Benefits of Mental Rest

As I sipped my second cup of coffee on a Saturday morning, it was clear: I was in desperate need of mental rest. The clues were all there: agitation, stress, fatigue, nausea, etc. Every single day during the previous workweek had been a blur. Once again, I found myself needing to spend an entire day resting to recuperate. I didn’t even have enough energy to enjoy my weekend. All I could focus on was my body telling me (nay, yelling at me) that I needed significant rest so that I could do it all over again the next week. I had had enough.

The truth is that I was doing a terrible job of taking mental pauses because while I would take “breaks” during the workday, my mind was still in hyper drive and active with things like reading up on something I had been meaning to research, being distracted by a TV series, listening to a Podcast, playing a game on my phone, scrolling through social media, etc. I never let myself just “be” and that often transferred into my sleep where I would dream about work tasks.

So, as I found myself missing another Saturday because I had once again reached a point of exhaustion where I felt sick, I decided that I needed to change. For real this time.

My life was flying by in a daily whirlwind and I felt completely and totally disconnected from my body and my soul. I felt like I was taking the days of my life for granted with the promise of, “if I can just get through the day, I can reward myself with relaxing later.” How ridiculous that sounds to me now. I was often too tired to enjoy anything!

Sometimes, you have to fall backwards to go forward. Right? The first step would be to do a better job of not overscheduling myself by scheduling in time for distraction-free work. The second step was to implement a daily meditation practice every morning for 10 minutes or so. Just deep breathing, allowing myself to disconnect and just be with nowhere to go and nothing else to do. This is crucial because I am of the habit of waking up and almost immediately being off and running mentally.

The first couple of weeks of this began fairly well, but it wasn’t like I saw immediate progress. I knew it would take at least a month of practice to begin to feel the clarity and mental space I was in search of.

During this time, I was in a Clubhouse room about self-care and one of the moderators suggested that while my plan was great, I also needed to take breaks throughout the day for roughly three minutes at a time to put my phone away, step away from electronics, and just practice being still. And so, I added that in as a third step: implement breaks of doing nothing in silence periodically throughout the day for a few minutes at a time.

I am still early on in these new habits, but I can tell you that I feel remarkably more relaxed (something I didn’t think could happen if I wanted to have a productive workday) and clear in my thinking process, helping me to feel so drained. Even my husband said he noticed that I seem much more relaxed as of late.

Benefits of Mental Rest

The journey of self-care can ironically be an arduous one. Out of habit, we give relentlessly to benefit others, but also to benefit the goals we are trying to reach. Mental rest can take a backseat.

I find this to be particularly true for people who are go-getters, achievement-oriented, anxious, and highly sensitive people among others.

Be honest: Is your self-worth connected to how much you’re doing?

Because somehow if you’re putting in effort—regardless of what that effort is actually producing—well, at least you’re working and you’re trying. This makes you feel good because you can put the blame on “it’s not my fault that things aren’t working out because I’m always busy doing something” and/or “no one can judge me as being lazy because I’m always really busy.”

Truthfully, busy work isn’t productive and it doesn’t help when you’re doing it to overcompensate for something.

Here’s the thing: The act of “doing something” can be deceptive.

It can bring mental and emotional gratification because we think being busy all the time means that we’re making progress. Action feeds the ego. But, as we know with our physical bodies, sometimes rest is the most productive action we can take. Your body needs to heal. So does your mind.

“Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration—it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.”

Tim Kreider as published in his article “The Busy Trap” in The New York Times

Countless studies are being done on why your brain needs rest. Consider these two quotes from an article titled, “Why Your Brain Needs More Downtime” by Ferris Jabr in Scientific American.

• “Many recent studies have corroborated the idea that our mental resources are continuously depleted throughout the day and that various kinds of rest and downtime can both replenish those reserves and increase their volume. Consider, for instance, how even an incredibly brief midday nap enlivens the mind.”

• “That learning and memory depend on both sleep and waking rest may partially explain why some of the most exceptional artists and athletes among us fall into a daily routine of intense practice punctuated by breaks and followed by a lengthy period of recuperation.”

• “Many researchers…have gathered enough evidence to conclude that meditation can indeed improve mental health, hone one’s ability to concentrate and strengthen memory. Studies comparing long-time expert meditators with novices or people who do not meditate often find that the former outperform the latter on tests of mental acuity.”

Three takeaways:

1. Put the phone away and give yourself the gift of just being with your soul in silence a few minutes at a time throughout the day. Take three-minute breaks periodically to do nothing but breathe.
2. Disconnect from the belief that non-action = non-production. I once heard someone say, “you can’t stress yourself enough into a solution.” Believe that.
3. Be purposeful with your time. You can bet that the greats like Kobe weren’t doing stuff just to do stuff. Even he meditated. Look it up.

Want more help prioritizing your mental rest and unlearning patterns of the emotional satisfaction of “busy work” or “overscheduling?” Contact me to learn more about how coaching can help.