Give Yourself Time to Think
Thanksgiving has come and gone, which means everyone’s schedules are about to get a little more hectic. Finals approaching, holidays coming up, on top of balancing friends and family. It’s safe to say that everyone is a little stressed out. Everyone needs to manage their busy schedules and in all that effort to balance, we forget to carve out time for ourselves.
In the hustle and bustle of the world, it is easy to lose sight of how important it is to have time to ourselves. Having time on your own gives you time to think about your day, do some self-reflection and make an effort to make things better.
“Don’t let the sadness from the past and the fear of the future ruin the happiness of the present.” —Cameron Jibril Thomaz. Photo by DigitalDesigner on Pixabay
I’m sure I’m like most HCC students where I work and go to school full time, have to balance seeing my family, friends, and girlfriend. I’ve fallen under that wave of stress. I was at Eastern Connecticut my freshman year and balancing everything I mentioned was just too much. I became irritable towards friends and family, my school work suffered, and I even failed my first class. I was in a dark place and needed to step-back and look at what was going on and why.
And that time to think and reflect helped me so much. I was able to see my faults that led to the arguments with my family and friends and was able to apologize for my mistakes. I was also able to realize that what felt like a mountain of work really wasn’t that bad when you break it down one by one.
If you never give yourself time to get away from everything, you never have time to relax and think, which can be the difference between feeling crushed under the stress of the day and finding the strength to push on.
You can do this in a variety of different ways, but what I find most helpful is to make time for yourself every day, even if it’s just twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes gives you enough time to sit back, relax and think. For example, you could go over how your day went in your head and what you can do to make the next one better. Maybe you had a disagreement with a co-worker and need to get your thoughts together and think about it calmly.
Perhaps that time is on your drive to work, or in the shower, or just a few minutes at the end of the day, but maximizing that time and relaxing can make your day feel a thousand times easier.
Having that self-reflection time and letting yourself think clearly is so important because if you don’t have that break in your day, it’s like a snowball rolling downhill. The stress will build and build and the only way to combat that is to stop the ball from rolling.
What works for me is I make sure to always have twenty minutes to a half an hour carved out at the end of my day to decompress. I personally like to watch whatever the prime-time game is that night. Whether that means watching the Knicks or Monday Night Football, I just like to watch sports.
But you can use that time for whatever you want. Maybe you need time to catch up on the new season of Stranger Things, or possibly you want to listen to T-Pain’s new album and just haven’t had time to yet. The important thing is, to make sure you have to yourself. Give yourself time to think.
Because going back and thinking lets you relax and grow.
In the words of the great American philosopher Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. says, “You’ve got to always go back in time if you want to move forward.”