Four reasons why you need to take a break from sharing your story

Sharing your business story is like singing a song you’ve written and doing that over and over again: you share a piece of yourself with the world and spend energy while doing it. And you need that energy to pass on emotion to your audience. So here are four reasons why you need to take a break from sharing your story.

If you are a little like me, you have no idea what a break looks like. You love your work and the impact you have on other people and struggle to switch off your brain every once in a while. But for self preservation, I had to learn to take a break from my work and my story.

What does a break look like?

There are obviously different degrees of break you can take. There’s:

• The 30-minute nap
• The staring at the sky moment
• The one-day outdoor cycling
• The one-week vacation

You name it!

A break, is a pause, a moment when you don’t actively do things. When did you last take one?

You should take a break before you break

Taking a break from your story really means, allowing yourself to breath and recharge both physically and emotionally. And I mention emotions because when you share a piece of yourself over and over again, two things can happen:

1. You do it so often and so automatically that it stops from feeling emotional and delivering emotions to others. Your story is in atrophy.
2. You do it so often and with so much emotions and passion that you are overwhelmed and weakened by the constant sharing. Your story is exhausted.

The ideal solution, is to take a break before any of the two things happen. Firstly, because it’s much easier to prevent than to cure. And secondly, because you need to take care of your story as much as you take care of yourself.

So please take a break before you are starting to feel the first signs of burnout.

Why you need to take a break from sharing your story

When it comes to your business stories and activities, you want to preserve your mental health. But also, you want to take sometime to do four things, which really are the four reasons why you need to take a break from sharing your story.

1. Recharge: think about yourself has a battery-based vehicle. You can run for a while, drive, go uphills, make kilometres… but at some point your battery is going to run low. That’s when you need to recharge it. And it’s the same for stories, you need the time to gain back your energy so that you are prepared to share more stories
2. Get inspired: if you let everything out all of the time, which is what you do through storytelling, then you have no time left to actually be inspired. And inspiration doesn’t hit when we are stressed out, spreading ourselves too thin or tired. You need the time and space and relaxation. 
3. Reflect: this is a big part of finding your story and sharing it. You need time to reflect on many aspects of your storytelling. For once, you need to take a break to understand which stories you really want to share. And also, you need to reflect on the best way to share your story based on your personality. Even more, you need time to reflect on your whys, which are the foundation of your storytelling.
4. Measure: if you can’t stop to measure the impact or results of your storytelling you will never know what works and what doesn’t. Which means you will never have the chance to improve. Taking a break from sharing your story, is about taking some time to analyse and measure how far you’ve come.

So go ahead and plan your next break, plan two, three of them. But make you give yourself the time to recharge, get inspired, reflect and measure.