…don’t be surprised if your nervous system learns that sickness is the fastest way to make you stop.
Your nervous system doesn’t make mistakes. Its job is to keep you alive, and it is very good at doing that.
But your nervous system can’t judge whether the patterns it has learned to keep you going are actually good for you long term. Like only resting if you’re sick.
If sickness is the only time you consistently slow down, lie down, cancel things, stay home and take care of yourself. You’re teaching your nervous system that stopping happens only when your body forces the issue.
You’ve probably also got very good at ignoring all the little signals. The ones telling you to slow down before it’s too late. So you don’t. And then it’s too late.
Resting often gets framed as laziness or failing to ‘push through.’ But it’s actually just teaching your brain and body that you’re allowed to stop without something having to go wrong first.
With the latest research telling us burnout takes 3-5 years to recover from, it just smart to learn how to stop before you get forced into doing it by pushing yourself too far.
So perhaps the goal isn’t to become better at pushing through.
Perhaps it’s to get better at stopping before your body has to make the decision for you.
Take a look at my 7 Days Back From Burnout free video series if you’re already a lot closer to that than you’d like to be.
