Prioritizing Rest

There’s a difference between the sleep you get so that you can be “well rested” for a future obligation and the sleep you get solely because you are relaxed. The latter seems to melt away all tensions allowing your mind, body, spirit and soul to reconnect with a genuine zest for life. While the former tends to feel like nothing more than a momentary mental escape. One that can can, at times, feel like just another obligation that takes away more energy than it gives

I didn’t understand that until very recently.

In fact, since the very beginning of my adult life, I only focused on being well rested enough so that I might be energized enough to tackle a new day. No wonder the exhaustion only seemed to get worse no matter how much sleep I got.

Fast forward and it’s now December of 2021. Over a decade of being a grown up and finally, I know better. But knowing better and doing better are also two very different things.

Reinvigorating yourself properly takes practice.

So how do I take that leap from knowing I should relax, rest, and get some really great rejuvenation and actually doing it?

Somehow, allowing myself to really rest always manages to find itself in the backseat. Behind all those other seemingly detrimental priorities; making money, keeping my family happy, improving my career and health, and building a better relationship with God.

In the beginning rest just seems like the catalyst through which other, greater and more desirable things might be accomplished. Rest for school, rest for work, rest for beauty, rest for a fun day ahead. Rest is the thing that needs to be done before the thing that needs to be done. You can’t, after all, just skip it.

Admittedly, there are times in my life when I might choose to skip it if not for the consequences born from lack of sleep. Be honest, how often would you skip sleep if it wasn’t something that you needed?

Thinking in this way creates quite an embarrassing cycle. Where I blaze until burnout, search for solutions to really rest, and then once accomplished I find a way to burnout all over again!

What if the cup never had to be empty?

Prioritizing Rest: The Guide To Rejuvenation That Will Make My Peers Think I’m Crazy

Step One:

Understanding Rest, Relaxation, and Rejuvenation (And Why They’re Valuable Even If I Don’t Have Grand Plans)

According to Google’s English dictionary which was provided by Oxford Languages, Rest is defined as “to be placed or supported so as to stay in a specified position.” And to “cease work or movement in order to relax, refresh oneself, or recover strength.”

“To be supported..”

Without getting too deep into any of Newton’s Laws or any particular Spiritual belief system, I feel it suffice to say that rest is what gives God, The Universe, or maybe just the body that I’m living in the opportunity to support me. We could all use a bit more support, right?

That part about staying in a specified position is important, too. I’ll come back to that later.

The second definition describes rest as an action that leads into being capable of relaxation and rejuvenation by way of ceasing work (staying still). Which is interesting because it suggests that relaxing and rejuvenating may not even be possible without first knowing how to rest.

This same dictionary defines the word relax as “to make or become less tense or anxious” and rejuvenate as “to give new energy or vigor to; revitalize”. I think it’s important to note the distinction between one action leading to the removal of something and the other action leading to the addition of something else.

These words are all three completely different actions and yet, common connotations will have us believe that doing one thing can satisfy all three of the needs.

Why is this important? Because it reveals a process. First I rest, then I relax, and finally I rejuvenate.

Step Two:

Trust My Spirit, It Knows What Parts I Can Handle And What Parts It Can Do For Me

Every once in a while you’ll hear someone refer to the phrase “sleep like a baby” and then someone else will remark about how babies wake all through the night. That doesn’t really sound like the best way to sleep, does it?

But the phrase isn’t referring to the sleep and wake patterns. It’s referring to the way that babies can rest completely without a care in the world. That’s real rest. I’ll bet that baby has never awoken in a panic believing that he’s late. Imagining the remainder of his day in ruin because every moment has already been accounted for and this oversleeping blunder has stolen time that belonged to all those other rigid, but necessary obligations. Only to realize that he wasn’t even late at all.

Babies are, arguably, fully reliant on their physical bodies and external forces to support them. (There’s that word again) Worrying about their needs being unmet is a type of fear that unfortunately comes later. This fear takes many different shapes and sizes and often acts as a motivating force for the rest of us. How much more often would you choose to rest if you didn’t have to spend every moment building and maintaining the life you are currently living?

In this case, sleeping like a baby is finding a way to replicate this worry-free ability to trust in the unknown. To dispel our fears surrounding having unmet needs. However, because I’m not an infant anymore, this trust in the unknown must be carefully balanced with an ability to have a healthy relationship with adult responsibility.

Step Three:

Become Friends With The Monster I Call ‘Not Achieving Great Things’ (And It’s Twin ‘Failure’)

So, what does it really mean to prioritize relaxation? Sleeping more? Meditating?

Or perhaps it’s about connecting with my body in such a way that I recognize when my plate is full and I can instinctively know how to not bite off more than I can chew. Even if that bite is radically and rebelliously tiny. And especially if that bite is much smaller than what I’m used to.

Perhaps making relaxation a priority requires making molehills out of my mountains. Taking all of my dreams and aspirations and making them so small in mind that it doesn’t much matter if I obtain them or not. Contrary to what we might have all been taught, relaxation does not equate to complacency. Being comfortable where you are will not physically morph you into a lazy, bump on a log.

Picture yourself entering a dark tunnel with a tiny speck of light at one end. A door closes behind you and now the entrance is completely dark. Suddenly you hear growling. You’re not alone. Of course you’re going to start moving very quickly towards the lit end, away from the growling and the darkness. Now picture that same tunnel. This time, the door behind you never closes. You are accompanied by a very dependable and loving friend. Are you going to stay in the tunnel beside the door because you are unmotivated? Doubtful. You may play around a bit, explore, or sit back and enjoy spending a little time with your friend. Maybe you’ll even go back out of the door into familiar and comfortable surroundings for a bit longer. But, whether now or later, you will move. Because fear is not the only way to be motivated. There is curiosity, adventure, duty, love, a sense of purpose, contribution or self-efficacy. This list can go on endlessly! Sometimes fear is just the loudest of them all.

Humans have drive and purpose. And perhaps it is only my abundance of faith in humanity speaking here, but there is no place in my heart or mind that believes that if people didn’t have to achieve, they wouldn’t achieve. In fact, I believe they would achieve much more.

So, what if I practiced believing in the very radical notion that life on earth won’t end if I don’t accomplish the thing today. Am I able to relax, or let go of anxiousness, by simply understanding this? Lessening my focus on the mountain peak, not by giving up the climb, but by facing my fear of staying put.

There is no monster chasing me towards achievement and away from failure. It is only my friend.

This brings me back to the first definition of rest. Remember that part about staying in a specified position? In the past, I would work as hard as I did because I was afraid that I could look at my life in ten years and everything would be the same. I was afraid that what I had wasn’t good enough. I struggled with finding things in my life to truly appreciate.

In addition to this feeling of discontentment, I was terrified of what might happen if I couldn’t maintain what I already had. I was afraid that if I didn't do it all on my own, no one would. Can you see the contradiction? Afraid of the same, and simultaneously afraid of different. This was my reality.

I needed to take a moment to myself, away from all of my ambition, obligation and drive to ask myself.

“Does any of this even make sense?”

Unfortunately, for me, I didn’t rest by choice. I found myself plagued by panic and anxiety attacks, depression, poor concentration and an overwhelming fatigue that just would not go away.

Once I came to this understanding, I began to understand what it means to make myself able to metaphorically ‘climb’ out of sheer enjoyment and no longer for the sake of running away.

Step Four:

Recognize My Habits (Are They Helpful Or Just Habitual?)

After my crippling burnout, I took some time to rest and once I felt myself again, I was right back at it. After all, I had things to accomplish! After falling many times and picking myself back up many more times, I began to ask myself new questions.

Am I sabotaging my accomplishments, unknowingly, in an attempt to make a more permanent place for other things, like joy, love, or peace of mind? Things that I compulsively neglect because it’s the responsible thing to do?

Am I confusing real rejuvenation and enjoyment with a counterproductive replacement like watching the news, scrolling through social media, eating high carb meals or, my favorite, lying in bed making mental lists of what else needs to be done?

Am I attaching my ability to rest to an external object or circumstance that requires more work to be done first? Can’t relax without a spa massage, right? A cocktail with a new love interest? Several new three-wick candles from Bath and Body Works?

All three of these habits lead into the reasons why rest (being supported) and relaxation (removing the anxiety) can never quite get the job done. When it came time to rejuvenate, I had no idea what would truly vitalize me, when or how.

I believed that chasing a goal against all odds was vitalizing. I believed that eating half a large pepperoni pizza almost every day was vitalizing. I believed that buying new clothes and shoes every chance that I got was vitalizing.

And maybe to a certain extent, all of these things were. They served a purpose, certainly. But I hadn’t taken the time to notice the very real effects that these familiar sources of pleasure were having on my energy.

I needed to take better care to notice when things like exercise, junk food, work, play, etc. stopped making me feel invigorated and started making me feel exhausted. I needed to know when enough was enough. And maybe more importantly, I needed the courage to trust myself when I thought enough was enough.

Step Five:

Use Your Newfound Energy Wisely

I am rested, relaxed and rejuvenated! Now what do I do with all of this blazing energy? Find a mountain to climb. Not the same or very similar to the mountain that already almost killed me, of course. Right?

But maybe it’ll be different this time, right? I have more energy!

I always try to remember that whatever I begin doing to achieve something is likely the exact thing I’ll have to do to maintain it. So with that being said, wouldn’t it make much more sense to put energy into things that will give energy back to me?

Finding this symbiotic relationship with the things that I choose in my life is probably the most important thing I can possibly achieve. More important than climbing any mountain is my ability to live, breathe and feel good in the atmosphere.

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