Restoration Revolution: Redefining Rest for Optimal Living

 

For this 16th edition of The Distillation (formally the Joyful Sovereignty Weekly), my intention is to expand your perspective on rest and how to integrate it into your life.

---

Perhaps you know of someone that has worked so hard and been burnt out.

Then one day, they’re forced into a deep state of rest.

Their body collapsing in fatigue, even becoming sick.

Because of this, they can’t work for days or even weeks.

The only thing they can do is rest.

Maybe that person has been you at some point.

It’s almost as if rest is an afterthought, not something you preemptively account for in your daily and weekly routine.

There may be an internal dialog where you tell yourself that you only need to rest when you’re body tells you so.

But by the time we hear those loud sirens, its already become a big issue.

There is a way to look at rest that will increase creativity, boost your sense of well-being and give you greater states of peace and joy.

There is a way to consistently rest throughout your days and week.

There is a way to reprogram yourself in an empowering way.

Read further with an open mind to shift your perspective of rest and how to integrate it into your life.

Stress + Rest = Growth.

This is a formula that brings awareness that work and rest can’t exist without the other.

Work and rest are two sides of the same coin.

When you work (stress), you take action and usually exceed your limits (even if only by a little bit).

When you rest, you allow yourself to recover and grow in many ways.

Lifting weights is a common example.

If you workout 5 times a week at 1 hour each session, that adds up to a tiny fraction of the hours in a given week. You spend the majority of the time actually recovering (resting) from the workout (stress).

In a previous edition of The Distillation, we discussed becoming anti-fragile and welcoming the stress and pressures of life.

Here, we discuss how rest plays into this holistic approach to living.

For decades, there has been a workhorse mentality surrounding work and rest.

The story goes something like this: That if something profound, great or impactful is created, it would “mean more” if we worked hard for it.

Effortless creation is frowned upon, because we didn’t “earn it.”

I’m here to tell you, we don’t need to earn our worth.

This story has a root in the production of things. Meaning, it takes hard work to produce something.

To be sure, we aren’t avoiding work here, but rather becoming aware of the conditioning we’ve succumb to.

A shirt button is mass produced, with each button being either identical or nearly identical.

Great works aren’t produced, but cultivated.

The greatest creation or work you will do is on yourself.

No need to mass produce you, because you’re one of a kind. And to reveal that uniqueness, you’ll need to transform a production mindset to a cultivation mindset.

Cultivation assumes that what is growing already knows, we don’t need to work hard to figure it out.

We just need to cultivate, nurture and support it to happen organically.

Rest allows us to let go of the conditioning of being mass produced (this is how life is supposed to be), to radiating your authenticity and being the catalyst of positive impact in your life.

Take a seed for example.

An apple seed knows exactly what it is and what it needs to do. We don’t have to inform the seed or convince it. We just need to cultivate it so it becomes what it was meant to become.

Same thing with you.

Cultivating yourself and allowing rest to be part of that process, will give you greater states of peace, joy and the good stuff in life.

Contemplation is a form of active rest.

It’s slowing down the pace of life and allowing your subconscious mind to wield its power on your behalf.

Contemplation gives us the space to allow creativity and play to shine through.

Collaboration, when intentional, can be a powerful approach of creation.

You can work on the things that you excel at, while allowing your collaborator to work on the things they excel at.

The period in which you aren’t working, is time for rest.

And because you’re working in unison, the project can be worked on continuously, while each of the contributors work and rest as needed.

This process is a harmonization of contemplation and collaboration.

Some people will need a touch of contemplation, but they best work with people as more of a collaborative effort. Think brainstorming and building off each others ideas and then taking action.

Others will need deep states of contemplation and when they collaborate, they do so in a potent, limited and rapid way.

Neither approach is better, as they complement each other.

Now that we have some paradigms and concepts laid out, let’s focus our efforts on grounding this into your life.

As we’ve discussed (and will continue to share), your conscious mind can only process around 10-50 bits of information a second. While the subconscious can process 11+ million bits of information a second.

When we’re not actively thinking on a task, the Default Mode Network (DMN) within your brain becomes active.

The DMN processes and organizes information without your conscious mental effort. It does it in the background (which is pretty cool).

To be clear, your brain never actually “rests”. It simply diverts its resources to other aspects of mental health and organization.

Even during sleep, your brain is wildly active.

So the mental rest we are talking about here is directing our awareness on “other things” besides the things you are working on (worrying about).

Here are a few examples:

• Playing a fun game
• Reading an enjoyable book (nothing “productive”)
• Meditation
• Spending time in nature
• Listening to music
• Taking a nap
• Float tank
• Mind-wandering for 15 minutes

I hear you, none of these are revolutionary.

But when you sprinkle these kinds of mental rest throughout your day and week, you will see profound shifts in your life.

Physical rest is both active and passive.

Passive rest is literally doing nothing stimulating and getting deep rest. Think sleep, naps, chillin at home on the couch, etc.

Active rest is when you are “doing” something, but it actually supports your overall well being.

Sitting around and doing nothing can be extremely difficult for some. It should be the easiest thing to do, but because we’ve been conditioned, getting profound rest can be work in and of itself.

It’s work, until it’s not.

Here are a few forms of active rest:

• Going for a walk
• Getting a massage
• Yoga
• Sauna
• Ice bath / cold shower
• Breathwork

You’ll also notice that different forms of rest, whether mental, physical or emotional have some overlap.

That is because you’re a holistic human being.

Mental rest can support your physical rest (and vise versa).

The reason we break it down into categories, is so that you can understand and begin to implement as needed.

Emotional rest often means to recharge your energetic batteries.

For many, periods of solitude and alone time can do wonders to get the emotional rest you need.

It can be tiring to constantly deal with the emotions of others. This can put a strain on relationships and bring strife.

When you emotionally rest, you allow yourself to regain that inner state of peace and joy.

Emotional rest also expands your capacity to hold more space (emotions) for yourself and others.

The other side of emotional rest is to authentically express what has been repressed.

Meaning, you feel the emotions that you’re really feeling, without putting on a mask for others to see.

This is why solitude can be a great tool for this practice.

Now that you’ve taken in this message of rest, it’s time to take some action.

1. Based on what you read above, choose a form of rest you feel you need most in your life right now.
2. Over the next 3 days, set aside 15-minutes to rest. You can also do this spontaneously, but needs to happen within the next 3 days.
3. After you rest, reflect in some way as to what happened and how you can integrate rest into your life on a regular basis.

That’s it for this edition of The Distillation.

Wish you a great rest of your day!

With Joyful Sovereignty,

Lane

P.S. If you enjoyed this edition, share this link on your social media or with a friend who you think would enjoy reading this.