12-25-18 - "Just Do It, Right?"

Dear Sweet Babe,

Today I want to talk to you about breaking.

Breaking is a wonderful thing some times. Breaking from a heart-racing situations when you’re too exhausted. Breaking when you need to reevaluate or refocus. Braking at a stop sign instead of just cruising through there with a gentle pressing of your breaks…we all saw you, Janice! When we stop what we are doing, we are allowing ourselves the time we need to reflect.

Many people don’t take this break time. They power through their days, jumping from one activity to another, convinced that their constant persistence will yield the most amount of fruit in their life. Go hard or go home, right? Just do it, right? Don’t think, just do, right?

Well, no. Wrong. Not the best plan, if I can say so.

Persistence and drive are admirable and beneficial traits to cultivate, but if we spend all of our time doing and no time breaking, all of our drive will drive us into ruin. We can’t drive a car that has run out of gas, right?

Now, I feel like you may be able to guess what I am going to recommend next: If you spend too much of your time doing, and not enough time reflecting, the simple cure for re-alignment is, you guessed it, balance. Balancing your schedule is one of the most important skills you can learn, and it is much easier if you learn it early. Take the time, while your schedule is predominantly simple to take a good hard look at it.

Tackling your goals is important, and breaking those goals down into little steps and scheduling these little steps is just as important...but, take a harder look at your schedule. Where are your break times? Where are the moments when your mind isn’t focused on one task, and it can wander to find its own playgrounds of thought and build its own places of creativity? Where are the moments that you can take in media and stories that affirm your decisions and teach you about the type of person you are and would like to be? Where are the moments when you can pet a cat, play with a puppy, enjoy the sunshine, or simply, as cliche as it is, stop to smell the roses?

When we take a look at our schedules it is most important, as it is in so many other aspects of our life, to create balance. Too much of a break and we won’t do anything. Too much doing and we’ll burn out and our bodies and minds will force us to not do.

So, sweet babe, how will you take a break today?

xxx