Feeling weary, worn out and drained? Are you feeling like you have so much to do and not enough time in the day to get it all done? Do you find it hard to say, “No” without regretting it afterward? Are you wondering if anyone cares about how you are feeling?
How many of us really take time to R.E.S.T? When you hear the word REST, you may think of sleeping or taking a bath, something like that. These are good things to do to rest our bodies and they are very necessary. In order for us to operate at our optimum rest is so important. Making sure we get enough sleep and relaxing our bodies from strenuous activity is so needed for our health. If we don’t get that rest we can become short tempered with our co-workers and our family members, we can make poor decisions and regret them later. So rest is important.
However, I am not talking about getting rest for our bodies. I am talking about getting rest for our minds. We may think that taking bath will rest our minds or going to sleep will allow us to rest our minds. That is not the rest I am talking about.
When we rest our minds we are actually making a conscious effort to do so. You see, if we take a bath with your mind racing about how you missed an opportunity to meet with a client because you were late due to picking up your daughter from school. Or you are beating yourself up for saying something you should not have said to your best friend and now you regret it. You might even be thinking about the promotion you did not get and you KNOW you were more than qualified for the position and they gave it to one of the ‘good ole’ boys’ in the office. These things do not disappear with a bath or with sleep. You mull it over in your head in the bath or you dream about it in your sleep. Here is what real REST looks like:
Renew = restore to freshness
Every = individual, one thing at a time
Single = only one part
Thought = a developed intention or plan
Take the time to change your thoughts. Take time to think about what you are thinking about. When you take the time to slow down and do some real self talk, some mind altering conversation, you will see the difference in your well-being. Take a moment and look in the mirror and tell yourself who you really are. You are good. You are strong. You are powerful. You are important. You are valuable. You are necessary. If you would tell yourself that you are enough and that you do matter, say to yourself that you are important and mistakes do happen but that is not the sum total of who you are, your REST will be sweeter and you will sleep better at night.
