Radical Idea: Take a Break Before Collapsing from Exhaustion

When I told my sister recently how I have been struggling, she promptly made plans to visit. She showed up at my house a few days later toting my precious niece, bags of toys, and delicious, healthy lunches for everyone.

Once Warrior Girl went down for a nap, we sat down on the couch, babe at the breast, and stayed there for hours, getting up only to make more tea every now and again. Because my sister is a smart cookie, and basically a fountain of wisdom (which sounds like sarcasm but is not), I will share with you the process we underwent during our sofa sorjourn to come up with the radical idea mentioned in the title.

My sister is a mother of two, and is in her first year of working full-time at a new, highly demanding job. When it’s been a rough day at work, she treats herself to a delicious coffee in the late afternoon, to reward herself for surviving.

Recently, she decided to try an experiment on herself: instead of rewarding herself on bad days, she started rewarding herself with afternoon coffee on good days. She found this helps her focus on the things that went right in her day, and gives her extra motivation to try to turn around bad days.

Then we got to thinking: why is it that we only treat ourselves/let ourselves relax/give ourselves downtime when we reach our breaking points and have no choice but to take a break? We realized our unconscious motto has basically been, “If I can (get up with the kids every morning including weekends/function with very little sleep/handle the fifth tantrum of the day by myself), then I should.”

If you were the type who got terribly sick immediately after the last final of the semester literally every semester in college, you might know what I am talking about. If it is physically possible for me to fit in another study session, then I must do it. If it is physically possible for me to throw in another load of laundry, then I need to throw in another load of laundry. Etc., etc., etc.

I’m sure the problem here is obvious to both the laid-back and the Type-A among you: at some point, we stop functioning at our best. Our performance declines, resentment builds and so forth. We tend to get mentally or physically sick, or at least just plain exhausted. We wonder whether we even like doing whatever it is we are working so hard to do.

Enter: radical idea of taking a break and practicing self-care before we are on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion.

The idea is not new; the concept of a weekly day of rest is found in religions the world over.

I’m starting now to try and take better care of myself.

This week, I let J take care of the kids while I went to yoga.

It was nice.

It’s a start.

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Do you also struggle to let yourself rest, or do you have the rest thing pretty dialed? What are your favorite methods of self-care?

Share in the comments below!