Gratitude for Rest
Learn to relax. Your body is precious, sit houses your mind and spirit. Inner peace begins with a relaxed body - Norman Vincent Peale
I bet you’ve heard the saying - Sleep is for the dead.
Well from where I am coming from today I will say that’s a big fat lie. I have never been so grateful for rest - sleep as I am now. Yes I am admitting to this. Well if you know me you know I am very energetic and love to have many projects going at a time. Being an early riser my day starts at 5:00am and by 8:00am I can tick a lot of things off my to-do list. I always have a long one and can proudly say I am able to tick off more than 80% of them daily. This has been my norm for as long as I can remember and even the days I tell myself I’m going to rest I don’t do so fully because I am either on my phone or browsing but when I recently was force to rest not by man but by nature I needed to heed to it.
I have been working quite a lot and hard because of a few deadlines I need to meet and this was taking a toll on me so when I started having symptoms of excess fatigue and discomfort lasting over some days that I haven’t experienced before I panicked. I couldn’t concentrate longer than 15 minutes at a time and was lost for all my creative urge. Seeking the GP I got some tests done and it came back all fine but I was still not feeling my best then a chat with my sister turned out to be reverse coaching where she also after some time asked -
“if I were your client and I came to you with this challenge what would you tell me?”
“Well if there isn’t anything medically wrong then I would encourage my client to take a look at their selfceare routine and priorities themselves there. Maybe take a full day to rest, do nothing just rest.” I replied
“Well there you have it and please promise me to actually do this for you” she responded.
She was right so I planned a day where I did nothing but rest. Had a lie in, woke up late and read a fiction all day only getting up from time to time to eat and drink. That was the best medicine I could have gotten for just that day on the couch by myself with no work or chores did wonders for me. It was what my body and mind were craving after the long hours and months of hard work.
So today as I write up my gratitude newsletter I am utterly grateful for the concept of rest and its magical powers. I am also grateful for the body and how it communicates with us about the things it needs. I am grateful for my awareness to receive the changes, listen to the messages and respond effectively to my body’s needs. You might relate or maybe think how can she not make rest a priority well that was me just a couple of weeks but when you are working on something and almost at a point where you can see its completion you work harder to get to the end goal but this period has taught me to prioritise my rest even when I am almost at the finish line because success is finding the balance between work and rest and this I am grateful for for being reminded of once again.
So my encouragement is in all your efforts please remember to prioritise your wellbeing and rest for in my rest I regained energy and found possible solutions that I had been searching for.
Affirmation: I will be kind to myself and prioritise my wellbeing