Here are my 7 signs you may have “overdone” it a little bit with your working hours and it’s time to look at your own body again and recharge.
1. You believe you can’t afford taking time off.
Wrong.
There is always time where you can allow yourself to rest and recover. The problem is that you don’t WANT to spend your precious time on “resting”.
You believe that it is not getting you closer to your goal so therefore it must be not helpful. Just like some people have troubles with starting something you have built up resistance towards stopping it (sounds funny, but that’s just how the human brain works.
It is just wired that way.
It goes the way which is the most comfortable for you and which offers you the least resistance). But oftentimes we have to break out of this comfort zone, listen to our body and refill our cups in order to provide value to our job, our business, ourselves and to others again.
2. You think that you have to work hard now so that you can relax later.
Wrong again. A lot of people believe that they can just work hard now and then relax later. But soon you will realise that later can also be postponed too.
There is never the right time to take time off, or just simply “relax”. There is always something more important that needs to get handled.
You have to learn to let go of the idea of just having to work once. Get everything done now. And rest later. It never works that way.
The sooner you learn to balance your work with your private life and take little mini-adventures along the way, the sooner you will understand that life is actually quite fun!
3. You realise that you are overwhelmed but you are clueless about how to cut back.
Some people are already one step closer to getting out of a toxic working mode which might cause them to break down sooner or later.
They already know that they are overwhelmed, yet they don’t see any solutions on how to break out of this routines. They believe they HAVE to work that much, there is just too much external (and oftentimes also internal) pressure applied to them.
You have to shift your focus: What if somebody puts a gun to your head and demands from you to stop that unhealthy work-mode and cut down your working times by 50% or he will kill you?
4. Nothing is working right now.
Sometimes when nothing is working you are just one millimetre off the right course.
With experience in taking risks and going for what you want, you learn that oftentimes just little things can make huge impacts on how things will unfold.
You learn that when you just keep pushing you will eventually get it right and everything falls into place. Your past experiences reinforce this idea in your mind and you just keep going.
What I found though is, that when you experience difficulties and struggles that never seem to end, it is always great to take a step back or two.
Stop what you are doing, don’t touch it for a week or even a month. Do something entirely different and then go back and re-approach this very project.
You will be surprised on what will happen next.
5. You postpone your planned holiday yet again.
Holidays are so important. You need it to recharge and align yourself with your inner purpose again. Invest into yourself. Even only a short trip can have an invaluable impact on your life!
When you are working your butt off to get ahead in life and you are trying to “succeed” by making the money for you to support the lifestyle you want, oftentimes you forget that you can have the lifestyle RIGHT now.
You can go for exotic places some times in between. You can travel new places and meet interesting people all the time.
Heck, you don’t even have to travel to do a lot of the stuff you tell yourself you want to do.
Take a look around and imagine being a tourist in the city you are currently living. What would you find super interesting if you would not be already so “used” to it?
6. You are unable to separate your work and private life.
When everything starts to bleed into each other and you no longer can separate your private leisure time with the focus time where you try to get ahead of things you might consider escaping work for a bit and take a time off.
Whenever you are doing something you should do it fully.
But if you begin to catch yourself thinking about work when you are actually in this very moment spending some quality time with your spouse you might have some problems already.
Never mix work with private life. Keep it professional. Keep it separated. Stay focused.
If you no longer feel yourself being able to focus, maybe it’s time to take a break!
7. You think that time spent socializing is wasted time.
I usually go out and meet new people when I find myself having the need to break out of my working routines.
I found that going out to some social venue and talk and share your thoughts with other people is super effective when trying to get out of an unhealthy work-mode.
It’s so helpful, because it is the last thing you want to do when you have been working 80 hour weeks or more. Your brain cannot handle social stuff anymore because you literally re-wired it to only focus on working!
Once you are in such a flowing work-mode it can easily turn out to be very one-sided and get unhealthy. Whenever that happens I have a very hard time talking to people and just being social.
And then this is the very thing I force myself to do. Because I learned that doing the stuff that happens to trigger the most “fear” and resistance in my body, is very most likely the thing which I profit the most of in the long run!
