Rest Assured
Today I’m going to hand you a permission slip. Yes, a permission slip. No, it won’t be like the ones your mom or dad signed back in Elementary School for a field trip or classroom party. In fact, you don’t really NEED my permission. But you might believe you need someone’s approval for what I’m about to talk about. So, here it is. I hereby give you a permission slip…to REST. Sit down. Take a load off. Phone a friend. Read a book. Take a breath. Take a walk. Take a nap. Take it easy. You get the idea. But will you do it? Most of us aren’t. And it shows. Doesn’t it? How many people do you talk to who say they are…TIRED. I know it’s the topic of conversation with many of the people I’m talking to these days. Recent case in point. I was walking out of my morning workout the other day and my friend Andrea and I start talking about….you guessed it…how TIRED we feel. She told me what a lot of friends and family are telling her lately that “By the afternoon, I am just dead tired! I would take a nap. But the kids are at school. My husband’s at work. If I took a nap, I would just feel guilty!”. Sound familiar? It does to me. Andrea works two jobs part-time and for the rest of the time is a fulltime Mother and Wife. She rises very early to drive her kids to school and then go to a workout. She spends the rest of the day working at one of two jobs or working on that “to do” list for her family, herself and her home. Her weekday evenings are usually spent shuttling her kids back and forth to their after-school activities. She, like so many of us, usually doesn’t give herself permission to rest. It’s a lifestyle many of us live, but few of us are working to change. And look what happens. When we don’t rest, we get cranky. We lose focus. We forget things. We get sick. Work suffers. Our relationships suffer. And we tell ourselves (and those who will listen) we need to REST! My Grandmother often told me when she was alive that “You can’t take care of others if you don’t take care of yourself first.” She was usually talking to me as a young mother. Now, I’m in my 50’s. All of my kids are 16 and older. And I’m just now putting her advice into practice (and trying to get YOU to do the same). You really don’t need my approval though. This permission I’m trying to give you has been around since the dawn of time…literally.
If you’re a Christian, you likely know the story all too well. God created the world in six days. And on the seventh…yep! You know it! He RESTED. See? Even God needs rest. And He commands the same for us. “The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work.” That’s in Exodus Chapter 20. In Exodus Chapter 33 Jesus said, “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” He also told his disciples to take time for rest. “Come away by yourselves to a remote place and rest for awhile.” (Mark 6:31) The messages about rest and the benefits of it don’t stop with the Christian faith. According to livehappy.com there is a Jewish tradition, a 24-hour period from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, known as Shabbat or the Sabbath. This is a time of rest in the Jewish faith where activities like using electricity, taking photographs, and even driving a car are supposed to come to a daylong stop. If you’re Buddhist, you may have heard of Thich Nhat Hanh. He was a well-known Buddhist monk, peace activist, and is often referred to as the “Father of Mindfulness”. He once wrote, “Calming allows us to rest, and resting is a precondition for healing. When animals in the forest get wounded, they find a place to lie down, and they rest completely for many days. They don’t think about food or anything else. They just rest and they get the healing they need.”
Okay. So, religions call for rest. My Grandmother did, too. But If you still need more reasons to take that break and not feel guilty…look to the science! According to an article published by Florida State University and the Center for the Advancement in Teaching, they define rest as…
“An essential part of working well. Breaks, including breaks to walk or exercise make us more alert, help us focus and help our motivation. They can help with decision, fatigue and procrastination. They increase our productivity and even our creativity.”
It goes on to reference research findings at The Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard which concluded that students are better able to engage in creative problem solving when they’ve gotten enough sleep. The Centers for Disease Control reported in September of 2022 that 1 in 3 adults don’t get enough sleep. Furthermore, the report claims that if adults between the ages of 18 and 60 are NOT getting enough sleep (at least 7 hours), they are at increased risk of developing chronic conditions such as, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and frequent mental distress. Whew! Just that information alone makes me want to rest! Haha! Ready for that nap now? The American Sleep Foundation says, “A brief nap can be refreshing and restorative, especially if you are sleep deprived.” The foundation claims “an ideal nap lasts 10-20 minutes.” And that the “best time to take a nap is in the early to mid-afternoon.”
So, there you go. Naptime people! God has given you the greenlight. The Buddhists say it’s okay. The science is behind you. Even my grandmother okayed it. Rest assured that taking breaks from that busy life of yours guarantees success.
—Natalie Holzer