The Garden: Take Five

Whenever you feel tired rather take a break, don’t give up. Giving up should never be an option unless of course if it means concluding or closing on a chapter. Which in this case would be moving in to other things and not necessarily quitting.

It is so easy for us to be tempted to cheat or quit the race before we reach the finish line simply because anything worth having requires effort and effort is the hard part. It can be very discouraging to put in maximum efforts with minimum results and if you’re not careful you could be discouraged to a point of giving up.

During a race your body will get tired sometimes even your mental state will feel the exhaustion which inevitably will affect your emotions. To start can be easy until you encounter hurdles on the tracks and you’re required to put in even more effort. On your race you could run out of breath, you even get thirsty. Need a refresher stop? That’s okay grab some water and hydrate. Take a walk and feel the breeze beating your face; go on that weekend break away. Sometimes all you need is to refuel yourself for the second lap or the third; fourth or possibly your last lap.

It is not cowardly to be tired, neither is it a sign of weakness to take a break. In fact acknowledging that you need a break is a very responsible thing for your health and secondly a very productive decision. You will agree with me that when fatigued or demotivated, you execute very little productivity if any. What ideally should take you an hour to do will probably take you four hours. Therefore take heed of the signs, your body knows how to tell you when it’s time you do not need to crush before you heed the call. Listen to your body, service its interests and then jump back on the wagon refreshed and revitalized.

The key thing here is to keep moving and focus on the prize, do not stop for too long hence you lose your drive. Take a power nap; a gap year make sure you have a comeback action plan.

Taking a break means different things to us because each of us have different things that help us relax. It will also depend on the amount of stress and the state of your mental and physical health during this time. All of these will determine the duration of the break and the required activity. These could vary from anything ranging from a cup of tea right through to going on vacation. I know retail therapy always does it for me and some power naps of course.

There’s a popular culture we have in Africa that taking a break is laziness and so a lot of people are afraid to go on a break because they do not want to be associated with laziness. It gets severe when we don’t even make use of our annual leave that we are entitled to.

Let me affirm to you once again, it is totally okay to feel tired. Exhaustion is real and so is fatigue and both can be very detrimental to our health if not dealt with. And so please, when you feel tired, whichever type of tired, don’t give up just take five.