"Challenging Yourself" and "Burning Yourself Out" are two VERY Different Things

We live in an "All or Nothing" culture. That mindset is holding so many people back from living a healthy, active and satisfying lifestyle. At the same time, it's also burning out, stressing out and exhausting others.

It's great to challenge ourselves. Pushing ourselves a bit at times. In fact, we can do it in BIG ways OR we can do it in SMALLER ways. A challenge doesn't have to be earth-shattering to be a challenge for you. Either way, challenging ourselves creates growth in so many facets of health and wellbeing.

BUT....

When that "challenging yourself" mentality is exhausting you, weighing you down or worse - That's called "Burning out", not challenging/pushing yourself. Burning ourselves out, running ourselves through the ground (not just physically, but in other ways as well such as mentally, emotionally and even spiritually) is HARMING yourself. Not HELPING yourself.

It's the reminder to create BALANCE in your lifestyle. Challenging times (again- think in other ways in addition to physically) means ensure we BALANCE those times with recovery/slower times so that what we do stays as a "challenge" or "push" instead of eventually leading us into burnout.

• MOST of the time, train in that Easy-Moderate intensity range.

• MOST of the time, create a steady flow to your days (as best you can)

• MOST of the time, aim to keep time for yourself in addition to other commitments, choices and/or responsibilities

• MOST of the time keep things "simple & easy"

And then here and there... Challenge yourself. Push yourself. But then... gear down again.

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