I had to figure out how to heal — outside my body was a raging mess, and inside, I was in turmoil — my confidence was shot, my memory was shockingly bad and I was wondering if I would ever feel energetic again.

It took me over 2 years, thousands of dollars, and dozens of experiments to find out what would give me energy…

I poured myself into books, medical journals, podcasts, and consulted with almost every professional out there. What I found, and what I discovered helped me not only recover from that accident, and come away with:

RECOVERY IS REVOLUTIONARY

Recover is allowing when your body, and mind, needs to restore itself so you return to peak performance. It’s what you do outside of your career that makes you stellar at your career.

Recovering is hard because we live in a world where work is a ‘grind’ and we have to ‘keep grinding.’ Work — more, and more and more. Do you want to get ahead? Work HARDER. Work More. We wear 70 hour work-weeks like a badge of honour.

But Science is starting to be more vocal about this topic: To Work Better, Work Less. Companies like Google offer flexible work schedules. Countries are taking notice, with the Netherlands prioritising a work-life-personal balance at 27.5 hours per week.

Less Is More When Healing

I am close friends with a published author. She thinks, talks and post-it notes about her ideas all of the time. She thinks in the macro — bigger picture, wider view, the long game. Most of us, even on this platform, myself included, just keep hammering away at the keyboard hoping for something magical to happen. Here’s my thought process on Medium, out loud:

• What are your goals? (Mine is to be a Top Writer in a few categories)
• Am I doing this right? (No, I Don’t Submit To Publications)
• Should I keep my focus on writing one article a day, or should I get more views? (Why keep writing into the void?)
• What is success? (I am currently making $0.20 an article, but the goal is to drive people to my business)
• How could you get 10x the results with 10x less effort? (be-friending 50 people a day, focusing only on publications, take a few days out to strategize).
• How can you produce less but impact more? (Get a Coach, Model Someone Who Is Successful)

Reading my own answers, I myself have a lot of work to do, with this one small part of my world — Medium. Recovery, the art of thinking bigger picture, would aid me right now.

The Recovering Mind 

When you are off, what are you doing? Do you come to Sunday evening feeling like crap and not recharged, after a nasty hangover, take out food boxes littered your apartment and your laundry machine doing overtime to get ready for Monday?

Did that weekend rejuvenate you?

If not, try to start changing your weekend habits:

• Fall asleep and wake up at the same time you do on weekdays (provided you get your 8 hours of rest).
• Create a technology free day — this means not checking email, not checking texts, not having to be present.
• Give yourself time off. Do you ever notice how many new ideas you get, on holiday? These are catalysts.
• So What Is Recovery? It’s spending time off with family, travelling, learning, having adventures or doing something with your hands. Do you see — recovery isn’t pizza and beer and Netflix? It’s using your body and mind and still being creative.

Conclusion

Recovery is at odds with most of our society, our culture and our lives. Recovery to some people means weakness. The opposite is true.

True recovery is focusing on the bigger strategy and ensuring you are fine-tuning your time off so that you can come back to work feeling fantastic.

Creating time to think, being creative during your time off and taking technology free moments are revolutionary, and could lead to the real gains you are looking for in your life.