Years of hustle culture have led us to wear exhaustion as a badge of honor. But is this approach helping anyone? If we look at what therapists, neuroscientists, and bestselling authors emphasize, they all underscore the value of rest. Moreover, by some accounts, there are at least seven distinct types of rest.
Frequently, we ourselves don’t understand which kind of rest we require. In her book Sacred Rest, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith defines 7 types of rest: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, creative, sensory, and social. Below, we’ve selected helpful tips from the best sources on wellness and personal development.
Never underestimate the importance of physical energy
When your body is numb and tired, you will ultimately need to get some physical rest. Other signs of physical rest deficit are a weak immune system and lack of energy. What should you do?
As simple as it might sound, you need to go to bed. If you don’t dream about getting Alzheimer's, weakening your immune system, or dying from a heart attack or stroke, treat yourself to some sleep or a nap. Our summary of Why We Sleep can offer you a deeper understanding of sleep, but here are some useful tips on how to get a good night's rest.
First, reduce your exposure to artificial light before bed. Wear yellow-tinted spectacles to block out dangerous blue light that depresses melatonin, and use blackout curtains. Second, never ever drink alcohol at night or coffee in the evening. Third, keep the bedroom temperature at a comfortable 65°F (18.3°C). Also, you can try taking a hot bath before bed to help you relax.
Give your mind a real break to recover from the mental load
If you’ve noticed that you’re making a lot of mistakes at work, this may be a sign of mental rest deficiency. Mental rest is about slowing the pace and calming your mind. This type of rest is a must when you can’t stay present and focused, easily get annoyed, or lose your temper frequently. A few recommendations from our summary of Do Pause might be beneficial here.
Take a pause to distract yourself from all current problems. It could be a small pause like getting lost in a favorite TV show or a never-ending book series. You can also try out mindful breathing. Pay attention to your abdominals and relax them for a while. Then, take a deep breath with your stomach, not only your lungs. Later, slowly make a full exhale. It’s a tiny pause, but it drastically improves our thinking process.
Sometimes, you need a longer pause to restore your mental health. Create a safe space somewhere in the mountains, forest, or on an island. Seek a place without the Internet and just relax from your exhausting routine.
Emotional rest to escape everyday pressures
Do you often feel overwhelmed with fear or anxiety? Or is your job highly emotional, like that of a social worker, teacher, or doctor? Then, you may need some emotional rest. Perhaps you’ve heard of emotional intelligence (EI). If not, our Emotional Intelligence summary is a great start to understand this concept. EI plays a vital role in having genuine emotional rest.
Check in with your emotions during the day. You can use self-dialogue for that. Questions like, “Why do I feel this way?” and “Is it because…?” may help you unwind and relieve anxiety. The next tip is to reflect on how your ups and downs impact your motivation. Emotional rest comes with understanding your emotions.
A good practice for developing awareness of your emotions is journaling. In the morning or at the end of the day, dedicate a few minutes to writing down how you feel. This will undoubtedly benefit your emotional state. You can find some tips on how to approach this practice in our article on journaling for mental health.
Focus on what your soul needs as well
Our spiritual rest is our way to find inner peace. For some, it’s safety and stability. For others, it’s the connection with their beliefs. Often, it's an escape from helplessness and apathy. There are numerous ways to achieve spiritual rest, from meditation to journaling and prayer.
Our summary of Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics can help you understand how to reach emotional, mental, and even social rest. But here, we will focus on getting to spiritual rest through meditation. The secret is to establish a consistent daily meditation habit: meditate during your commute or when your kids are asleep.
Meditation can help you reclaim a sense of peace as you switch from constant thinking to mindful observation. Try a ten-breath meditation to get started. Count silently as you take ten deliberate breaths in and out. It steers your attention away from prevailing worries.
Your creativity requires room to breathe
Enough creative rest allows individuals to see the beauty and wonder. If your work thrives on creativity, but you are short on it, you are bound to top up your creativity reserve. Also, once you discard your needs or self-care, stop seeing the point in working, or forget to enjoy nature, a creative rest deficit enters your life. What could you do?
Creative Superpowers by Laura Jordan Bambach has a few amazing tips. To start with, learn how to do nothing, switch off your logical thinking, and just let your thoughts wander. Next, don’t try to organize everything since creativity hates organization. Instead, let ideas and thoughts come to you randomly. Need more advice? Check out our summary of Creative Superpowers and unlock your creativity.
Screens and stimulation take a toll on our well-being
Deep in this technological world, we are frequently overly stimulated by our phones, laptops, and TVs. People can struggle with different sensory experiences, from bright lights to concerts and even a loud workspace. The first thing you must do is to identify your main sensory stressor and stay away from it.
Cal Newport, the author of Digital Minimalism, advocates for a digital detox. Your first step is to discern essential and optional technologies. Perhaps you need your laptop for work or your phone for making work-related calls. Then, use them only when essential, minimizing their optional usage, like watching TV series or scrolling through TikTok.
While you are taking a break from technology, try out new hobbies. You will feel discomfort for a week or two, but then comes adaptation. Follow this pattern for one month, then gradually reintroduce optional technologies into your life. Before doing it, define the importance of this technology to your life. If it can bring something to the table, use it again. If not, quit it and live happily ever after without sensory overload.
Learn about what drains or restores your social energy
You’ve probably heard the saying, “Man is a social animal.” Yet, once in a while, we need social rest. Not all people we communicate with refresh and revive us. Pretty often, even being among people, we might feel detached and lonely, experiencing a sense of social overload. Could it happen be we are not with the right people?
Ask yourself: Who are the people who are pulling from your social energy, and who are the people who make you feel restored and renewed? When you find out the answer, seek people who make you shine and embrace you as you are. If you’re looking to build strong relationships that are beneficial to both parties, read our article on how to meet new friends as an adult.
We hope this article helps you define which rest you lack and work out some ways to achieve it. But if you aren’t sure about the type of rest you need yet, allocate 10-15 minutes to take a FREE Personal Rest Assessment test. In the end, you will get an email with your results and instructions on how to interpret them. Let’s get your right rest today!
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