I’m going to come out and say it right away, I lost motivation to do work last year. I hit a wall and I was burnt out. It happens to the best of us and honestly, it’s okay. Sometimes we get caught up in feeling like we have to be continuously working all of the time. The reality is, we don’t have to.
Somehow, I feel like it’s a cultural mindset that goes on in America and not in other places. I feel in other countries, it’s not that way. There’s countries in Europe that go on 3-4 week breaks during the summer to recharge their batteries, travel and do things that they love and want to do. Work isn’t life for them, they work to live comfortably.
For the past few years, I’ve been preaching the gospel of constantly working and pushing toward your goals forgetting to tell you to take breaks, recharge your battery, do other things that you like to do. I got caught up in constantly feeling that I needed to be doing my podcast and by August, I was tired and just stopped recording.
When I stopped recording my podcasts, there was no warning to my listeners but I figured I would only take off a week or two. But one week turned into two and then the rest of 2024. The good part was my blogs were written and I didn’t have to work on those things.
The next part of my loss of motivation was, I didn’t have an urge to write. What I mean by that is, I would spend my summer writing new books for the following year. That…didn’t happen at all. I didn’t write a single book in 2024 for 2025 and it felt good to do that. I had already spent the summer of 2023 writing my last four books to hit 60 in 2024.
It’s funny how life works and how things happen so suddenly and randomly. Life has a way of making you slow down, cherish the moment, go do other things, live life, be in the moment and that’s what I did. Also when you transition out of your Corporate America job, you know that it’s figuring out and learning your purpose.
We all hit a wall on our journey and when you spend years constantly going, there will be a point where your mind, body and soul tell you to slow down. I was forced to do it and I’m glad it happened that way. I had spent nine straight years non-stop writing books, editing, formatting, releasing new books, starting my podcast, building my websites, writing blogs, book promotion, marketing myself, social media content, book festivals, moving across the country, networking, interviews, it was overload.
Everything was all on me, and for good reason. When you’re a content creator, you want to be in control of your own destiny. You want to be someone who is laser focused on everything you want to do and when you have a vision, you don’t want anyone in the mix. So in hindsight, all of the years of doing it all on my own drained me mentally.
Hitting the wall is no joke and it’s not fun. It doesn’t mean quit, it doesn’t mean to give up on all that you’ve worked on and have worked on. What it does mean is, take a break and for however long you need to. It means to not feel the pressures of the world to keep going when you don’t have the energy to do it.
It means to have perspective and know that you can get back to your passion when you feel good enough to do it. Your body will always tell you when it’s time to take a break, make sure you listen to it.
That’s my blog, thanks for reading as always, be good and go accomplish your goals (no matter how small they are)!
Jamell Crouthers
Aquarianmind
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