Something is wrong with you, if you are not busy, if you don’t have a long to-do list and plan for a productive weekend. Something is wrong with you if to a question “How are you?” you answer “I am fine” instead of “I am busy” or “I am tired”.
This is a reality nowadays - the culture of being busy.
But do you know that rest is important not only for surviving and for your physical health? Rest is the most important part of success and happiness. No matter how popular it is to be busy, resting is crucial. Let me give you few examples:
- Lack of rest —> no energy to manage stress. When we are facing stress, our body releases stress hormones - adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones prepare us for "fight-or-flight" response: heart beats become faster, our heart starts to move blood much faster, thus blood pressure is increasing, muscles tens, like this our body prepares for a fight, we start to breath faster, glucose levels in the bloodstream increase to deal with the emergency. Imagine how much energy your body needs to handle this. If you are already tired, there is no way you can successfully manage stress.
- Lack of rest —> straight way to depression or other mental health issues. I could say a lot here, but let me ask you a few questions – didn’t you notice that when you are tired, everything starts to annoy you, you lose motivation, you trust yourself less, everything somehow seems more complicated, more disappointing, you struggle to make decisions and to solve problems? Now imagine if you are tired for a longer period of time…
- Lack of rest —> struggles to recognize your own and other people’s emotions. This can cause problems in both personal and work relationships. It’s not a secret that now EQ is valued more than IQ. When you are tired, your empathy is less.
- Lack of rest —> decrease in creativity, productivity and concentration. This can disturb you not only to reach your goals, but in general to live a normal life and to do regular tasks.
By the way, what would be your answer if I ask you what is the definition of resting? I am sure the majority would just mention sleeping. In general, it’s much more than that. It’s time with your loved ones, time for your hobbies and for doing nothing (yes, this is also important).
However, if we speak not about mood and productivity, but about brain function, then definitely sleeping is the key. Sleep is important to many brain functions. It is important for how neurons communicate with each other.
Sleep helps to clear the brain from toxins that build up during the day. Recent studies showed that even one sleepless night causes the buildup of protein that is linked to Alzheimer. And this is only one example.
So, we want to be in line with the fashion of being busy and we have fear of missing out, thus we exchange our rest to so many other things. We keep ourselves busy without paying attention to our body needs. And then we are questioning the meaning of life as somehow everything works hard for us. But what if we just give ourselves more rest?