When life gets extremely hectic finding time to relax is generally the last thing on our mind. However, carving out some time for yourself is good for your sanity.
Trying to push through the fog of a tired, overworked mind and body will leave your run down and unhappy. Don't let yourself get to that point by finding time to relax and unwind every day.
After finding myself absolutely exhausted, running on five hours of sleep a night for weeks at a time and consuming three times as much caffeine in a day than recommended, I knew I needed to find balance.
There's no point in doing so many things you love if you can barely keep your eyes open while you're doing them.
There are times in life where we have to work, but our whole life shouldn't feel like work and at the peak of my sleep deprivation, that's what my life was feeling like.
I knew I genuinely loved all of the things that keep my days so jam-packed, but I didn't love how every single one of them had turned into work. I missed the days where I was excited to do these things and didn't constantly find myself saying "I have to go do this".
I didn't want my fun extracurriculars to turn solely into resume builders, and that is when I looked at my life and realized that I still have a passion for everything I'm doing, I'm just too exhausted to enjoy them.
I needed to make time for myself a priority.
I started saying "no" when I knew I couldn't take on one more thing and I stopped feeling bad about it because I knew that saying "yes," wouldn't be good for me.
I set my phone to automatically turn on "do not disturb" every day from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. so even if I was awake and I didn't feel like I had to stay up all night fixing the problem that someone texted me about if it was after 10 p.m.
I started telling people about the things that were on my mind because even though it's hard I feel better after I stop pretending life I've got everything under control.
I took breaks during the day and reflecting on how I was feeling and just doing that made me feel better.
I'm a workaholic without a 9-5 day job, but I'm learning to make time for me and I hope you start doing that too.