Learn where your breaks are.

“Before you learn how to ride a bike, learn where the breaks are.” — Abdul Rahman, 6 years old.

This is the life lesson of Abdul Rahman, a six year old boy in Belgium. It resonates with me heavily, as I’ve had the same experience as most people learning to ride a bike: gaining speed and not yet knowing how to break. Then I did the same again on my rollerblades, which was equally painful, many times.

To me, there’s an even deeper meaning to this life lesson. Something that’s universal, not only for riding bikes but for life itself. Most people today seem to not know how to use their own breaks, or even where they are.

I had a colleague when I was working in a low budget general store that seemed to be working harder than I’d ever seen anyone work before. He was almost two meters tall, skinny, and highly focused when at work. We had a lot of traffic around christmas, and he’d be in a lot of stress getting all of our stuff up on the shelves, helping customers and managing personel at the same time. He’d be running back and forth through the store with his giant leaps and a forklift behind him, and more often than not someone would be running behind him picking up the things that got knocked down.

He’d be putting in 10–12 hours a day for two full months, 5–6 days a week, always with the same kind of stress levels. The rest of us would be wondering how he’d do it, so one day, I asked him in the lunchroom. His response was that he’d learned how to turn work off. He told me that as soon as he was out of that building, his mind was as well. He wouldn’t spend another single thought on work when he wasn’t there. He’d learned where his breaks are.

We all need to relax, but all of us have different ways to do it. Some need to meditate, others need a couple of episodes of Modern Family in the sofa. Some find small periods of rest in the everyday, and some need bigger chunks of time to switch off. Some need a five minute smoke per day, and that’s enough. Some need two hours in the evening reading a book.

The point is this, know your breaks. Know how to use them effectively, just as you need to know the pedals in order to speed up.