Lose Your Quit Quest 21

Step 21:  Rest or burn out.  The choice is yours.

I've been listening to my soundtrack over and over.  At present, the song that stands out to me the most is Van Halen's Right Now.  I head the song when it first came out in 1992, but didn't pay much attention to it. Now, certain lyrics are jumping out at me.  The first part of the second verse says:

Miss the beat, you lose the rhythm,
And nothing falls into place, no
Only missed by a fraction,
Slipped a little off your pace, oh,

In music, this is true for missing the beat, but also for missing the rest.  If I'm playing a piece of music and miss a rest, I lose the rhythm and a train wreck happens.

The same wreck happens in life when you miss rest.

Rest is valuable.  Rest is where energy is built.  Rest is where the mind slows down enough for great ideas to come to the forefront.  Rest is where healing and renewal of the body takes place.  Even Jesus said "come unto me and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28).  Not, "come here so I can work you to death."

Resting is one of my weak points.  I feel so lazy when I rest.  However, I'm more lethargic and lazy feeling when I don't rest.  I think the problem is having to explain myself to people.  Once, someone came to visit my housemate.  She was rather loud, and my housemate gently reminded her that I was trying to sleep. Her response, "she doesn't need to be in bed this time of day anyway."  How do you figure?  This person knows that I get up at 4:00 a.m. to be at work on time, but her attitude is that anyone who sleeps that time of day is either lazy, sick, on drugs, or a college student on the weekends.  No self respecting adult under that age of 80 or over the age of four should ever take a nap right?

Wrong.

Hey, I understand.  I used to think that if I wasn't burning the candle at both ends (and the middle), then I wasn't doing anything worthwhile.   I still struggle with it, but I'm improving.

In this blog post, writer Michael Hyatt gives a breakdown of why naps/rest periods are important.  He does a much better job of explaining it than I do.  The only thing I disagree with him on is that the nap needs to be short (20-30 minutes).  We're not all built the same.  Power naps are just long enough to make me mad and give me a headache.  I need at the minimum one hour.

Of course, rest isn't just about sleep; it's about relaxing, slowing down, and enjoying one's surroundings.  It's like this, I can go for a walk and be so caught up in time, distance, and pace that I miss seeing the beautiful scenery, or occasionally I can slow down, not worry about the time and pace, and experience something beautiful.  Usually, I walk further when I do that.

And so goes life.