How to find real rest.

Real rest is there, and you need it. Make space for it today.

Be slow. Find slowness. Find real rest.

What is real rest?

Rest is a time when you can simply be and do, in peace. Rest is distinct from sleep, although sleep can also be restful. Rest is not necessarily idleness, although lazing about or an idle afternoon of reading can be restful. Rest is not necessarily distinct from work, if a long, deep flow session on a project is fulfilling to you. Rest itself provides relaxation, but the paradox of relaxing is, you can’t TRY to do it. The trick is to set up the conditions for rest, then let it draw you into a flow state.

Rest as we need it is highly damaged by the pace, demands, and expectations of modern life. Therefore, you’ll need to take charge and set some boundaries to create a sacred space for soul-recharging and simple peace.

Here are a few ways to begin to reintroduce rest into your life:

1. Think about what real rest means for you. Does it mean reading a hardcover book undisturbed? Time to work in a long, deep flow on your favorite project? Taking a nap for as long as you want, with no one judging or waking you? Puttering around your smaller house projects peacefully? A day where you can do a really long, open-ended run, if you’re an athlete? A long meditation session with no worries about interruption? Real rest is different for everyone, so choose what

2. Turn off, tune out. Real rest is usually not involving movies, videos, or music. Rest allows you to tune into the aliveness of your unique inner vision, not merely watch and be dragged around emotionally by someone else’s vision on a screen or lyrics in a song. Turn off the addictive alerts on your smartphone as well, so you can keep your focus.

3. Think about who can or can’t be involved for it to be restful. If there are wonderful people whose synergies are calm and deeply peaceful with yours, that works. If there are others who disrespect your rest, belittle, or criticize, or merely interrupt, find a way to be solitary.

4. Ensure an open-ended time. Rest requires freedom to know you can slow down and dive in to whatever it is, without having to worry about the modern contrivances of clock time and schedule. Rest allows you to enter a flow state, a state of pure being and focus. This is disrupted if you’re constantly gauging when you have to do some future event in the day. Saying, “Well, I have a whole hour until I have to get dressed at 10a for that brunch! Let’s rest!” is not real rest.

5. Stop buying into the myth that you don't have time to rest. It's damaging your delicate, generous, life-appreciating spirit. This is your life, here and now. You have time to rest. But you must make space for it.

To find real rest, begin to diagnose where rest has been eradicated from your life. What do you crave? What do you yearn for? Realize that for you to receive those gifts, you are the one who must step out of the current of modern 24/7 stimulation, and find peace. Know that you may have to go against the current of others around you, who are constantly on the go filling every moment with ‘something’.

There is a slowness to life that is part of our ancient nourishment. For tens of thousands of years of evolution, life was lived at a much steadier and slower pace, and rest was plentiful.

Reach back to those roots, and cultivate real rest.

How will you make space in your life for real rest today?

Keep Growing,