Pause: Harnessing the Life Changing Habit of Giving Yourself a Break

I really should not read about different diseases and ailments after 8 pm. While I am good at making sure I get my information from Mayo Clinic, a scientifically backed website, always start wondering if I have diseases that I don't really have. Then I will get anxieties about depleting my bank account for an urgent doctors visit since I have a high deductible and getting written up at work for using up my sick time since that is company procedure when all of your sick time for the year is used up. Or I will get worried that what I may have is a fatal condition or a condition that will prevent me from being a functioning adult.

But once I get a good nights sleep and have a cup of tea I feel fine in the morning and I get on the train to go to work. Sometimes I may need to take ibuprofen or/and a cat nap on the train. But the majority of the time I am perfectly fine.

While I picked up Pause: The Life Changing Habit of Giving Yourself a Break with the intent of finding some ideas on how to give myself more of a break some of the things discussed made me go through a similar process as reading medical information. I wondered if I am too digitally dependent despite the fact that I make myself take at least one break a day where I am not on an electronic device. I wondered if I have a soft addiction to books even though I am strict with myself about my budget. I worried that I do not have enough money in savings to simply walk away from my job even though I have been gradually eliminating my debt load.

Yet I have already instinctively implemented many of the things she discusses as smaller pauses. I journal, meditate, take walks and try to have some technology free time in the course of my work days.

I question why I picked up this book. While full of good advice some of the things that it suggests evaluating produced more anxiety for me. I could have gone in the other direction and give myself a pat on the back for the things that I am already implementing but that would not be helpful either.

I often don't like self help books but I do find myself purchasing and reading them when there is a topic that I am trying to deliberate in my life. Having spent my twenties feeling lonely and being in underpaying jobs my thirties are a relief. Being in a loving marriage and a stable job makes me feel more at ease with life than I ever felt before.

However as life takes on a  fast pace with joyous things there are times where I find myself feeling hungry to find a few more pauses in my life. I hoped that this book would have some suggestions for me which is why I picked it up. But there are points in which I keep finding myself saying that I am trying the best I can with what the world has given me.