Mental Health Warrior Tool “Recess Break”: The 15-Minute Strategy for Stress Relief and Rejuvenation

Could a simple 15-20-minute break transform your mental health and productivity? Join me, Bruce Schutter, host of "No Surrender," as I explore the power of the Mental Health Warrior Tool "Recess Break" in our latest episode. Drawing inspiration from the carefree joy of childhood recess, we delve into how "unproductive time" can be a game-changer for managing stress, anxiety, and mental health challenges. From playing a quick game on your iPad to stepping outside for fresh air, these breaks can rejuvenate your mind, clearing away stress  and give you the energy boost needed to conquer your day.

In addition to stressing the importance of taking these breaks, we discuss how they can actually enhance efficiency and help you handle life's challenges more effectively. Reflecting on the necessity of pauses after periods of intense work, this episode serves as a crucial reminder to prioritize self-care and balance in our daily routines. 

Tune in to learn how integrating "Recess Breaks" into your routine can help you maintain control over your mental health and foster a refreshed and empowered mindset. Don't miss out on building your warrior toolkit with effective Mental Health Warrior solutions right here on "No Surrender!" 

Chapters

• 0:00 Rejuvenate With Recess Breaks
• 14:26 Importance of Taking Breaks

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everybody, bruce Shooter here with the Mental Health Warrior Program podcast, no Surrender. Now, today, I'm excited to bring you out a new mental health warrior tool. Now we have a lot of tools for you and we got a book filled with actually 84 mental health warrior tools, but I'm getting a little ahead of myself. The tool we want to talk about and give you today is actually a great way to get stress relief, to stress buster, and it's a great way to rejuvenate, rebuild that energy. Perhaps you just went through a tough struggle and you need to get the energy to get through the afternoon. It is the Mental Health Warrior tool of take a Recess Break yes, you heard that right recess, as in back, when we were all in kindergarten or first or second grade and we went to recess. That's what we're going to talk about today and the power of this Mental Health Warrior Tool. So thanks for joining me. Let's just jump right into this. So what brought up this tool? Well, as I mentioned, a mental health warrior in order to triumph over our challenges each day. For example, when my challenges of bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, alcoholism, ptsd from my time as an EMT with the rescue squad well, those things aren't just going to go away because I decided to become a mental health warrior. But I did realize as a warrior, I can triumph over them every day, which means I stay in control. I can manage the emotions or whatever challenge they bring me. And along the way to do that, a mental health warrior builds a tool belt filled with lots of warrior tools. Now we have and you've probably heard this before, we have mindset rules. But today we also have something I like to call just the mental health warrior tools. And what they are is you merge an everyday activity with a therapeutic technique. Now, that sounds kind of over the top, but trust me, they're very powerful but very straightforward to use.

Speaker 1: 2:11

And today's is about taking a recess break. Yeah, each and every day. Now, what does that mean? Because we talked about that. So we were back in kindergarten and we said take a recess break. We ran with abandon out to the playground. You probably remember I want you to join me in thinking back the freedom of granted. This is not we're in college level classes, but we're in a classroom forced to learn and learning through lessons and things like that. But when recess came, it was all of a sudden open up, wide open. We could do anything we wanted. We could play kickball, we could run around, hit the volleyball, we could be outside, whatever fun things you could do outside. There was just enjoyment in going out into the day, exiting the building, being outside, and we returned excited from recess. You return back to school with that energy.

Speaker 1: 3:08

Now you can kind of see those are great benefits and they match up to what I was talking about, because today, as adults, we're under a lot of stress and everybody has stress in their lives. There's stress from jobs, stress from family, stress from challenges, everyday challenges, maybe stress too, like myself with mental health challenges and mental health disorders. Those type of challenges. Again, they are very tough and what that means is they can bring in a lot of energy. They need a lot of energy. Sorry, got a little bit confused there. They need a lot of energy, so that got a little bit confused. There. They need a lot of energy. So that brings in the rejuvenation part. So the key is we're going to use this tool to not only stop the anxiety, stop, even maybe stop depression from creeping in, and we're also going to be able to use this tool then to rejuvenate so we emerge even more refreshed, because what we're going to do is we're going to be as a mental health warrior.

Speaker 1: 4:09

Next time we're in the day and we're in the midst of this, we're going to make time to take a recess break. Now, this is exciting, because how do we do that as adults? Now, I'm not suggesting, and if you had a playground, I guess, in your backyard and you wanted to run outside, you could do that, but that's probably pretty rare and you probably don't have one. So how can we do this as adults? So I found a couple of ways I like to take these recess breaks. Now let's talk about this, because the first thing is we can save these for whenever you need to take them in the day. They're not planned out and you can say wow, my morning was so overwhelming, it's one o'clock, I need to take that recess break, or maybe it's at the end of the day, you find it. So just remember, there's no set time, only you can use them. They're available anytime throughout the day. The idea is, we're going to take some and hang on here.

Speaker 1: 5:02

This is what the key is is non-productive time, and you're probably saying, oh, that sounds like the worst thing ever. I mean, when I initially thought of this. I thought boy, I am in the midst of all these projects. The anxiety is through the roof, so I'm going to take time and do nothing productive. That doesn't sound like it's going to work. But I gave it a shot. I opened my eyes as a mental health warrior and embraced this tool that I created and said let's try it out for a couple of times. And what happened was this non-productive time, which sounds so terrible as the words non-productive, because we love talking about being productive, but what happened actually was is I gave my brain, I gave myself a chance to have a break, and I mean a real break. So what you're going to do during this recess time is you're going to take 15, 20 minutes and you're going to do something non-productive. You're going to have some fun with it too. Now, I had mentioned I have three examples, so let's run through a couple ideas how we're going to take these breaks.

Speaker 1: 6:09

One of the things I like to do is grab my iPad and play a little zombie shoot-em-up game. Now, there is certainly no way I can classify that as productive time, trust me. I've tried with my wife to say oh, no, no, this is a good skill I'm learning, and she'll say, sure, unless we're having a zombie apocalypse, that I missed out the window, don't quite see how this is going to help us out. What I explained to her, though, was that 15 minutes of mindless shoot them up, save the world. It gave me a chance to take a break from that anxiety, and it stopped it from spiraling in my head, and it gave me a chance to basically think of it, almost like physically stepping back from their anxiety, letting it sit out there while we regroup our strength, because, again, that 15 minutes of just playing the game when I stopped, I was rejuvenated too mentally and physically, because I sat down in a nice comfy chair and I gave myself that break. And it doesn't have to be that long. Like I said, 15 minutes of playing this game does wonders for that break, does wonders for that break, and the key part is it lets you take a break from thinking, from your emotions recenter, and then emerge emotionally strong and full of energy.

Speaker 1: 7:31

Now, if you don't like video games, we have another choice, another way I like to take a recess break, and this one's fun too, is you can just go out to your front porch or, if you have an area. You could sit out back and you're just going to go get a cold soda, cold glass of water, cold glass of iced tea, whatever, whatever you like to have as a drink and to be sitting outside, and I want you to take 15 minutes where you just let the day wash over you. This is exciting because this is we're introducing a little bit of what I what is termed and what I'm calling here is mindfulness of the day, and what that does is it lets us appreciate things and it's giving us that break again because we're going to sit there for 15 minutes. We're going to enjoy how cold our nice crisp soda in my case is Nice Diet Coke sitting there very refreshing. I get to enjoy it, as I mentioned, for 15 minutes. Now I am not thinking about projects, I am not figuring out my next plan. I am literally enjoying the morning or the afternoon with that short block of time, and that's what you have to do. Remember, this is not a time to sneak in other agendas, not a time to be working on problems. I want you to literally enjoy the day for 15 minutes and sipping a cold drink. Maybe it's nice out, maybe it's chilly out. Enjoy the day Now.

Speaker 1: 8:53

The third way of this, again, is very similar to this. Again, if you have a front porch, maybe you don't want to go have a drink right now with the Diet Cokes, or a cold cup of coffee, or a hot cup of coffee or whatever. So this one, though, I want you to go outside and just sit We'll call this porch sitting and you sit on your porch, sit on a front step, sit out by your car. Again, take 15 minutes as a break. Now, this is one you can even do if you're at work. 15 minutes as a break, now, this is one you can even do if you're at work, because, again, the idea is not to go on a hike and walk and be moving around, it's to sit still for 15 minutes. But I want you to again let the day wash over you. Now, in this second one the first one we kind of talked through we had cold drink. We're sitting out in the sunshine. In this one, you might be just focusing on letting the breeze go by. You might be focusing again, and what I like to do is throw some music on. Now, this is a great way to let the day and just some music wash over you. You can see where I'm going with this.

Speaker 1: 9:56

I am trying to give you some ideas and myself all the time, to give ideas to make the best use of non-productive time, which means giving ourselves, giving our brains and giving our bodies a little break in the day. And that is the essence of a recess break. And it is a fantastic tool that you can use in having your warrior toolkit that you can use any day. And it's really amazing because what happens is this tool is very straightforward and simple, as I mentioned, but the results are so powerful because what happens is you get not only breaking anxiety or lifting yourself out of depression by enjoying the day and seeing how beautiful it is out there, you get to recenter and emerge rejuvenated, both physically and mentally, and that is one of those key warrior tricks that this tool builds and helps you use. And it is really exciting because this is a fun one, because I want you to go back with me right this minute and just take a quick visualization and remember how much fun recess was, and I want you to start equating this time, this recess break, as adults I'm using air quotes here because we're all adults and we're very serious about things but guess what we are going to give ourselves recess breaks where, literally, we are just having fun, just enjoying the day for 15 minutes.

Speaker 1: 11:25

Now I want to talk about this because I know at this point you're probably saying, well, that sounds so easy, but it's hard. It's hard when we get to be adults. It's hard when your schedule's busy. It's hard when you have a million commitments and your phone's buzzing and everything else. You're going to have to set those things aside. But I can guarantee you that when you try this once, you'll be hooked, just like me, and you will find that this non-productive time we call it, or a recess break added to each and every day throughout the day maybe even two of them if you really need it it will return and you will jump back and return to whatever activities, whatever projects, whatever challenges. You have excited and empowered because you gave your brain a break and you gave yourself some internal motivation by enjoying that day, enjoying that game, by simply enjoying life and seeing how wonderful it is today. Now, that is it over the top excitement from probably something you were thinking. Boy, this tool, I'm not sure how it's going to fit in my adult life, but you can make it fit and recess breaks can be, have a lot of fun. They can reemerge and be something a mental health warrior can use each and every day. Now, speaking of being a mental health warrior can use each and every day.

Speaker 1: 12:43

Now, speaking of being a mental health warrior, make sure you go in order to check out all the other tools and things we have. Now. This tool comes from one of the warrior books. Now everything's on BruceShootercom, so it's S-C-H-U-T-T-E-R. That's the home of the Mental Health Warrior Program, and there's nine books there Now. One of these books is called 84 Mental Health Warrior Tools, and we just covered one. So we got 83 more to discover and add to your warrior tool belt.

Speaker 1: 13:16

You should be excited because every time I see that number, I say, wow, we as warriors are very empowered. We can definitely take on any challenge life throws our way. I just wanted to bring that up because I love seeing that on the front of the book, and I hope you will too, and get excited because that's a lot of tools and a lot of strength we can build. But there's plenty of other resources and ways to work on becoming a mental health warrior, learning to ally with your emotions with this self-help approach that I've created, and when you do that, you can then triumph over your life's challenges each and every day. So please come out and check it out. Not only the podcast, there are blog articles if you like to read and enjoy some fun tales of how you can use warrior tools in everyday life. And then there's a free book to get you started, which you can sign up for and get downloaded right there on the website, again on bruceshootercom. So I hope this tool and the idea of, as adults and as warriors, we can take a recess break get you so excited. We'll see you on the website very, very soon to continue your warrior journey.

Speaker 1: 14:26

Thanks for listening to me. I'm going to sign off now. Maybe I'm going to go take a recess break because this was a lot of work talking, but then again I might save that for a little bit later in the day, after I got a couple more things done. But I will be taking a break and I hope you will too. Remember it is not only encouraged. It is important that we take these breaks because it will help us on our path to triumphing over any challenge life throws our way. Talk with you more later. Bye.