower the percentage if we learn how to ‘give ourselves a break?’ 

Here is my simple (yet not always easy to do) list on how to do it. Success guaranteed 🙂

• LOG OUT 

It’s essential to stay connected, and if you’re like me, your business relies on your internet accessibility. But be honest to yourself – if we cannot log out from our devices for at least 3 hours daily and when we sleep – are we honestly as free as we would like to promote? I challenge you even more – pick one day each month to be fully logged out and commit this time only to you and to people that are physically surrounding you. No phones, no TV, no internet. It will be challenging, but so refreshing.

• LOWER YOUR STANDARDS

Tony Robbins once said that you could be happier if you lower your standards. What a great idea! I’ve never really soaked it in like this, but this can be a deal-breaker when it comes to ‘taking a break’. We are so hard on ourselves because we have very high standards. We don’t even take the proper time to heal when we have a cold. Did you know that in 2019 “The number of sick days taken by UK workers has almost halved since 1993, according to the Office for National Statistics? The average employee once spent 7.2 days a year at home due to illness; they took just 4.1 days off in 2017.”

I would say, and this is a guess, that people are not less sick as they were in 1993; we are just so afraid to stop. 

• BREATHE

With proper breathing, you are regenerating your body. The Oxygene you are providing to your brain is vital to have a ‘clear head’ and to take it easy in the end. Have you ever experienced that when you are in an uncomfortable situation, you stop breathing regularly? Like a woman in labor – you can overcome significant tasks by proper breathing. 

• LOVE

This one is not something new. Love is a secret ingredient to the soup of life 🙂 I am not talking only about loving what you do, although this is also important. But think about self-love and love to the Universe, to the Creator. If you learn to love, you learn to surrender. And this, my friend, is the final and ultimate key to achieve a well-wanted break.

So here you go: 

Log out of your devices, lower your standards that are too high at the moment, breathe properly and effectively, and love yourself and the path you are on.

If you do find your break, let me know. I would love to hear it from you.