Let's talk about rest
Grace Stanhope,
6th Mar 2021
Tags:
Life
Blog
Mental health
You hear the word rest, and word associations come flooding through your head: sleeping, watching tv, being unwell, or maybe even “being lazy”.
Rest can so easily be viewed as a bad thing, but in fact, it’s incredibly important that we make time to rest in life.
We live busy lives, we have school, college or uni deadlines that we have to meet, along with a whole list of stuff that we need to do or want to do. However, as humans, we are not made to do everything. We need to rest.
In the Bible, it tells us that when God created the world, he made it in six days. It also reveals to us that he used the seventh day to rest.
If God took a day of rest on the seventh day of creation, I think we as humans definitely need to factor in rest into our lives.
So how can we rest well? I want to share some tips I’ve discovered along the way on how you can make time to recharge, and also how you can spend your time of rest.
HAVE A SCHEDULE
A great thing to do is have a schedule of a week. I’m a small business owner and currently doing a degree, so it’s safe to say life gets pretty busy.
I find it helpful having a schedule for each week, detailing what I’ll be doing each day. This is really useful, as it also helps me factor in my days off each week.
LEAVE YOUR WORK AND DEADLINES
Try and be strict about your rest days.
With the majority of us being at home at the moment doing school, college, and uni work, it can be so easy to slip into work mode. Especially if you have deadlines.
However, I really encourage you to keep your rest days for just that: rest. Try to eliminate all distractions from work or things you need to do.
TAKE SOCIAL MEDIA BREAKS
On your days off, I highly recommend taking a little social media break. It’s really up to you how much you want to limit your time on there on your days off. It may just be an hour, or several, or even the whole day.
Social media is great, but sometimes it’s great to take some time away from it. We can so easily spend so much time on it, and I think when we take a step back it allows us to be more present with those around us.
DO THINGS YOU ENJOY
Now you’ve set aside your rest day, it’s great to think about how you want to spend it.
What do you enjoy doing, that maybe you don’t get the chance to do throughout the week? For me, I love taking the time to read a book, watch a movie or a TV series that I’ve been meaning to, or even baking.
Don’t feel like you have to cram your days either- if you want to watch a movie or just chill with your family, then go for it. Remember, it’s a day of rest.
It’s so important to find time to rest, and when you set time aside to rest, you’ll really feel the benefits. So find how you rest best, and set some time aside this week to recharge.
