In our last article we wrote about challenging your mind, to stay healthy it’s important to stimulate your mind from time to time. This will help you to become healthy and to maintain it. However our mind and body aren’t made to continue going full out all the time. If you keep going despite your body giving signs that you shouldn’t you will burn out.
To get the advantages but not the disadvantages of constant pushing you have to give your mind and body time to recover. Find your method of relaxation and make sure to spend some time on it. It’s a plus if the relaxtion also had additional benefits to your body and mind. For example going for a walk or a bike ride with your friends give you plenty of relaxtion and it adds some extra movement in your life. Your mind will become stronger and both your mind and body will become healthier from it.
Suffering isn’t ennobling, recovery is. – Christiaan Barnard
Hard work improves anything we are working for. However without taking a break it’s impossible to continue to move forward. You would either give up at some point or lack the energy to continue pushing as hard as you used to. It’s amazing if you manage to challenge your mind but the greatest improvement is possible if you implement breaks. Taking a break reduces your stress levels and helps you to get the advantages of pushing and avoid the disadvantages of constant pressure.
The days of practise and improvement aren’t a straight line. Some days it goes fast, other days you need to take it easy and recover. There is no shame in taking your time for recovery. For example when you injured yourself working out it’s easy to blame yourself and to be totally demotivated to ever get back into working out. But why shouldn’t you? Having a minor or larger injury doesn’t mean you done something completely wrong. You may not have listened to your body or didn’t understand it well enough. But injuries happen to the best of us. Rest and make sure you recover not only physically but also mentally.