S5E45: Showing up vs taking a break
Full transcript:
Good morning, happy Friday and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway.
So, as I know you know either from noticing that the podcast suddenly disappeared, or from reading my updates on social media, the Language Confidence Project podcast went on hiatus mid-series, middle of the week. In that time, I also cancelled various other events, and pulled out of a speaking appearance.
That was not a decision I took lightly.
I’d been seriously considering it for a couple of weeks beforehand, and trying to get to the end of the current series, but in the end, it became very clear that I had to stop, immediately.
It is just so hard to know when to slow down or take a break, and when to keep showing up.
And so today, on my first episode back, I wanted to make this episode about exactly that. So here are two reminders for anyone who is desperate to take a break, but is giving themselves a million reasons why they can’t.
You can’t make the best decisions for yourself in survival mode.
And that might be in your language learning on its own, or that might be in your life or your health in general. It is so hard, so hard, to weigh up all your best opinions, or do creative work, or strategise, when you’re trying to do it through a lens of extreme discomfort, or extreme uncertainty, or extreme scarcity. You can’t make optimal decisions in survival mode.
And the thing is, survival mode doesn’t only happen in life-or-death situations. It can activate in any kind of discomfort. Being in a really cold room for a long time or a room with loud roadworks right outside. When you’re filled with doubts, day after day, about whether your work will ever pay off. When things outside of your language learning, some kind of ongoing crisis is weighing on you or you’re in a period of health, financial, familial or political instability. And when you can’t change the thing, or can’t change it yet, it might be that some other things need to adapt. And when they can’t adapt, they might need to go on the backburner.
You can only ignore your body and your brain for so long.
Because first it whispers, then it shouts, then it screams. And when it screams, it can take so long to calm things back down. And so many of us have got so used to that, that we forget that if we catch it early, it’ll never progress down the shouting and screaming stage. The earlier we catch it, take a short break, make those tiny adjustments, set ourselves back on a healthier track, the less time we spend later on dealing with recovery and damage control. Pushing through, while it might be necessary sometimes, in urgent, short bursts, it cannot become a way of life.
It's okay to take a break. It doesn’t mean everything is going to grind to a halt. It doesn’t mean you’re never going to start again. And it doesn’t even need to mean that everything stops: once you take a break from the things that are grinding you down, you find space in your life and in your brain for other things again. Things that might bring you the health, connection, comfort or creative energy that you need to get back to your goals. Or you find the clarity to help you rebuild your journey in a way that’s gentler, more sustainable, and that takes less from you or gives more back.
Nothing is more important than your health, language learners. That’s the ground you’re planting all your other seeds on, but more importantly, you matter.
I’m glad to be back, language learners, thank you so much for your patience and your messages of support and encouragement, and I’ll be back here at 7am UK time on Monday.