MY MINIMAL MAY: THE JOY OF TAKING BREAKS

This week, I’m talking about taking breaks - taking breaks when you don’t actually NEED to take breaks.

This is a novel concept, I know.

This topic is really relevant to me right now, because I have declared this month to be ‘Minimal May’ in my world. This is a satisfying, alliterated way of saying I’m cutting back on social media, and a few other things, this month.

This post is also a podcast! Listen via the Player or search for Your Supernova Moment wherever you get your podcasts.

I LOVE creating content, making videos, writing podcast episodes and blog posts, but over the last few weeks it’s all felt a bit overwhelming.

I think what happened, to be totally honest, is that I started this year REALLY focussed - a lot of that focus was on my business. This year was going to be all about energy, and dialling up the Yang after so much time spent being all about the Yin, which I did, but I also dialled up the work energy and so the first quarter of my year was BUSY.

Let’s be clear - it wasn’t busy in the same way my life used to be before I Burned Out. It wasn’t struggling through each day, downing coffee and swilling wine and passing out after midnight ready to do it all over again the next day. It’s been busy in a really exciting, engaging, rewarding way - while still being pretty well balanced. January to March I was fully booked with 1:1 clients, I was doing group sessions, I ran my challenge, I’ve been teaching, and alongside all that I’ve also been working in my parent’s B&B pretty regularly as well to help them out. I’ve been working with business coaches, and marketing coaches, churning out content and getting really awesome feedback.

By the time I got to the end of April, i found myself checking in with myself like: ‘How are you doing? You’re really busy, is this okay? Can we handle more 1:1 clients right now or do we need a break? Why are we getting so stressed about making Instagram reels - the world is not going to end if we don’t make one.’

In my last post, I talked about this whole thing of ‘expectations’. Doing what we think we SHOULD be doing, what we think we NEED to be doing. I feel like we need to sort of take 5 minutes every day to just go and sit somewhere quiet and check in with ourselves. And when I’m talking about ourselves, I’m talking about that sort of Inner You, that thing that is YOU, the essence of you, that’s here on the inside, that we frequently ignore in favour of listening to the chatter in our heads which is NOT you. You are not your thoughts, You’re the one listening. That’s something I really subscribe to and it’s explored in the book The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. If you haven’t read it, I recommend! I’m re-reading it this month with all this extra time I now have. This is a concept that has really changed the way I live my life after Burnout. My thoughts can be influenced so easily, they can lead me astray, they can make me doubt myself and hate myself. The me on the inside isn’t much of an intellectual, she doesn’t think very much, but she FEELS. And ignoring and avoiding feeling is often one of those behaviours that gets us to the point of Burnout in the first place.

All this to say, I’m having a social media break for May. I’m still answering DMs, I might even post the occasional story, heck I might even make the occasional reel. I PROBABLY won’t, but I might!

Instead what I’m doing is stepping back a bit. I was super booked up with 1:1 clients January to March and while I’m a little less busy for the next couple of months, I am still busy, but it’s manageable. I can probably handle like one more, so get in there if you want it to be you.

I’m looking ahead to courses and classes I’m going to run later in the year. I’m working on an awesome course of guided journaling sessions that lots of people have been asking me for, which I’ll be launching in the summer, I’m creating content for my podcast, for my mailing list, and for my Facebook group.

I’ve also got some family stuff going on this month that I want to be fully present for. I don’t want to be spending my time panicking that I haven’t made a reel or posted a picture of Didy to my stories.

So this month, I’m keeping things Minimal. It’s Minimal May. And it’s not because I need to, it’s because I want to. This is what I want to encourage you to think about today.

When you take breaks, do you take them for the sake of taking them, or do you take them because you have to?

A lot of the time, when we hit Burnout, it’s a blessing because it makes us FINALLY stop. We have to. I had to. It kind of takes the will power out of the thing, doesn’t it? People say to me; ‘Oh, you are so brave for doing what you did and stepping away from it’ and I’m always like; ‘What, for ignoring every single warning sign and pushing myself to the point of actual collapse until I couldn’t push any more?’ I didn’t decide to stop, that decision was made for me by Burnout.

The decision that I celebrate myself for, is deciding not to get back on that road altogether.

And now, it’s for paying attention to the warning signs, and even getting ahead of them before they appear. It’s taking Fridays off as often as I can manage, not because I need to but because I like to. It’s looking at the amount of clients that I physically have the space to take on and then also looking at how much space I have mentally and emotionally as well. And it’s taking breaks when I don’t absolutely need to, simply for the sake of taking them, and because I know good things will come from them.

So this week, I’m encouraging you to take a step back from everything and look at your now. Check in with yourself on that deeper level, beneath the thoughts, to the feeling You on the inside.

How are You doing? How close to the edge are you? If you can’t actually step back and see this big picture stuff, it could be because you’re WAY too close to the edge and all your energy is being used up trying not to topple over the edge. You might even have gone over it already, and you’re just flailing around in free fall. If that’s you, then you want to listen to the Burnout SOS episode of my Podcast. And maybe you want to book in for a free 30 minute chat with me, so we can look at your specific situation and hopefully do something to help.

But if you’re like; ‘I can see the edge. I’m fine at the moment, but if this, this and this happen then actually I’m probably going over it.’ If you’re there, then think about where you can take a break. It might look like my break, it might not! It might look like cutting back a few little things, it might look like a major shift of schedule.

I had a check in session with a 1:1 client last week who I worked with my in my 3 month programme. The transformation she’s done through is amazing, but the changes she’s made  haven’t actually been that many or even that major. More sleep, better delegation, more boundaries, re-organisation of priorities - and now she’s blowing my mind with the decisions she’s making, and the reasons WHY she’s making them. She knows where that edge is, and she’s learning to delight in being MILES away from it, after a lifetime of succumbing to this bizarre human need so many of us seem to have, to live our lives teetering right in it.

And if you struggle to take that step back, if you’ve convinced yourself that taking breaks is a waste of your valuable time, then, well, I’m probably not going to be able to convince you otherwise in a ten minute podcast episode or a blog post. I know that sometimes it takes that moment when life forces you to stop, for you to allow the possibility of that Supernova Moment. The moment you decide that something has to change. When it happens for you, I will be here to guide you through it.

Mx