YOU MIGHT NEED A BREAK TOO.

For a couple of weeks, I deliberately stayed away from certain routines, especially the ones that I have committed almost all my life to. I’m talking about a couple of activities related to my career, passion and enterprise.

A curious friend sent a funny text amidst my ‘silence’. She asked verbatim, ‘Bosun, it’s been a while you posted write-ups or held any program. Abi o ti n lose focus ni? (or are you losing focus?). I smiled and simply responded, ‘No, I am adjusting my focus’.

This post is quite a sensitive one. I have decided to be blunt, confronting certain issues we all may face at any point in our life. The summary is, you may need a break at any point. Just know when to take it!

I have read a motivational quote that states, ‘build a life that you won’t need a break from’. That sounds sweet right? I’m sure you will have a second thought after reading this piece.

When I say a break, some of you need to hold on and catch your breath and move at a reasonable pace. By taking a break, I am not saying you should give up. Below, I will highlight few instances that call for break. Take a break when you find yourself in any of these situations;

In my book, ‘Your Place: Understanding Your Place in Life and Connecting Yourself to Destiny’, I emphasised that one of the stages of maturity you can attain is getting to a point where you can say no to many ideas,  even if they are good.

I was a victim of this circumstance at one point. For some of us, we have series of ideas flowing. We have too many things we want to do at a time. They are all good. In fact, one idea breeds another and we kept diving in between them to try to make them all come true. Calm down, you will kill yourself.

Learn to take a break when you are overwhelmed with relative or contrasting ideas. Pick one and build it. The frustration from trying to make all ideas look good ‘on you’ is suicidal. You will die before your manifestation.

Take a sit. Look at the feasibility and potency of these ideas. Streamline them. Choose what is best for you. You can choose two or more. But be sure they are interwoven, and you can carry them on the same path.

Don’t chase fashion combined with mental health services; you will definitely ruin it all. Take a break to break down your ideas into small units, set a plan, and test their validity and reliability. Pick and build the ones that best suit your strength. Do not overstress your prowess, you will weaken it!

I am sad that many young people today are concerned more about the speed at which they are going rather than the direction. When you realise the speed you are going is not proportional to the right direction, don’t be fooled into believing you can improvise. Turn back and take the right direction.

When your speed is going in a direction that would not yield an effective result, take a break. Re-strategize!

The speed is not as as important as the direction. You can go on a minimal speed at the right direction. That’s what matters. Don’t ever choose speed over direction.

I know some of you can’t admit this. Yes, it is difficult. Some of you don’t have the natural tendency to control applause and praise. Rather, you let them get to your head such that your head swells till your crown falls off.

Over the years, I have mastered ‘leaving the podium’ the moment I feel the ovation is becoming distracting or raising some unnecessary feelings of ‘arrival’ that can quickly truncate my reign.

Today, many wonderful ideas have gone into extinction because their innovators got carried away by praise. Many men might still be relevant today if only they took a quick break from the’scene’ of applause. They stayed back, let it get into their heads, and lost their focus to it.

Learn to leave the stage at the highest tempo of applause. Take a bow. Humbly acknowledge the good comments. Breath. And save yourself from letting it break your focus. This is if you don’t have the strength to keep your work up praises!

Be wise handling applause. They can kill you from your subconscious.

Don’t forget, the people praising you are genuinely doing it. They don’t mean to kill your dream. You decide if that stirs pride that can lead to your fall.

Don’t be fooled into making hasty decisions because you want to keep a pace. Take a break to figure out the next step. You don’t have to do the ‘trial and error’ thing. It might be an error you can’t recover from.

It’s fine to be confused. It is not to stay confused and that’s why you need to take solitude in a break to figure out what you should do next.

No circumstance or person should decide the pace at which you should go. If you are not confident in the next thing you want to do, take a break, catch your breath and draw the plan again!

I would rather pause running when I am distracted than to keep running with half concentration. I might get into a pit I won’t come out from.

When you feel you can’t handle distractions while striving, please, pause and deal with your distractions. Not all of us have the strength to deal with distractions while working. You might need a quick break to completely eradicate that distraction and get back to work If you feel it is becoming overwhelming.

Conclusively, taking a break is neither cowardice nor being clueless. Make it a necessity when the need arises.

Peace.