Hello loves, how are you today?

Today I want to talk about 6 reasons you need to prioritise intentional rest.

We are approaching my favourite time of year! I am loving the autumn walks, wrapping up warm. The smell from the slow cooker. Curling up on the sofa under blankets watching Christmas films. Yes, we’ve already watched Christmas films this year! It’s also a time for planning!

My day-job is at a US firm based in the UK, and my boss is American, so for the last few years I have taken Thanksgiving week off too. The week has become my major DIY week. I have an extensive to-do list of things we want to get done before Christmas, and I have to be very careful with myself that it doesn’t become overwhelming.

It also means we’re approaching year-end, and for many of us work expectations steadily ramp up as we near the end of December. We want to get as much off our plates so as not to carry it into next year. Both at work and at home. As the list of things to do gets longer, the opportunities to truly rest seem far fewer.

My day-job’s industry culture was all-consuming long before the pandemic. It’s the increased pressure of the corporate world, along with the ever-blurring line between essential and non-essential and/or urgent and non-urgent work.

Did you know that almost 3 in 5 people report feeling mentally and emotionally exhausted?

Mental and emotional exhaustion can manifest in a variety of ways, and it’s beyond important that we build room for rest in our always-on, all-consuming lives. Our relationships, especially our health, and even our ability to be productive depend on it.
We know that our bodies need rest. If you don’t take it, at some point, your body will force it upon you. And, like many other aspects of our lives, the responsibility for making the time for rest lies with us. No one is going to clear time for you. Work definitely isn’t going to tell you. Unless it’s a “take a couple of days, and then come back better than ever” kinda vibe.

It’s not just time away from work and chores, but the ways in which we spend that time that actually matters. 

It is more important that you have psychological detachment to actually feel the benefit of rest.

A 2005 study by Sonnentag & Bayer found that when workload is high, the need for psychological detachment both increases and is harder to achieve. And for women, as it’s typically them who are the caretakers of home and family, it’ll come as no surprise to you that the shift from day-job to caretaker, for want of a better term, didn’t create that psychological detachment at all. Psychological detachment resulted in improved mood and diminished fatigue at bedtime, with men achieving much better results than women.

Signs you need to create space for intentional rest, and it won’t come as much of a surprise that many of these will line up with your chronic illness symptoms.

1. Persistent fatigue and sleep disturbances are one of the clearest signs of mental and emotional exhaustion. Your body is constantly tired, no matter how much coffee you drink or sugary foods you eat. This should be your biggest wake-up call to re-evaluate your lifestyle habits and consider if there are any changes you can make.
2. Emotional shifts. Manifesting as rapid emotional shifts, ranging from happiness to sadness, irritability, or anger. Irritability. This one is my biggest clue! If you find yourself easily upset, annoyed, or with a short temper or less patience than usual, you might be mentally and emotionally exhausted.
3. Decreased concentration and memory. So, difficulty remembering things, making decisions and/or struggling to focus. For me, it often starts with not being able to decide what I want to eat, or be bothered to even wear my glasses.
4. Neglecting self-care. I don’t mean long soaks in the tub, or having your nails done. I mean eating, preferably healthy choices, drinking water, and general personal hygiene.
5. Be it negative self-talk, or being excessively self-critical, self-criticism is a common response to mental and emotional exhaustion and a sign that you need intentional rest.
6. Living for the weekend, or using weekends as some sort of time earned. You don’t earn rest. You don’t get time off because you worked yourself into exhaustion through the week. The weekend isn’t a prize you get for hitting some goal markers during the week. If you are using your weekend to catch up on all the chores you didn’t get to in the week, does that feel like rest? Is it more likely that you have overburdened yourself in the week?

Practices to build intentional rest

It’s one thing to know that you need intentional rest, it’s another thing entirely to actually do it. Here are a few ideas I encourage you to try out during these winter months. This is, after all, the season to rest and reset!

• Stop the scroll. The biggest killer of intentional rest. A couple of weeks ago my fiancé and I got home from work and put our phones to one side and didn’t look at them for the rest of the evening. During the walk home we talked about everything about our day we needed to talk about, and didn’t mention it again once we were inside our home. That’s probably the most relaxed and switched-off after-London evening I have had in a very long time. We tried it again a few nights later, this time remembering a few things that we needed to arrange, so we picked our phones up to put things in the diary etc, and it wasn’t as effective. Next time, paper and pencil will be used to make notes for the following day.
• Identify your triggers and minimize distractions in your environment. Maximise success. If you wanted to lose weight you wouldn’t set yourself up to fail by leaving your favourite sugary treats on the side, and the same here. Be it reading, sewing, knitting, playing cards, doing puzzles or other games, have something to do that doesn’t involve what would typically switch your brain back to work-mode.
• Share the load. Who else can you delegate to? The other thing that has made a huge difference for me, I now have someone who genuinely shares the load around our home. My fiancé cooks dinner on the nights I’ve been working in London. He does other household chores and without prompting or complaining about it. He doesn’t make it seem like he’s doing me a favour, or expect a medal for it. He gets that it’s his home, and his responsibility, too.
• Remind yourself that setbacks are part of life. Difficult days are part of life. Sometimes we go through seasons of chaos, and seasons of calm. We tend to notice the calm ones less. Break tasks down and spread them out. I’ve talked before about how I used to be able to get up first-thing and start DIY, and not stop until bed. Now it’s a few hours. We have our week of DIY for Thanksgiving week coming up, and we’ve taken it one step further and planned an hour of DIY every non-London weekday so that we get through the list in a much more manageable way, and hopefully a bit less to do then that week too.

These suggestions may vary in effectiveness for different people. It’s important to find what works best for you. Get others on board. Schedule it. Just like any other commitment or meeting, schedule daily or weekly time for rest. It doesn’t matter how you spend it; the goal is that it can’t be productive, in the purest sense of that word. You must psychologically detach from work both outside and inside the home. Hold the time sacred as a commitment with yourself, just as you would commit to meeting with your boss or a friend. You owe yourself at least as much as you owe them.

And remember, you are worth it, and you get to choose.

Have a lovely day.