Is rest truly attainable? Not sleep, but actual rest. The National Sleep Foundation reported in 2014 that 45 percent of Americans say poor or insufficient sleep affects their daily activities at least once a week. Those same people also report poor quality of health. In this week’s Intentional Living we will take a look at how many women are more focused on pleasing others over themselves. It is important to remember that if we don’t find the time for rest we can burn out. All of us need a little reminder it is ok to take time for ourselves.
I talked with UMC Chaplin, Jerry Hatfield, who tells me, “the pressures of life have crowded us to where we don’t have any time.” For many of us the feeling of not having enough time to do everything we want can actually be an interruption in our lives. Hatfield continues, “the solution to being burned out may actually be a time out. It may involve getting away from the normal routines and rhythms of life, to do some things out of the ordinary, maybe spur of the moment things.”
Feeling tired and overwhelmed can have a negative impact on your health. Even causing you to get sick more often. Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith authored a book called “Sacred Rest” to help learn to live a more intentional and nurturing life. Hatfield teaches parts of the book at UMC that is focused on Replenishment for employees and says the book has, “some very good teachings and a look at seven different types of rest.” Dr. Dalton-Smith writes the seven different types of rest are…Physical, Mental, Emotional, Spiritual, Social, Sensory, and Creative. Hatfield adds the book says, “make more time for the little things we so often bypass.”
Finding genuine rest is more than overcoming insomnia, it is about finding the answers on how to truly reset. “We have a national epidemic in this country that was highlighted not too long ago in the news of people that are addicted to sleep aids, I have co-workers every day around me that are drinking those power drinks, to keep them awake and there has to be another way, a better way,” says Hatfield.
Most of us spend too much of our days doing and not enough of our days just being. Hatfield quotes, “most of the things we need to be fully alive never come in busyness. Instead they grow in rest. It emphasizes two things, One, rest is not an option, it has to be participated in or we can’t survive or function. And two, it’s not automatic.”
Dr. Dalton-Smith writes, you need to find your Sacred Rest boundaries, know when to say no or learn how to say no. Stop with the excuses and the reasons you have to maintain the status quo. Don’t be afraid of rest, accept the challenge to allow rest to help you reveal things about yourself, it may be scary but in taking the time you might find something you didn’t expect. Choose your best life.
