Hi! It’s been a long time! If you didn’t notice, I took a break for a while.
“But,” one might say, “you just started! You can’t take a break immediately after starting something! What’s the point? You need to push and hustle and really build something before you can do that!”
And I laugh.
In fact, once I realized that a break had happened organically, I decided to embrace it and extend it for a while longer, partially to prove to myself that I could indeed do so. That’s harder than it sounds for many of us. But as one who is spending significant effort trying to help others be their best selves, I knew that I had to walk the walk before I could turn around and make something of this suspiciously silent blog.
Breaks are good.
There, I said it. And I backed it up by taking my own before writing any of this.
BREAKS ARE GOOD!
They remind us that we aren’t what we do. Every single day that the future of my little writing endeavor was hanging in the balance, I was still 100% Mark, through and through. I was not any bit less myself simply because my attention was directed somewhere else… or nowhere at all.
Breaks… are… good…
They separate us from what we’ve been immersed in and allow our perspective to widen - the antidote to doubling down and hyper-focusing. Despite what all those productivity gurus tell us, these are not the keys to the kingdom of success. We can step back and adopt a lighter touch, for both the task at hand and ourselves.
Breaks
Are
Good.
Pressure may form diamonds, but humans are not rocks. We were not designed to be the same for millions of years like a stone; instead it’s vital that we grow and change in a constant flow of being-ness during our relatively short time on Earth. A “breaks are bad” philosophy brings with it the diamond-forming pressure which can certainly break an effort entirely - or even a person.
Here it is one more time - breaks are good.
Have the courage to take a lighter touch, to go with the flow, and to allow a break when the time is right. The important work you paused will be right there for you when you resume; the not so important work has the tendency to vanish… if not from existence, at least from your mental priority list. That’s a trick I’ve learned in my own meditation practice. Let’s welcome the filtering process that only a break can provide.
So I dare you - take just a one minute break from everything, right now.