“Leave Yourself Wanting More”
You may want to nudge yourself into different aspects of your life, but sometimes less is more. Whether it’s exercise, work, or just a good place to grab a bite to eat, you can become a much happier person if you continually leave yourself wanting to get back to things later.
Life has a way to empty your fuel tank, and it’s much more difficult to deal with the crooked balls that come your way when you don’t have a spare tank ready to push you through. You become unhappy because you have stretched out too much and everything starts to press on you like a ton of bricks. Leo Babauta of Zen Habits advises keeping energy and joy in life by knowing when to hold back:
When we go to a great restaurant, we want to try all the dishes, eat as much delicious food as possible. And we leave stuffed, sometimes to the point of pain, and the waist expands. When I go for a run, I often feel like running as far as possible or as hard as I can … and then I’m exhausted and less likely to want to run tomorrow. When we work or read on the Internet, we continuously move from one task to the next, leaving it only when we have exhausted ourselves, and not something that could be useful to us. How can we resist the tendency to do as much as possible? Allow yourself to want more.
It’s no wonder you don’t want to exercise. You’ve worn yourself out and all you can think of is how hard it was last time. You don’t want to go to work tomorrow because today you are burnt out. You can be much happier if you just stop while everything is okay . He will still be waiting for you next time.
Leave Yourself Wanting More | Zen habits