Hit the Damn Reset Button. Your Brain is Begging You To

Let’s get real for a minute we are not robots. We are not meant to grind for eight plus hours a day, five days a week, fueled by caffeine and denial, pretending Teams notifications aren’t slowly eating our souls. Yet here we are burnt out, over-meetinged, and holding it together with the classic “Sorry, I was on mute.” 

Newsflash: it is not fine. Think of it like restarting your Wi-Fi when the connection sucks. You don’t just keep hitting refresh you unplug it, wait ten seconds, and let it reboot. Your brain needs the same damn courtesy. 

You are not broken you are just overdue for a mental reset. And what the hell is a mental reset, anyway? It’s not a vacation (though those help). It’s not quitting your job in a blaze of glory (tempting, I know). A mental reset is a pause.. short or long…that gives your brain room to breathe, stretch, and stop spiraling into existential dread every time someone says, “Quick question…” 

Let’s blame hustle culture for making breaks feel like failure. Somewhere along the line, busy became a badge of honor if you weren’t booked solid from dawn till dusk, were you even trying? Yes you were and you are allowed to stop. Stepping back doesn’t mean stepping down. It means you are smart enough to know that constant output without input leads to garbage results. (You know that report you stayed up late finishing? Yeah, it was hot trash. Sorry.) 

Need to know the signs that you are long overdue for a mental resets?

✔ You’ve reread the same email six times and still don’t know what it says.

✔ You’re irrationally pissed off by someone’s use of Comic Sans.

✔ You fantasize about throwing your laptop out the window more than once a day.

✔ You open a new tab and instantly forget why.

✔ You’ve started answering emails in your dreams. (Seriously, call someone.) 

How to actually reset… It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture it just has to be intentional . A reset can be:

A 10-minute walk with no phone. A weekend without touching your inbox. A midweek afternoon where you say, Screw it, and read something for fun. Some people meditate. Some bake bread. Some scream into the void (valid). Do what works, but DO IT. Regularly. 

I created an intentional structured mental reset called SNAP—Shimmy, Notice, Anchor, Pivot. SNAP is your emergency eject button when burnout looms:

Shimmy-Shake off tension with movement, even if it’s just standing up and stretching.

Notice-Pause and check in with your thoughts. What is actually going on in your mind?
Anchor-Find stability in your breath, a grounding phrase, or a physical reset.

Pivot-Shift gears, reframe, or change your environment.

SNAP Worksheet

Stop glorifying the grind, burnout is not a flex. Fatigue is not a trophy. If your brain is waving a white flag, it is time to stop and listen. Normalize taking a beat. Normalize saying not today. Normalize hitting the damn reset button before you crash and burn. Because when you give your mind the rest it needs, it repays you in clarity, creativity, and actual joy.

Imagine that.

ღ Chi