The Hard Work Of Resting

Every sport has an off-season, every week has a day of rest, every life should spend time working at resting. Mark Twain is quoted saying,”I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting”. While Twain is being satirical, like he most often is, here at EverydayQB I want to make a suggestion and observation: Resting is hard work.

Resting takes effort, takes planning, takes commitment. Yet built into the very fiber of our being is the need to rest. The average human needs 7-8 hours of sleep a day to be healthy. That means that 1/3 of your day is spent sleeping, 1/3 of your life unconscious. We were wired to rest.

Often times in our lives we pack them so full with commitments, work and activities that we completely run ourselves into the ground and wind up exhausted and often sick. There have been times in my life that I have worked so hard and over-planned and under-delegated things that I get physically ill. And yet our American culture will praise the man or woman who spends 12 hours at the office a day because they are ‘living’ the American dream. The truth is that they are not ‘living’ at all, but are rather controlled by an insatiable need to always be working at working, and never working at resting.

It takes a commitment to set aside time to rest. It takes effort to lay aside to-do lists, social activities and the stresses of a normal everyday life. But those that have found the ability to do so will find themselves more refreshed and more productive in the long run than if they try and sprint through life and get tired because they haven’t worked at resting.

Every athlete takes time in every off-season to rest. Even in each week, teams have days of rest. Sundays and Mondays are opportunities in the flow of a college football athlete’s week where they are to rest there bodies and that rest is essential to their production the following week. We were made to rest.

Do you have moments in your week when you set aside time to rest? Maybe its one evening a week where you make no plans except to be at home with your family or by yourself. Perhaps its an entire day where you rest from work and things that cause stress in your life. Hopefully you take vacations or getaways by yourself or with your family from time to time. You will find that if you make the effort to rest, you will be more refreshed and better prepared for the task at hand when you return from that rest. The EverydayQB and his wife are heading to the beach this afternoon for a night and day together of rest and relaxation. Even though its in the middle of the week and there are tons of things to do, we are setting aside time to refresh and relax together so that when we return, we are energized and excited about all that life is bringing our way.

So the EverydayQB challenge today is to find a time this week to rest. To work at making time to relax and recharge your batteries. You will find yourself better prepared for the stress of everyday life and more effective and successful in your endeavors.