Mental Cooldown — What’s Your Solution?

Jobs can be tough. Starting and building a business can be even tougher. I’m sure others may agree, startups are a challenge. Everything from nailing down your business plan to effectively executing it, it’s no easy task. There are bound to be bumps ahead as you try and push forward. As you progress, the stress starts to build up as questions such as: Are we doing this the right way? Is our team solid? What are we missing? Am I doing enough?

Sometimes, it seems you forget how much mental anxiety you bury away inside you as you try and build your startup. Then, one day, it just unloads itself. Your mind and body give you a ‘reality check’ and brings you to a rest stop. I never noticed how sudden it can be, let alone realize how much time I spend on trying to raise myself to the next level. Because of this, I’ve come to the realization that sometimes I just need to tune myself out for a bit. Whether it be for 10 minutes or 30 minutes, I need to have a ‘mental cool down.’

Since a cool down seemed necessary, I decided to do some digging around to see what others did that helped them ‘relax.’ I came across this very nice post written by Ryan Holiday. I've linked his article here. His article speaks about writing, why he does it, and how it helps him. Being one who loves to read and occasionally blog, I thought it was a good find to help me utilize writing as a mental cool down tactic for me (hell I’m writing this post right now and it feels damn good). From what I’ve experienced so far, writing seems to make me not think of any worries or anxieties of work I might have. Maybe it’s cause I’m forced to think about what I want to write, how I want to write it, and organizing my thoughts in a coherent manner. Oh, if I have any grammar errors here, forgive me 😂.

So far, while writing this post up to this point, I’ve felt rejuvenated. Seems like I’ve found my solution for my ‘mental cool downs.’ I need to start doing this more often (oh shit I hope I don’t stress about figuring out topics to write 😩). Now to my question, what’s your “solution” for your mental cool downs? Love to hear your responses.