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Guest Article
Category: Personal Development / Health
The Lost Practice
of Resting One Day a Week by Joshua Becker
He that can take rest is greater than he that can take
cities.- Benjamin
Franklin
Editor's note: This
is a guest post from Joshua Becker of
Becoming Minimalist.
Ask any physician and they will tell you that rest is essential for physical health.
When the body is deprived of sleep, it is unable to rebuild and recharge itself adequately. Your
body requires rest.
Ask any athlete and they will tell you that rest is essential for healthy physical
training. Rest is needed for physical muscles to repair themselves and prevent injury. This is
true whether you run marathons, pitch baseballs, or climb rocks. Your muscles require rest.
Ask many of yesterday's philosophers and they will tell you that rest is essential for
the mind. Leonardo da Vinci said, "Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for
when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer." And Ovid, the Roman poet, said,
"Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop." Your mind requires rest.
Ask most religious leaders and they will tell you that rest is essential for the soul.
Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha'i, and Wiccan (among others) teach the importance
of setting aside a period of time for rest. Your soul requires rest.
Ask many corporate leaders and they will tell you that rest is essential for
productivity. Forbes magazine recently wrote, "You can only work so hard and do so much in a
day. Everybody needs to rest and recharge." Your productivity requires rest.
Physicians, athletes, philosophers, poets, religious leaders, and corporate leaders all
tell us the same thing: take time to rest. It is absolutely essential for a balanced, healthy
life.
Yet, when you ask most people in today's frenzied culture if they consistetly set aside
time for rest, they will tell you that they are just too busy to rest. Even fewer would say that
they set aside any concentrated time (12-24 hours) for rest. There are just too many things to
get done, too many demands, too many responsibilities, too many bills, and too much urgency.
Nobody can afford to waste time resting in today's results-oriented culture.
Unfortunately, this hectic pace is causing damage to our quality of life. We are
destroying every sense of our being (body, mind, and soul). There is a reason we run faster and
work harder, but only fall farther behind. Our lives have become too full and too out of
balance. Somewhere along the way, we lost the essential practice of concentrated rest. We would
be wise to reclaim the ancient, lost practice of resting one day each week.
To get back into balance, just consider the countless benefits of concentrated rest for your body,
mind, and soul:
§ Healthier
body - We each get one life and one body to live it in. Therefore, we eat
healthy, we exercise, and we watch our bad habits. But then we allow our schedules to fill up
from morning to evening. Rest is as essential to our physical health as the water we drink and
the air we breathe.
§ Less
stress - Stress is basically the perception that the situations we are facing
are greater than the resources we have to deal with them - resources such as time, energy,
ability, and help from others. We have two choices, either reduce the demands or increase our
resources. Concentrated rest confronts stress in both ways. First, it reduces the demands of the
situation. We have no demands on us as long as we have the ability to mentally let go of
unfinished tasks. Secondly, rest reduces stress by increasing our resources, particularly
energy.
§ Deeper
relationships - A day set aside each week for rest allows relationships with
people to deepen and be strengthened. When we aren't rushing off to work or soccer practice, we
are able to enjoy each other's company and a healthy conversation. And long talks prove to be
far more effective in building community than short ones on the ride to the mall.
§ Opportunity for
reflection -Sometimes it is hard to see the forest through the trees. It is even
more difficult to see the forest when we are running through the trees. Concentrated rest allows
us to take a step back, to evaluate our lives, to identify our values, and determine if our life
is being lived for them.
§ Balance - Taking one day of your week and
dedicating it to rest will force you to have an identity outside of your occupation. It will
foster relationships outside of your fellow employees. It will foster activities and hobbies
outside our work. It will give you life and identity outside of your Monday-Friday occupation.
Rather than defining your life by what you do, you can begin to define it by who you are.
§ Increased
production - Just like resting physical muscles allows them opportunity to
rejuvenate which leads to greater physical success, providing our minds with rest provides it
opportunity to refocus and rejuvenate. More work is not better work. Smarter work is better
work.
§ Reserve for life's
emergencies - Crisis hits everyone. Nobody who is alive is immune from the
trials of life. By starting the discipline today of concentrated rest, you will build
up reserves for when the unexpected emergencies of life strike... and rest is no longer an
option.
Properly developing a discipline of concentrated rest requires both inward and outward
changes. Consider these steps to reclaiming the lost practice of weekly rest in your life:
1. Find contentment in your
current life. - Much of the reason we are unable to find adequate rest is
because we are under the constant impression that our lives can and should be better than they
are today. This constant drive to improve our standing in life through the acquisition of money,
power, or skills robs us of contentment and joy. Ultimately, rest is an extension of our
contentment and security. Without them, simplicity and rest is difficult, if not impossible.
Stop focusing on what you don't have and start enjoying the things that you do.
2. Plan your
rest. Rest will come only from intentional planning and planning rest will come
only if it is truly desired. Schedule it on your calendar. Learn to say no to any tasks that
attempt to take precedent. Plan out your day of rest by choosing creative activities that are
refreshing and encourage relationships. Understand that true rest is different than just not
working. As the Cat in the Hat wisely said, "It is fun to have fun but you have to know how."
Avoid housework. Plan meals in advance to help alleviate cooking responsibilities. And by all
means, turn off your television, e-mail, and blackberry.
3. Take responsibility for
your life. You are not a victim of your time demands. You are the creator and
acceptor of them. Refuse to complain or make excuses and start changing your habits. Remember,
you are only as busy as you choose to be. Leave "if only" excuses to the kids. If needed, alert
your employer about your desire for rest and tell them you will be unavailable on that
particular day.
4. Embrace
simplicity. Embrace a lifestyle that focuses on your values, not your
possessions. It is difficult to find rest when the housework is never finished, the yard needs
to be mowed, or the garage needs to be organized.
5. Include your
family. It is much easier to practice the discipline of concentrated rest if
your family is practicing it too. The fact that this gets more difficult as your kids get older
should motivate you to start as soon as possible.
6. Live within your
income. A debtor is a slave to his creditor. It is difficult to find rest for
your mind when you are deep in debt. The constant distress of your responsibility to another may
preclude you from truly enjoying a day off. It is possible; it's just more difficult. Don't
overspend your income, live within it.
7. Realize the shallow
nature of a results-oriented culture. If you live in a results-oriented culture
where productivity alone is championed on every corner, rest is counter-cultural. And thus, the
saying goes, "If you rest, you rust." Rest may even be seen as a sign of weakness by others.
Unfortunately, that view of humanity's role in this world is shallow. It is true that many of
the benefits from concentrated rest are not tangible; but then again, only a fool believes that
all good things can be counted.
Rabbi Elijah of Vilna once said, "What we
create becomes meaningful to us only once we stop creating it and start to think about why we
did so." The implication is clear. We could live lives that produce countless widgets, but we
won't start living until we stop producing and start enjoying. Capture again the lost practice
of resting one day each week and start truly living.
Read more from
Joshua at his blog,
Becoming Minimalist,
subscribe to his feed, or check out his new ebook, Simplify.
This article was posted in http://zenhabits.net/ , a blog on simple living.
Visit this blog today to read more about simplicity and peace in your life.
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