“Never feel guilty for taking your full lunch break, needing a mental health day, or using your vacation time. Make time for yourself now because you won’t get that time back.”
For many of us this can be just as relevant now, in the middle of a pandemic, as it is when things are "normal." If you are working from home or trying to fill your time at home, are you allowing yourself to take real breaks? Or have you let work bleed earlier and later into your mornings and evenings because you no longer have the boundaries set by your normal routine?
Work and productivity can actually be a major defense and coping mechanism, and often our same patterns and mindsets carry over, even when our circumstances change. Stepping away for ourselves can often make us feel guilty or anxious, especially when we're surrounded by a societal or company culture doing the same. And deep down we can feel like if we're not doing "enough," we're not "enough," or that we'll somehow be punished for it.
We have to be the ones to claim our boundaries. We have to be the ones to decide when time is ours and not someone else's. How can you practice re-claiming your own time today?
