It seems simple, doesn’t it? When you’re tired, rest? Well, humans often like to make things more complicated than they are. 🙂
Did you know that when you exercise, there’s actually a whole lot of death and rebirth going on? Old muscle is torn down to make way for the new. Cells are actually destroyed and new ones created. And for that process to fully complete…you need to rest.
Society salutes the red-eyed warrior who boards one flight just in time to reach the next meeting and works on the plane…okay, that might have been an exaggeration, but not too much of one.
Resting is not a luxury. It’s not even an option. It’s a necessity.
I used to work in an extremely toxic environment that actually had a vibe similar to my example above. When one person would talk about how hard they worked on a project the other day, the response was often along the lines of “I’ll see your two sleepless nights and raise you 4 cups of coffee.”
I would like to say I got out of there in a hurry – but I didn’t. I was a little seduced by the entire culture of “productivity” and it took me a while to leave, but not before I had learned an important lesson – rest makes you productive!
If you are in a place that doesn’t respect your need for rest, you might seriously have to think about leaving. And unlike me – sooner rather than later.
If all that wasn’t enough to convince you, science shows that we need downtime for our minds to put things together. Neurologist Dan Siegel has a diagram of what a healthy mind needs :
So it’s not just sleep. We need time for ourselves, for our hobbies. To reconnect, recharge and just play! To zone out from time to time. Makes you think about this resting thing in a whole new light, doesn’t it?
Alright, so now without further ado – although I love writing these – I’m going to go and take a rest 🙂