Pushing is NOT the Same as Progress

But … as I get older, I realise that strength comes with a cost.

The last three months have been a perfect example.

What this looks like for me is exhaustion so deep that even breathing feels like effort. I take a deep breath — sometimes many — and tell myself, “Oh, it’s only three days.  I will rest then.”

Three days later, “Three more weeks. It will go quickly. I’ll be fine.”

Three weeks arrives, and you are still pushing just as hard — sometimes harder — because maintaining everything now requires even more effort.  Work quality?  Forget it … You just get done what you have to.  Everything has to be “Good enough.”

Then the next thought appears: “It’s only six weeks. How hard can that be?”

Eight weeks later, you are still pushing, and the break you promised yourself never came. By that point you are no longer managing life — you are holding it together by stubbornness alone, because your last fingernail just gave out, and it is taking you eight hours to complete one task that, eight weeks ago, it would have taken you 45 minutes.

Take it from someone who has learned this the long way around: by the time you are saying “It’s only six more weeks,” you have probably already pushed beyond the point where rest is optional.  (In my case, three days was probably it …)

You may even be doing real damage to your nervous system — especially if you are neurodivergent or highly sensitive to the energy and demands around you.

So if that quiet voice inside says you need a break?  Learn your “Safe phrase”.  I learned that mine is “it’s only (time frame).  How hard can it be?”

Listen to it.

Take the week.
Take the two weeks.
Rest before your body insists on it.

It is much easier to stop walking for a moment than it is to recover from collapse.