Did you figure that you could get away with a 20-minute coffee break, or a 15-minute phone scroll, and then you’d be back to work?
Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.
Your brain (and body) need a longer break than you think they do. And I’m going to unpack why.
When you’ve been “on” all morning, or all afternoon, temporarily hitting “pause” and putting your feet up is a welcome switch – but 20 minutes of it doesn’t count.
‘Cause in the back of your mind, you know that you’re only unplugging for a little bit. You can’t just completely flop. You have to be ready to go again here in a little bit.
All you did was remove the stressor – get off your feet – not power yourself up.
So as soon as you head back into that noisy, chores to do and kids to chase environment, your battery blinks red yet again, leaving you puzzled because you *did* feel better while you were taking a break – why didn’t it hold?
It’s because you just stepped out of the noise for a little bit – moved away from the chaos – you didn’t actually refill your own tank.
You just existed in peace and silence for a moment. (Which didn’t strain your batteries.)
So the minute you come back in, your mom batteries start flashing at you again – no, you didn’t actually recharge me! You only stopped using me. I can’t function like this!
Are my car analogies getting across the point here?
You can’t just step away from the chaos and expect yourself to be filled up. You have to ACTUALLY FILL YOURSELF UP.
And that takes much longer than 20 minutes or a warmed-up cup of coffee.
So where in your day do you need to completely rewrite the “I get this long for a break” script?
Where do you need to allow yourself an hour, even two, to properly recharge those mommy batteries?
Remember, the true test for whether a break was long enough is if you feel ready to meet the chores (and kids) again.
If you’re not on your second-to-last straw.
If you’re not 2 minutes away from snapping – you’re multiple hours again.
So give yourself (and your tired brain) what you need, take a long enough break, and to heck with the mom guilt worries of “did I take too much time for myself?”
You took enough. You took exactly what you needed.
And now your kids are going to have a great mommy back.
Go live it.
