Rest. It’s so important.

Let’s talk about that word for a moment.

Dictionary.com defines it as:

a period or interval of inactivity, repose, solitude, or tranquility

For the longest time, I always worked my buns off. I started my first paper route at the ripe age of nine years old. Throughout all of high school, I had a part-time job that had me working every single weekend. I regularly worked 30 hours a week while balancing college and carried two jobs every summer. Hard work was something I knew well. The importance of rest? Not so much.

My favourite job to date was the summer I worked in a circuit board factory. I learned the ins and outs of how they were manufactured by working my way through each stage in the process.

Flash forward to the beginning of last year. I had been working full-time at my current job and had been maintaining almost full-time hours and a ton of responsibility being the sole contact for an online training platform. I was at my limit. Burnout was imminent. I had no time for a life. I had no time for the dentist. No time to prepare healthy meals. Or even do my laundry for that matter.

So I let the wonderful owner of this particular company know I wasn’t able to continue.

I needed some rest.

Interestingly, my amazing sister knew the importance of rest. And knew this was something I needed to do because she put it on my 27 x 28 list.

It took a full year to transition out. That’s the thing with small business. You become a part of the family. Integral.

Needed.

It’s a lot to walk away from. You care so much about the few people who work for the company. It’s almost impossible for someone like me to accept that I cannot do it all and must step away.

It was really, really hard.

But I learned a very important lesson, no matter how hard it was. The lesson is this: money isn’t everything. I was at the point where I didn’t care if I made thousands and thousands of dollars in a month. When you have no time for yourself, no time for anything fun, it beats you up. It runs you down. It allows so much negativity and exhaustion to enter your life and start wreaking havoc.

I am endlessly thankful for how gracious, loving, caring, and incredible my boss was.

See, the thing is, rest is important. A period of solitude or tranquility, man, that can do good for the soul.

What is one of the harder lessons you have had to learn?