There’s a favorite bit of advice in our household that was first delivered by our son at a young age.

He always advised us to reboot whenever we had an issue with our computer, phones, or television.

“When in doubt, reboot.”

We joke about it often, but it has turned out to be, as we say, “out of the mouths of babes” wisdom. Sometimes, taking a step back, taking a deep breath, and rebooting is very productive.

Start over.

I’m not suggesting you start over from the beginning, though that might be advantageous sometimes. I suggest that all of us get caught up in this merry-go-round of actions that take us nowhere. We can be so busy with life’s dramas and challenges that stopping and rebooting sounds almost useless.

But it isn’t. It’s necessary.

This comes from years of not listening to my body and mind and suffering the consequences, an endless merry-go-round that never seems to stop long enough to jump off.

When we’re young, we’re taught that leisure time is supposed to be the release valve, the time to take a deep breath and chill. For many of us, that was an excuse to party hard to the point that we jumped off one merry-go-round and onto another.

Weekends became an extension of the other five days (unless you were already working 50-60 hours or more each week). When it all seems so dark, remember they still haven’t figured out how to stop the sunrise.

Then, there was the two-week vacation where you spent a year’s worth of salary to stuff your life into multiple suitcases, hurry late to an airport where you joined a long line through an airport, stuffed yourself into a seat two sizes smaller than you, reached a destination only to discover that your luggage was sent somewhere else (oh, it’s happened more than once).

Then, you are subjected to two weeks of wishing you were comfortably back home. And don’t even ask about the trip back home, where you suddenly need another vacation after your vacation.

When in doubt, reboot.

This has been the biggest challenge of my life.

As someone who has faced ADHD and other mental health issues, I’ve began to address the challenges of finding paths to rebooting my days so that I could stop, breathe, meditate, read, or look up at the sky or the spot on the window in front of me, any number of methods to reboot, to allow my mind to catch up with my body and most of all, recharge myself so that my mind and body are back in sync.

Now, I’m not pretending my path is correct for everyone. But the principle is the same: stop and reboot by whatever method works for you.

This may sound silly in a world that never seems to stop long enough to smell the roses and enjoy the fresh air.

That’s precisely what I told myself for nearly sixty-two years of my working life. Looking back, most of it was about chasing myself on that merry-go-round, creating an endless loop that, in the end, left my body and mind suffering.

It wasn’t all bad, but how much more could I have enjoyed life if I had just taken a moment, okay, an hour, heck, a day or more out of a lifetime to reboot?

I begin my days with a morning ritual of music, meditation, reading, writing, and focus.

Throughout my day, I use even the smallest moments in the quietest places, including the bathroom and car, to feel where I am and reorient myself to what I will face next.

If you keep telling yourself that there are no moments to take, then you are just making excuses to mask the pain you feel and refuse to stop the merry-go-round.

I thought I loved the feeling, the rush, but then I realized it was all about the rush, not the pleasure of accomplishment or enrichment. This was the rush on steroids.

Until one day, I woke up and realized that the merry-go-round had whipped me right off because it was going too fast, faster than I wanted to go, or I couldn’t keep up. Been there, done that.

So when that feeling arises, when you think and feel like something is not quite in sync, when you can’t think of any relief, when in doubt, reboot.

You’ll do yourself a favor.