On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Why You Need to Take a Break and 6 Ways to Make More Time For Rest Every Day, Week, Month and Year

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

Burnout. When you reach the point where you’re physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted due to prolonged and excessive stress at work, you get burned out. You start to malfunction in your daily life, work less and become unproductive. No one wants to go through such lengths of exhaustion. No one wants to drain themselves. Nobody would willingly burn themselves out. We all want a productive and stress-free work life so we remain our best selves when we are finally out from work. In this episode of On Purpose, Jay Shetty discusses why taking breaks daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly is crucial to rejuvenating our body and rewiring our minds. Key Takeaways: 01:04 Are you feeling tired but you don’t even know why? 02:45 That feeling of guilt when you take a break 05:29 The habits that strengthen or weaken you 08:06 Take a break, take a breath: take a 5-min break every hour 10:09 Step #1: Hydrate 10:29 Step #2: Walk to get water 10:59 Step #3: Watch something in the distance 13:38 Every four hours, take a 15-minute break 16:20 Middle of the day, take a 30-minute lunch 19:03 Take a full rest weekend every 30 days 22:00 Take a 3-day break every quarter 23:13 Once a year, take a week off Like this show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps! Post a screenshot of you listening on Instagram & tag us so we can thank you personally! Achieve success in every area of your life with Jay Shetty’s Genius Community. Join over 10,000 members taking their holistic well-being to the next level today, at https://shetty.cc/OnPurposeGeniusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Neum, I'm a journalist, a wanderer, and a bit of a bond-vivant, but mostly a human just trying to figure out what it's all about. And not lost is my new podcast about all those things. It's a travel show where each week I go with a friend to a new place and to really understand it, I try to get invited to a local's house for dinner. Where kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party, it doesn't always work out. Ooh, I have to get back to you. Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. When my daughter ran off to hop trains, I was terrified I'd never see her again,

so I followed her into the train yard. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. into the train yard. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. And into the city of the rails. There I found a surprising world, so brutal and beautiful, that it changed me. But the rails do that to everyone. There is another world out there. And if you want to play with the devil,

you're going to find them down the rail yard. I'm Denon Morton. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to city of the Rails and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Or, cityoftherails.com. Hey, it's Debbie Brown, host of the Deeply Well Podcast, where we hold conscious conversations with leaders and radical healers and wellness around topics that are meant to expand and support you on your well-being journey.

Deeply well is your soft place to land, to work on yourself without judgment, to heal, to learn, to grow, to become who you deserve to be. Deeply well with Debbie Brown is available now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Namaste. Most of us are carrying the baggage, the stress,

and pressure of the last meeting into our new meeting. And then we're carrying the confusion and ziyity and lack of preparation of that meeting into the next meeting. And then we're confusing and deluding ourselves into the next meeting and the next and the next. By the end of the day, you don't even know which meeting you got right. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to on purpose, the number one health podcast in the world.

Thanks to each and every one of you that are listening while you walk your dog while you're at the gym while you're cooking, wherever you are. I'm so happy to be with you. As always, I appreciate you. I'm grateful to you. I am so happy that you tune in every week. Now, today's topic is really, really interesting to me because I think I've been going through it myself. And so when I'm struggling with something or when I'm finding something difficult, I naturally want to figure out how to help you all through it as well. And be honest with me, how many of you have been dealing

with fatigue or tiredness, and you don't even know why? Right? If any of you've been feeling a bit tired during the week, maybe a bit fatigued, now I was looking at some studies as always, and I found a research study that says 60% of adults say they are more tired than ever before, right? And these are research being done during the pandemic. And this one really hit me about half of participants

of the study get out of bed 10 minutes before the remote work day starts. Right? So if you're starting at nine, people are getting out of bed at a 50. Now, if that's you, I'm not judging you. I'm just checking in to let you know that there's around 50% of people that are doing that as well. How many of you have felt like your sleep's been disrupted, your space has been disrupted,

how many of you are feeling more fatigue than ever. I think it's pretty, pretty common right now. And I wanted to address it because I just really feel like sleep and rest and rejuvenation are just such important things, no matter what you want to achieve in life, whether your goal in life is ultimate material success. Right? If you want to be number one, you have to know how to rest, how to recoup. Now, if your ideal form of happiness is joy, connection, bonding, you need energy for that, you need presence for that. And if you're someone

who just says, yeah, I just want to live an easy life. Well, even for that, we need to be healthy and well. So the idea of good rest and good sleep and good breaks is such an important thing to consider. And I think a lot of us look at players play and work his work. When we're at work, we're at work, and when we're playing, we're out playing, we're sleeping, we're sleeping. But based on the changes in our routine and the changes in what we've been experiencing over the last year, we need to change the way we work.

And that's why I think that there is more need for regular breaks throughout the day. Right? If you look at a, let's take a soccer game, obviously, I call it football. There's a break at half time, but there's also many breaks that players are taking throughout the game. It may be when the ball goes out, out of play, maybe when it's not on your side of the field, like there are many breaks, even in the biggest athletic sports, maybe not basketball as much. They seem to do a lot of running. But most sports have a lot of breaks in throughout. And we have to start thinking about our days and our life in that way as

well. Now, I used to be someone who didn't believe in breaks. I used to be someone who used to frown on people who took breaks. I used to be someone who saw someone taking a break and thought, yeah, that's why you're not successful, right? I used to be highly judgmental in that way because so much of my life was spent trying to be successful. I really wanted to be successful. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I'm not saying that I made a mistake. I'm not saying that you're making a mistake

if you're doing that. I'm just saying that the value of a break counts even when you want to be successful. And whether that's a short break per day or whether that's a vacation, whatever it may be, it's so, so important. So I want to talk about lots of different types of breaks that you can take today to rewire your mind around breaks because a lot of it just have this guilt around breaks, right? How many of you feel guilty when you take a break? How many of you feel like, you know, you're letting someone down?

And I want to ask you, where do you think that's coming from? Where is that challenge that you have, that guilt that you feel around a break coming from? Is it that you had a parent that told you you could never stop? Did you have a parent that forced you back out when you said, I need to take a day off today? Did you have a boss that told you there were no days off? Where was that mentality created?

Was it a hashtag no days off that you started following? Where did that mentality come from? Now, I had that mentality too, and I still have it to a great degree and I think that it's brought me a lot of joy, success, achievements over the years, but I've also seen where it's weakened me. And this is what I love doing with habits is I want to look at a habit and I want to think about how does that strengthen me and how does that weaken me.

For example, let's take the habit of healthy eating. It's obvious where it strengthens you, right? It nourishes your body, it makes you fitter, it makes you healthier, hopefully you'll live longer, but where does it weaken you? It can weaken you if it makes you judgmental. You may judge other people who eat unhealthy. You may think negatively of them.

So now you have a healthy body but an unhealthy mind. No one wants that, right? So many of us can have healthy bodies, but we have unhealthy minds because we have toxic thoughts about other people who don't work out. We have negative thoughts about other people who eat unhealthy. That doesn't lead to a healthy place for ourselves. So let me take another habit, for example, let's take the practice of meditation. When you're practicing meditation, what are the healthy benefits? Of course, focus, determination,

boosting your immune system. What are the negative habits of meditation? Well, there aren't many weaknesses, but one of the weaknesses would be when you're late or you miss a day, you then fall into that trap of perfectionism. Maybe perfectionism, the habit I'm talking about. How many of you know you struggle with being a perfectionist?

And that when it's not perfect, you stop doing it. You quit. You let go and you just let it be. So many of us experience all of these challenges. Right? So many of us experience all of these challenges. So many of us experience all of these things. So taking breaks is something that's undervalued, massively undervalued. I think a lot of people think breaks are something you should go guilty for. A lot of people think breaks means you can't focus. A lot of people feel breaks throughout the day means you're unproductive or ineffective. And I found now that the rate of which I'm performing at,

if I don't take breaks, actually that's the biggest weakness. Right? In the beginning, I do believe that taking regular breaks may actually slow you down, but as you grow and as you develop, taking more breaks is actually the most effective productive thing you can do. So I want to share with you how I think about breaks at multiple levels in different stages in my day, in my weeks, in my months, and even in my year, because that way you can start building up a schedule that really builds you up for success and happiness in the year.

Now, the reason I like breaks is breaks of the first time we let ourselves take a breath. Take a break, take a breath. Right? If you notice that when you're just pushing, you're just holding your breath, you're grinding through, you've got that grit, you're forcing through. When you take a break, you've got that grit, you're forcing through. When you take a break, you allow yourself to take a breath. And when you get to hold your breath in that way, in that natural, effortless way, that's when you're truly aligned and truly in sync. So, I want you you to every hour take a break for five minutes, just five minutes, every hour. And I want you to have this in your schedule.

So, if a meeting finishes at 10.30, the next one starts at 10.35. If a meeting finishes at 12.30, the next one starts at 12.35, or even better, make your meetings 55 minutes long. And start five minutes later, if you wanna get 10 minutes in to make sure you get five, but make your meetings or 55 minutes long. Meeting starts at one, it ends at one, 55. You get that five minute gap in.

Is it gonna make any difference? And he is the key thing. Is five minutes every hour going to make a difference in the meeting you're in, versus taking that five minutes, going to make a difference in the meeting you're in, versus taking that five minutes, going to make a huge difference to the next meeting and how you enter it. Most of us are carrying the baggage,

the stress and pressure of the last meeting into our new meeting. And then we're carrying the confusion and ziyity and lack of preparation of that meeting into the next meeting. And then we're carrying the confusion and ziyity and lack of preparation of that meeting into the next meeting. And then we're confusing and deluding ourselves into the next meeting and the next and the next and the next. By the end of the day, you don't even know which meeting you got right. I know you can relate to that.

I know I can relate to that. I know that this is a genuine experience that many of us have. And I want you for a moment to just recognize that what difference will it make if you just take five minutes out every hour. So taking five minutes out every hour, but here's what you do in those five minutes. Here's what you do. The first thing you do is you hydrate, right? You have to go and drink some water. You have to hydrate every hour. You have to remind yourself to do this. We all should be drinking two to three liters a day.

We're barely drinking one liter. The best way to do this is get up and do the second thing. Walk. So walk to get water, right? Walk to get water. It's so important to stay hydrated. It sounds so basic. It sounds so simple, but I promise you,

you'll be so much happier if you're drinking water regularly. And every hour, just like you'd go in your office, see we're working at home now, it's become harder, but just like you would in your office, go to the canteen or go to the coffee machine or the water area, go and drink some water. The third thing I want you to do is I want you to watch. When I say watch, I mean, don't watch a movie or watch a show on your phone. I mean, watch outside of a window, watch

something in the distance. It could be a bird. It could be their leaves on a tree. It could be a cloud. Watch something in the distance. Right? Watch something in the distance and just allow yourself to observe it. Allow that bird to fly. Look at the colors of its wings. Look at the shapes that it makes. Watch how it glides.

Watch how it changes direction. If you're looking at a cloud, like I'm looking at one right now, what kind of shape is it? What does it remind you of? The one I'm looking at right now reminds me of Pac-Man, right? That's the first thing that came to my mind. Another cloud I'm looking at reminds me of Nima, which is look at the cloud, observe it in the distance. Just for a moment, slow down to the pace of that cloud. Slow your mind down to the pace of the bird. This is such an important technique that I absolutely love. When you're watching something change fast, your mind naturally moves faster, right?

Even your breath gets quicker. If you've ever been watching a scary movie and something's moving fast and the person's running through your breath now chains to mimic the breath that you're watching. What do you think happens when you for a moment watch a bird's sore or glide? When you watch a cloud slowly move across the sky. Your breathing slows down. Your mind slows down. Isn't that just a phenomenal feeling? I love this principle of using nature as a way of nurturing myself. So people say, be outside in nature, it's good for you. Yeah, that's true, but how is it good for you when you use the features of nature in your own body and mind. I often breathe

in and out if I'm near an ocean. I breathe in as the waves come in and breathe out as the waves go out. Please take a moment every hour to take five minutes to do this. So we've got water, walking and watching. Notice how I didn't mention anything about looking at your phone or sending an email or doing anything else. I promise you, if you do these three habits every hour, just for five minutes, your mind will fill at ease, your body will feel hydrated and you will feel incredibly better. I am Yannna and on my podcast, The R-Spot, we're having inspirational, educational, and sometimes difficult and challenging conversations about relationships.

They may not have the capacity to give you what you need. And insisting means that you are abusing yourself now. You human. That means that you're craziest. L just like the rest of us. When a relationship breaks down, I take copious notes and I want to share them with you. Anybody with two eyes and a brain knows that too much Alfredo sauce is just no good for you. But if you're going to eat it, they're not going to stop you. Yup. So he's going to continue to give you the Alfredo sauce and put it even on your grits if you don't stop him. Listen to the R-Spot on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The therapy for Black Girls Podcast is the destination for all things mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. Here, we have the conversations that help black women dig a little deeper into the most impactful relationships in our lives, those with our parents, our partners, our children, our friends, and most importantly, ourselves. We chat about things like what to do with a friendship ends, how to know when it's time to break up with your therapist and how to end the cycle of perfectionism. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed

psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the therapy for Black Girls Podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Take good care. This is what it sounds like inside the box pie. I'm journalist and I'm Martin in my podcast City of the Rails. I plunged into the dark world of America's railroads searching for my daughter Ruby who ran off to hop train. I'm just like stuck on this train not not where I'm going to end up. And I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters,

living outside society, off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with a lifestyle and the freedom, this community. No one understands who we truly are. The Rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we call the American Dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die or you can have this incredible rebirth and really understand

who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to city of the rails on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts or cityoftherails.com. Now the second break that you need to take is every four hours, I want you to take a 15 minute break. Right? Every four hours, I want you to take a 15 minute break. Right, every four hours, I want you to take a 15 minute break. So chances are you have a, you know, eight hour, nine hour day, maybe some of you have a 10 hour day.

Every four hours, I want you to take 15 minutes. This is not for lunch. This is not, we're not there yet. This is just as time's going on. Now you may say, Jay, you know, why do I need this 15 minutes break? I want you to give yourself space to wonder, to just allow your mind to wonder.

And you may say, Jay, I don't have time. I've just got so much to do. How can you tell me to wonder? You're telling me to be lazy. My teacher's told me to not let my mind wonder. My teacher's told me to never let that happen ever again. You know, like my teacher's told me, like, you can't let your mind wonder. That's being lazy, but do you know why? That's where your creativity comes out. That's where your ingenuity comes out. That's where your innovation comes from, is being creative, allowing yourself to be free,

allowing yourself to free flow, right? So I want you every four hours to take a 15 minute break where you let your mind wonder. Another thing that's great for these mini breaks is having a healthy snack. For me, it's mainly been nuts. It's mainly been walnuts and Brazil nuts and just getting a bit of energy pumping again. And if you're someone that needs to take regular snacks, I highly recommend anything from nuts to fruits that can be really brilliant for just keeping that energy going. I think a lot of us are missing meals, missing breakfast, missing lunch. And it's so important to make sure that if you're missing energy,

that you do take a moment to re-energize. Now, this may sound unpopular, but I think as we're working from home, we're probably making this mistake even more. How many of you at work used to eat at your desk? Eating at your desk is such a bad idea because you don't do anything. You don't work well or you don't eat well.

Most, or more often than not. You're just rushing your food down your mouth and you're not digesting it properly now. So now you're at your desk, you're feeling bloated, you're feeling some indigestion, maybe you're feeling some acid. And it's because we actually have to learn to chew our food 16 to 32 times. Every bite, which you be biting food 16 to 32 times every bite which we're biting food 16 to 32 times I remember learning this in the monastery and just being like what? I don't think you're even bite four times the next time you're eating I want you to count how many times you think you bite but

middle of the day you need to take at least 30 minutes for lunch you need to take that 30 minute lunch I really want you to take that 30 minute lunch and for lunch. You need to take that 30 minute lunch. I really want you to take that 30 minute lunch. And again, you may be saying, Jay, I don't think that's going to happen. There's no chance I can take a 30 minute lunch. I mean, my, you know, my boss would just kill me and again, I'm not going to get anything done. And you're like, Jay, you're just telling me to take more breaks throughout the day. And the reason I, first of all, I just want to get it really clear. You may be listening to this and going, Jay, this is so unrealistic. The reason I'm telling you to take so many breaks

is because I know you're not gonna take this many. But if I tell you how important breaks are, maybe you'll take at least half of what I'm saying. But taking that 30 minute lunch, and that's for you to do your personal thing. Try and avoid making it about social media or scrolling or sending an email. But that's your lunchtime.

You wanna go and do some online shopping, you wanna call someone in your life. Or you just wanna sit there and eat, eat and be present with your food. Try it, try to do that without getting bored. I promise you'll be weird the first time and even leave your phone at the desk. And it'll be weird. You'll keep reaching

for something and noticing that it's not even on the desk. I've done that a million times. But you'll start seeing how that feeling starts to disappear. You'll start seeing how that, you know, challenge in the first place, that awkwardness actually turns into this beautiful stillness that you experience in your mind. For the past two days, and I'm doing this for the next two weeks, I am working on my book, and I won't be having my phone next to me from 9 a.m. through to 3 to 4 p.m. So 6 to 7 hours of the day,

I'm not using my phone. I cannot tell you, it's only day two. I cannot tell you how fulfilling and freeing it is to not have my phone to scroll on during the hours of nine a.m. to four p.m. You'd think I'd get bored, but actually I'm so in tune with my work. I'm so aligned with what I'm doing.

It's so refreshing and I would I would be thinking, oh, I'm missing so much. I've got so much to do. Sure, I've got emails coming through that I check after 3 or 4pm. But the truth is that I'm getting so much more done of what I want to do. Most of us start our day on the reactive because we are starting our day by responding to everyone else's needs. We start our day because, okay, well, what does everyone else who need from me on the on email? I've rather than saying, well, what do I want to achieve today? What do I want to get done?

Now, the fourth break I'm recommending is I want you to take or and this can be a weekend, but I want you to make sure that you're taking a full rest weekend every 30 days. So every 30 days, I want you to take a full rest weekend. So now that we're getting busier, we are tempted to fill our calendars up with the social life. Every night we're out, every weekend is jam packed. I can see it on social media. People are back out with each other again.

And again, that leads to exhaustion during the week. I want to make sure that every 30 days, there's one weekend that you take that is purely for rejuvenation. It may be one that you go and sit on the beach, sit in a park, it may be one that you just sit in your garden, it may be one that you allow yourself to just really lie in, it may be one where you go on sit on the beach, sit in a park, it may be one that you just sit in your garden, it may be one that you allow yourself to just really lie in,

it may be one where you go on a little hike, whatever it is that you wanna do, I want you to take a break every 30 days. Now me and Rathi, before the pandemic, started taking three days, every 30 days, where we drove three hours away from where we live, and we spent time together. We lock our phones in the safe of the hotel, or the Airbnb that we stay in, and then we go out and just spend time together. We lock our phones in the safe of the hotel or the Airbnb

that we stay in and then we go out and just spend time together and it was amazing for our relationship. It was amazing for our marriage and we're about to start doing it again when it's safe to travel. But those were some of the best memories we made in our relationship as well, being able to spend that quality time together. So I really want you to consider planning some quality time with friends with loved ones with a partner every 30 days that allows you to truly disconnect from everything that's going on and reconnect with the people that mean the most to you. So many of us keep saying, oh my gosh, I don't get enough time in my family. I'm working late every night. I work too hard during the week. This is the best way to not feel that way anymore.

You won't realize how much connecting in a deep way will surpass every other type of connection. Even if you sat down with your family member every night, it wouldn't solve the same feeling as this deep, immersive way of connecting with someone. And so I don't want you to underestimate this. This is just a take a week and break advice. This is really about deep connection.

It's really about the other person and you feeling like you've truly connected and that's only going to happen when you spend this deep quality time with each other. So I want to make sure that you start planning this out and when I say planning this this needs to get into your calendar. It needs to be in your calendar and what this is going to do is going to stop you from feeling burn out. See what people don't realize is when you get to burn out it's really hard to get back. Take so much more time, take so much more effort, take so much more out of you, but this will actually help you avoid ever getting to burnout, right? And the last two breaks, this one is you need to take

that three-day break every quarter, every quarter that's four times a year, take a long weekend for yourself. Take it on top of the long weekends that already exist. I was shocked when I moved to the United States and realized there were only 20 days off a year that people got for annual leave in England. It was 30 days a year. And I always used to take 40 days when I worked in the corporate world, even if it was unpaid leave, because I just really believe in getting your sanity back

and studies show that most of us don't even take the annual leave. So let alone taking 20 days, most of us aren't even taking 15 days or 10 days off per year. I want you to make sure you take three days off every quarter and that could be a weekend and just adding one day off. So one day every quarter, I want you to take off. To make it a three day weekend, on top of the three day weekends that you get wherever

you live. We truly, truly life changing. And I know right now you're all going, Jay, you are telling us to basically do nothing. I'm like, no, if you added up every break that I'm asking you to take, this is what it would be. So even if you added up all the days I'm asking you to take. This is what it would be. So even if you add it up, all the days I'm asking you to take, so you've got one day per quarter with the weekends. That's four days. And then finally, you've got your one vacation per year, where you're taking off seven days. Now, I've spoken to a lot of people

and a lot of people tell me, hey, Jay, it takes me like three to five days just to switch off. It's why we can't go away for three to five days once per year as our only time off. Right? Because if that's the time it takes, that's why when you're taking those three days off every quarter, right? With the two days in a weekend, one day off, every time you're taking that one full weekend, every 30 days as a rest weekend, you're slowing down the chances. You're actually

avoiding the chances, eliminating them of you ending up burning out. And that's the wish I don't have for you. I just don't want you to burn out. And the only way to not burn out is take more breaks. And so these are the breaks that I recommend you take regularly, consistently, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly to transform your life. Thank you so much for listening to On Purpose. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

I can't wait to hear what you guys think in your Instagram posts and your reviews on the podcast. They mean the world to me. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you again next week. I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprah, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Hart, Lewis Hamilton, and many, many more. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read, and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to on-purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon.

What do a flirtatious gambling double agent in World War Two? An opera singer who burned down an honorary to kidnap her lover, and a pirate queen who walked free with all of her spoils, haven't comment. They're all real women who were left out of your history books. You can hear these stories and more on the Womanica podcast. Check it out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen. The therapy for Black Girls podcast is your space to explore mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday.

Listen to the therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Take good care.