“Identifying your rest deficits is the first step in being your personal and professional self.” This quote by Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, a Board-Certified internal medicine physician, highlights an important issue. 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. If you can’t pick and choose how to relax today, these 7 types of rest will help you chill out and live your best life.
Lacking 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, 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 a comfortable bedroom temperature around 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3°C). Also, try taking a hot bath before bed.
Making a lot of mistakes?
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.
Make 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.
Focusing on the negative?
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. So, let’s cut to the chase.
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.
Don’t know what to believe in anymore?
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.
Failing to make up something creative?
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 rest storage. Also, once you discard your needs or self-care, don’t see the point of 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.
Feeling sensory overload?
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.
Here, we offer you one strategy to reduce your exposure to technology, but in fact, you can apply it to any kind of sensory stressor. 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 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.
Craving time without people?
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 because 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. Social rest is about reconnecting with people you love and building strong relationships that are beneficial to both parties.
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!
Photo credits:
