Replenish Yourself Regularly

Taking regular breaks to replenish ourselves helps us achieve our dreams quicker than working non-stop. 

This sounds counterintuitive, doesn't it? How can we make progress if we pause?

As backwards as it seems, it's true, and I can confirm it with my own personal experience. 

I am very hardworking. It is one of my strongest qualities and also the literal definition of my name. "Amalia" means industrious, and I very much live up to this. 

For this same reason though, I have always struggled with taking time off from working toward my goals. I am so hungry for success that taking breaks always felt like a waste of time. I thought I could get results faster if I just worked longer and harder. 

In theory, this is logical, and even the laws of physics seem to support this thought process: an object in motion stays in motion, an object at rest stays at rest. But when we take breaks from working on our goals, we're not truly "at rest". We're still in motion, even when we can't see it. 

How is this possible? It's because our bodies are made of living matter. Unlike a rock that will eventually come to rest after rolling down a hill, even when we sleep, the ultimate form of rest, our cells are continually in motion. Therefore, the physics of "rest" as we interpret it doesn't exist for us. 

I used to avoid rest as much as possible. I truly saw it as unnecessary. I was wrong, and there's another principle of physics that helped me understand the importance of taking regular breaks while chasing my dream: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This principle means that the more energy we exert toward a goal, the more intentional rest we eventually need in return.

As I pointed out earlier, we can never truly be "at rest", not by the laws of physics anyway. Our default is being in motion, but a passive motion. Effort we put into chasing our dreams is deliberate, or active, therefore the rest we take must also be deliberate. Just like we choose to work toward our dreams, we must consciously choose to recharge from the effort we expend. 

If you exercised for 365 days straight, your body would grow weary and your workouts would suffer. The best way to support fitness progress is by taking time to rest. The same applies to working on your dreams. If you work for 365 days straight, you'll get tired, the quality of your effort drops, your creativity dulls, and you take on an energy level that doesn't say "I am successful". Rather it says, "I'm not ready to handle more."

I don't know about you, but being able to handle more is an essential part of leveling up in my goals. I want to be able to handle more opportunities, more followers, more bookings. More is the desired outcome, but when I didn't think rest was worth my time, attaining "more" became frustratingly elusive. 

After building up months of fatigue from overworking myself, the first few breaks I took from chasing my dreams were involuntary--I experienced a mental shutdown that caused me to temporarily lose the desire to accomplish anything. This is exactly what happens when you avoid resting. You get to a point where your mind and body just turn off so they can get the rest they need. 

One of my first involuntary breaks unexpectedly turned into a two-month hiatus off of posting on social media or doing anything else I normally did for my goals. This functional freeze made me really anxious at first; I thought I wasn't being disciplined and was going to lose all my momentum.

Truth is, if you're building something real, something that's meant for you, it will never disappear from your horizon. It will be a constant in your life regardless of taking a break from it. Momentum built on alignment doesn't disappear. As I continued my forced rest, I noticed something: my 30-day view count hadn't dropped on any of my platforms. My content was self-sustaining; my past efforts had taken deep root. This allowed me to finally relax into the break I was taking. I started to trust that giving myself short-term space and time to feel replenished was non-threatening to my long-term success. 

What further positively reinforced the value rest for me was that when I finally came back to posting, I felt refreshed, I felt more inspired, and my new content started performing better. 

Since then, I feel at ease with taking breaks and make rest a regular part of my routine while chasing my dreams. I've learned that it's not scary to take time off. I take all the time I need these days, and it always ends up benefiting me in the long run. 

Taking regular breaks to physically and mentally replenish myself is key to making sure I'm not forced into taking a much longer break when I'm on the verge of exhaustion ever again. Taking the time to rest regularly has improved my ability to be consistent and has allowed me to sustainably chase my dreams with fewer moments of overwhelm and fatigue.

I encourage you to incorporate breaks into your plan for chasing your dreams if you haven't already. Maybe you need a break daily, maybe weekly, maybe monthly. It's been a massive tool in my own life, and I believe it can be for you as well.