One of my college aged staff members told me she felt guilty for “bumming it” during her school’s winter break.
She said she was sleeping in, lazily spending her waking hours on the couch burrito-wrapped in a warm blanket watching Disney movies and doing… well… not much else.
What I told her is guilt will ruin the purpose of break.
I explained that her pendulum has swung proportionally to the side of recovery as it was pushed to the side of exertion (during her semester)—and that it should be honored, not defiled.
During her semester she’s a high performing, “A-Type” personality who has perfectionist tendencies and demands excellence of herself from the second she wakes up until the second she goes to sleep at night.
…And this pushes the pendulum pretty hard in one direction!
By the time winter break hits, of course she shuts down and goes into recovery mode—the pendulum needs to swing proportionally in the opposite direction. For some, they burnout and it swings in that direction at the most inconvenient times. But for her, it swung in alignment with her time off anyway—and she shouldn’t ruin the recovery time by mixing in guilt.
The reminder is simple: recovery needs to be prioritized and honored as much as exertion is.
The pendulum can only be pushed in one direction so far…