Don’t Make The Mistake of Skipping This Step
You know what I love about hard work, which also happens to be a major benefit of keeping a steady momentum? The time you get to coast. Using the analogy from our first week in this series, this is the time when you finally get your bike to the top of the hill and then you get to coast down the other side. Feeling the breeze on your face, you slip your feet off the pedals and extend your legs out to the sides. Closing your eyes, you rest for a moment–deep breath in and out. Enjoy the fruits of your labor, you’ve earned it.
Friends, hard work pays off, but we have to allow it to. Sometimes we have our heads down working so hard, we pass the precious coasting opportunities right by. Don’t let this happen. If you choose to skip over these “downtime” opportunities, you’re going to miss out on a part of life that is meant to nourish and rejuvenate you.
Following are the five areas that make up the COASTING phase of momentum:
Rest: Resting your mind and your body is critical in your overall momentum strategy. Think about resting as your time to refuel. What happens when you don’t refuel? You begin to run on fumes, and ultimately run out of gas altogether.
Recalibrate: I think of recalibrating as regrouping or pushing the reset button. Sometimes, just allowing time for rest will do the trick. Other times, you may want to start a new exercise routine, do a body-cleanse, spend quality time with friends and family, take a vacation, or seek help from a counselor to deal with a specific issue. Do what rejuvenates and/or heals you.
Reflect: Reflection will provide illumination to areas that may normally be blind-spots or that haven’t been explored yet. Use your coasting time to reflect on what has worked, what hasn’t, what was fulfilling, and what was draining.
Journaling: Writing your thoughts, ideas, and reflections in a journal is an excellent way to, not only work things out in a stream of consciousness-type way, but to create a repository of content which you can access for future use. For journaling ideas and inspiration, click here to read an article I wrote.
Plan: The “coasting” phase is the perfect time to work on a plan for what’s next. Use your clear, rested head, and your reflections to formulate your plan of action.
It’s important to use your “coasting” time wisely. Don’t skip it because it sounds fun or frivolous. It may be fun, but it’s far from frivolous.
Some questions for you to ponder:
Are you in a time of rest now? How can you make the most of this time? Is there one of the five areas you need to lean into a bit more?
Are you at a time when you might need to force yourself into a time of rest? Don’t wait for the doctor to order it.
As always, I appreciate you spending time with me here today.
Here’s to coasting! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!
Jill xx
If you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends, family, and co-workers.
Momentum Series Archive:
Click here for week 1.
Click here for week 2.
Click here for week 3.
You’re reading week 4.
Click here for week 5.
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!