Do you know how to slow down?

Rest has been a subject that has been on my mind and has entered into a lot of conversations I've been having over the last few weeks. It all came to a head the other day when I opened Insight Timer and the quote of the day by Lao Tzu was, "The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long."

For many of us, rest has become a 4 letter word. The idea of slowing down, taking a nap, or not being productive or busy, has negative connotations. We think we are being lazy if we are not constantly in motion or accomplishing things.

It doesn't matter what is trying to slow us down, injury, illness, or exhaustion, all we can think about is when we can get back to doing whatever we were doing before. We resist resting and there is often no acceptance of why we are where we are or what happened to get us here. We have forgotten that we are human beings, not human doings.

I had a client, who was sick with Covid, say to me that they hadn’t done anything productive the last few days. They were just laying on the couch resting and being lazy. Even when we are sick we still think of rest as lazy and unproductive. 😳

When something happens in our life that asks us to slow down, be more present, and rest, it's asking us to put more attention there. We need to take the time to investigate what that is all about. Are we pushing too hard and burning out or getting sick? Are we burning the candles at both ends?

This lesson has been presented to me over the last two-plus months. Long covid has forced me to take a look at what is truly important and what isn't. I've had to take a deep dive into what rest looks like. And even when I feel like I'm resting, I'm reminded that there are deeper layers that have to continue to be explored. 😂

I have had to come face to face with the fact that I don't really like to sit still. It's been an eye-opener because I sit still quite often. I sit for my meditation and pranayama practice. Part of what those practices are teaching me is how to be still. The irony is not lost on me. But when I am not sitting in those moments, I usually prefer to be moving my body.

When I was faced with overwhelming fatigue, and movement wasn't available to me, I started to think about why it's so hard for me to rest and be still. It's something I've struggled with for most of my life. I love to be in motion and get things done. Whether I'm out hiking a mountain, riding my bike on the trails, or just doing projects around my house, movement makes me happy. But to be honest, that isn't the real issue.

It's not the hike, the bike ride, or the project. It's my overall approach to life. I tend to be overly optimistic about how much I can fit into my day. (I’ve also been labeled recklessly optimistic 🤔). I like to say yes to people, whether that is meeting friends for lunch or coffee, helping with a project, or even meeting with clients, I like to make myself available. I don't overschedule myself like I used to, but I do tend to fit a lot into my days. What doesn't get scheduled in as often though, is pure rest.

Did you notice that last sentence? I don't schedule in rest. It seems counterintuitive to schedule rest, but we need to make time for it until we learn to incorporate it into our day. It's not beneficial to wait until we need rest to take it. Instead, if we learn to incorporate rest into our days, just like we do movement, then we won't wear ourselves down and find that our bodies are forcing us to rest due to injury, illness, or exhaustion.

There is more to the concept of rest than we often admit. Culturally, we don't value rest the way we value work. Rest gets labeled a guilty pleasure, lazy, or luxurious. We create scenarios where you have to be worthy of getting rest. Conversely, we put people up on a pedestal who work 18-hour or 20-hour days and only sleep 4 or fewer hours. We aren’t addressing or discussing the health consequences and burnout that are usually associated with this type of lifestyle.

As we tackle the issue of rest in our own lives, we have to learn to reframe the way we speak about it. We have to stop acting like we are doing something wrong when we prioritize rest and we need to resist labeling it as a guilty pleasure or being lazy.

It starts with one moment at a time. We can begin to schedule rest into our days and speak about it as something positive that we don't need to be worthy of (because you already are worthy of it). It's time to stop burning the candle at both ends so we can burn for longer. It will be a challenge but I'm up for it! Are you ready too?

I'd love to hear your thoughts about rest and if you consider it a 4 letter word. Leave a comment below and let me know about your relationship with rest.