Where I get in trouble is when I go to other end of spectrum, usually because I’m depressed or discouraged, and spend all my time reading novels or playing computer games. Again, that’s another article.

But my point, and yes, I do indeed have one, is that it’s OKAY to take a break. You don’t need to be accomplishing something every minute of every day. I once told a very wise woman that I just had so much to do, I didn’t know how I was going to get it all done, and I was stressed beyond belief. She looked me deep in eyes, nodded, and said, “Do you have a trashy novel?” She then offered to lend me one if I didn’t, so I could go home, spend afternoon reading it, and get up refreshed to do things that needed to be done.

Downtime is essential if you’re going to accomplish right things. You can’t run on adrenaline indefinitely. It will catch up with you, and you’ll get a cold, strain a muscle, or worse.

So don’t worry about accomplishing anything for a few hours today. Go read a trash novel. I have a pretty good one you can borrow if you’d like.

So what do you do with this “growing edge”? Exactly what you’ve been doing, only more so. If you’ve been building a new habit and then letting it go in times of stress, which is what most people do, then you need to develop new stress habits. It’s easy to do right thing during calm, peaceful times in your life, as if any of us really have those. It’s harder when real stress starts. So what you need to do is develop a list of things you can do during a stressful time to keep your new habit going. For me, a real problem when I’m stressed is caffeine. I have a problem staying off of it, and when I’m stressed I guzzle it. My ways to avoid caffeine include not having it in house, keeping plenty of decaf soda cold, and drinking more milk. I love milk, so this is not a hardship. When I get a caffeine craving I have a glass of milk.

The bottom line on this is that action leads to solutions. Make a list of actions you can take to keep your growing edge growing, even when you don’t feel like it, and keep taking those actions. Feel free to drop me a line and let me know how you’re doing.