Restoring my soul.

Today is my day off – I make sure I take a whole day out of the week for me (today I have a sick child at home though but i will work around that).  I’m not sure about you but I am quite busy, three kids, house, husband, family commitments, work, study, basketball coaching.  Yeah busy.

In general we are working more and more “free” hours at our so called 9-5 jobs, spending less time with family and friends.  Our weekends are either spent sleeping or catching up on household chores.  We are always on the go and always booked with our “must do’s” and our “should” do’s.  Gone are the days of 8hours of work, 8 hours of play and 8 hours of rest and having our weekends to ourselves.  The work cycle is now a 7 day week and quite often 40 hours plus a week.  The World has gone mad and we are going crazy trying to keep up with it.

It is equally important to reload our power packs and take personal time out, forsaking all others and all things.  Rosalle Pulman’s article for Huffpost here explains https://goo.gl/XHYyYU. Whatever your “thing” is, mine is sitting around home in my pj’s and then spending a 2 hour soak in the tub with a movie or Netflix.  Take time to do it, take time for YOU.  Women and mother’s especially are more prone to putting everyone else ahead of themselves to the point of burnout.  The pressure to be “perfect” in our careers, in our families and with our friends is extreme.  Made even higher by the presence of Social Media in our lives. We are always on show to the world.

Mental Health issues are on the increase and Depression and Anxiety disorders top the growing list, when do we say enough is enough?  When will we hold our workplaces accountable for the torturous hours and pressures they put us under?  The never ending pursuit of profit over people has to be examined more closely and strategies put into place to protect our workforce. Union’s are not doing enough to stem the tide of workplace time abuse and business owners and huge corporations just don’t care enough to forgo some profit to allow for the safety of their staff.

So if we take down time, is it a waste of time or a necessity?  I know for me it’s necessary, I get very short and cranky on little sleep and woe betide the person who gets in my way that day.  A whole day to myself may seem selfish and excessive to some, but for me to maintain my limited mental health it is needed.  I am renowned for being a “yes” person, I will help anyone with a sob story, to the point I made myself very ill.  I am learning to say NO, without explanation or excuse.  Just a plain and simple NO should suffice, we do not owe anyone an explanation for why we cannot or don’t want to do what they want us to do.  Guilt is a powerful persuader though and if a family member is twisting an arm it can be difficult to say NO.  The trick is to say it often and it gets easier.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R5P69nRsic Watch Gabrielle Bernstein author of Miracles Now on Oprah talking about how to say NO and mean it.

Just in case you needed more convincing about the importance of downtime read this Scientific America Journal piece on the benefits of downtime.  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mental-downtime/

You don’t need to take a whole day, take an hour everyday to heal yourself, breathe more deeply, be with yourself, switch off to the world.  Trust me the healing is major.