It was December 2012. I had been working non-stop to grow my business for the last two years.

That meant always being switched on. Constantly on the move. Travel, untimely meals, late night meetings, the works.

Result – I got swamped out by a bacterial infection that meant I couldn’t eat normal food for a couple of months. Only semi-solids. Sounds yuck!

But that was the cost of me not listening to my body. Me not realizing that I had to pause and take a breather. Me not realizing that there’s more to success than just constant work.

The reason I bring up this incident, is because during a routine work timing conversation with a cousin yesterday, I realized that a lot of us make this mistake time and again.

Why don’t we take enough breaks? Why do we continue to chug along, resulting in a burnout?

This could be a topic worthy of a doctorate. I am sure some research would already have proven this fair and square.

I mean, we all read about this everywhere. How to attain work-life balance has never been a more hotly contested topic than after the pandemic. Yet, here we are in 2023 and the number of people going to the hospital as a result of burn-outs is only growing.

Then, as I thought more I started looking at my own behavior and patterns. Could there be something discernible there?

As I looked deeper, I realized that I had myself made this mistake many a times. In 2007, 2012, 2016, 2019, and as recently as in 2022.

Interestingly, each time I convinced myself that it wasn’t something wrong. I was just trying to do my best and didn’t realize when things got out of hand.

But I was wrong each time. I did hear some signals from my body or my mind. I did go through an instance or two of thinking about slowing down. Of hitting pause and taking a break. But I continued because if not for me, who else would be able to do it.

That’s the crux of why we all get carried away with this self-inflicted harm. We think we are the most important person in the larger scheme of things. That we are indispensable. That we cannot stop lest we play the spoilsport.

And lead ourselves into that downward pit from where the only way up is to pause and turn back to get back on ground.

If only we could have taken a break and then picked up things with much more vigor that could last us a while longer…

Is the answer then to not stretch oneself? No. I wouldn’t want to do it or expect it of others around me. But I would definitely want to be conscious of my own limits and identify where I shouldn’t stretch. Where does my limit stretch to.

Hopefully with practice, I will be able to identify and draw that boundary for myself and continue to expand it. And yet, keep an eye on it, so that I don’t unhinge myself from the center while trying to create a bigger circle every time or in running more laps!