Posted in , , | November 7, 2011 |
By contributor Samantha Nolan-Smith
Last week a client and I were discussing her decision to resign from her job and take some time to rest before deciding on her next career move. When I asked how she felt about the decision, she was very positive, commenting ‘to rest is delightful’.
It was a description I had never used myself in relation to resting.
Sure I thought of rest as refreshing, restorative and necessary. But delightful? This was not something that had ever occurred to me.
My life had not led me to come to see rest as a thing of beauty or delight.
Why? Quite simply, I had never valued it as much as I valued activity. Certainly I viewed it as important, but as a reward for performance; as something which came after, not prior to activity.
In my world and the world of most people I have been surrounded by, the approach to rest has been this; first come the activities of the day – washing, cooking, exercising, socializing, taking meetings, writing, making phone calls, and/or spending time with friends and family. Then, and only then, is it time to rest. By the time this occurs, rest is certainly a welcome relief, but not necessarily something to be valued in and of itself.
Looking back, I realize that I didn’t respect rest. Even my holidays were spent traveling, jumping on and off planes, arriving in new cities, and immersing myself in new languages and cultures.
Thankfully I found my way to yoga almost 20 years ago, because for many years, those 5-10 minutes of savasana (deep relaxation) at the end of each class were the only truly restorative moments in my week.
Contracting chronic fatigue in my early thirties was therefore a great gift. Certainly I didn’t view it as such at the time – so busy was I trying to keep doing what I perceived ‘needed to be done’. I struggled against it for a long time but in the end, it was the only teacher that I could really hear when it came to understanding the value of stopping.
Completely.
Chronic fatigue is utterly debilitating. Hours, days and weeks pass as you stare at your bedroom walls, too tired to read, too tired to watch television, too tired to talk or walk and feeling just as exhausted after hours and hours of sleep as you did before you slept.
For me, it was the result of many, many years of putting rest at the bottom of my priority list.
Once I stopped fighting against it though, chronic fatigue became an incredible teacher.
It was the beginning of understanding what it might be like to live in a world where:
- not every moment was filled with activity,
- I didn’t need to get to the end of each day and feel that I had ‘achieved’ something,
- I wasn’t being woken at 3am to the bell of my overactive mind.
It was the beginning of really coming to value myself and my life, not for my achievements and experiences but rather for the simple act of being.
And still….
It took me to the conversation with my client last week to realize that I had become like the soldier who is happy to have a break from warfare but who doesn’t necessarily come to see the true humanity of those he labels ‘enemy’.
Any war I’d been waging with rest had come to an end, but I certainly wasn’t embracing it as a dear friend – as a delight.
And so my investigation into valuing rest continues.
As it does, I take comfort in the words of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes who said; “Leisure is the mother of philosophy“.
It takes a moment to really feel the importance of this quote.
Hobbes is not just saying that leisure is important to philosophy. He’s not saying it’s a nice thing to engage in, after you’ve spent a day deep in philosophical thought.
He’s saying that without leisure, there is no philosophy.
In that sense, Hobbes is saying that leisure – having time for rest and relaxation, not being occupied, and not hurrying – is the number 1, most essential element to every great philosophical work ever written.
In this Hobbes is not talking about the sort of activity which people view as rest – zoning out whilst sitting in front of the television, or scrolling through social media on their phone or computer. This is not rest. It’s rare to feel refreshed when you’re done or to be inspired to great thought. In truth, this is often a form of marking time until you deem it an appropriate time for sleep.
What Hobbes is speaking about is being willing to be still or idle. To be empty of thought, of goals, of ambition, of perpetual motion or entertainment.
Simply being.
In such a short and simple statement, Hobbes turns my former priority list – socializing with family and friends, work, exercise, household chores, then rest – completely on its head. He says; rest and leisure first. Then see what comes from that.
Imagine for a minute a world in which this was the predominant way of living.
- The very idea of annual leave would become strange to us, so entwined would rest and leisure be in our day to day existence. Carving out time for these things would be viewed as not only unnecessary, but downright odd.
- People who took no time for rest and leisure would be viewed as unlikely to generate anything of great significance – having skipped such an essential element in the creative thought process.
- The incidence of certain illnesses would rapidly decrease as people gave their bodies the requisite time to heal as they’re naturally designed to do.
- Relationships would take a turn for the better as people had more energy and vitality to actually be present with their beloveds and engage with them, rather than being too exhausted to really see or hear them.
And quite possibly there would be a flourishing of creative and philosophical thought. For in a nutshell, I hear Hobbes saying this; genius and inspiration slip into the spaces between moments of activity and leisure, rest and relaxation grow these spaces exponentially.
Perhaps you’ll take a moment to examine your own assumptions about work, rest and leisure. Are you like me who assumed for so long that these things were things that were to be regarded as rewards once you had achieved your goals for the day, week or quarter? Or do you view these things as an essential part of your working week – indeed, as pivotal to your health, wealth, happiness and every great achievement you’re ever likely to attain?
Samantha Nolan-Smith works with women who are interested in creating changes in their lives, focusing on generating change from the inside, out. Her weekly blog investigates this different path to creating change. When she’s not exploring the delights of resting, you can find her here on and twitter .
Photo credit: Erlin1
Posted in , , | November 7, 2011 |
By contributor Samantha Nolan-Smith
It was a description I had never used myself in relation to resting.
Sure I thought of rest as refreshing, restorative and necessary. But delightful? This was not something that had ever occurred to me.
My life had not led me to come to see rest as a thing of beauty or delight.
Why? Quite simply, I had never valued it as much as I valued activity. Certainly I viewed it as important, but as a reward for performance; as something which came after, not prior to activity.
In my world and the world of most people I have been surrounded by, the approach to rest has been this; first come the activities of the day – washing, cooking, exercising, socializing, taking meetings, writing, making phone calls, and/or spending time with friends and family. Then, and only then, is it time to rest. By the time this occurs, rest is certainly a welcome relief, but not necessarily something to be valued in and of itself.
Looking back, I realize that I didn’t respect rest. Even my holidays were spent traveling, jumping on and off planes, arriving in new cities, and immersing myself in new languages and cultures.
Thankfully I found my way to yoga almost 20 years ago, because for many years, those 5-10 minutes of savasana (deep relaxation) at the end of each class were the only truly restorative moments in my week.
Contracting chronic fatigue in my early thirties was therefore a great gift. Certainly I didn’t view it as such at the time – so busy was I trying to keep doing what I perceived ‘needed to be done’. I struggled against it for a long time but in the end, it was the only teacher that I could really hear when it came to understanding the value of stopping.
Completely.
Chronic fatigue is utterly debilitating. Hours, days and weeks pass as you stare at your bedroom walls, too tired to read, too tired to watch television, too tired to talk or walk and feeling just as exhausted after hours and hours of sleep as you did before you slept.
For me, it was the result of many, many years of putting rest at the bottom of my priority list.
Once I stopped fighting against it though, chronic fatigue became an incredible teacher.
It was the beginning of understanding what it might be like to live in a world where:
It was the beginning of really coming to value myself and my life, not for my achievements and experiences but rather for the simple act of being.
And still….
It took me to the conversation with my client last week to realize that I had become like the soldier who is happy to have a break from warfare but who doesn’t necessarily come to see the true humanity of those he labels ‘enemy’.
Any war I’d been waging with rest had come to an end, but I certainly wasn’t embracing it as a dear friend – as a delight.
And so my investigation into valuing rest continues.
As it does, I take comfort in the words of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes who said; “Leisure is the mother of philosophy“.
It takes a moment to really feel the importance of this quote.
Hobbes is not just saying that leisure is important to philosophy. He’s not saying it’s a nice thing to engage in, after you’ve spent a day deep in philosophical thought.
He’s saying that without leisure, there is no philosophy.
In that sense, Hobbes is saying that leisure – having time for rest and relaxation, not being occupied, and not hurrying – is the number 1, most essential element to every great philosophical work ever written.
In this Hobbes is not talking about the sort of activity which people view as rest – zoning out whilst sitting in front of the television, or scrolling through social media on their phone or computer. This is not rest. It’s rare to feel refreshed when you’re done or to be inspired to great thought. In truth, this is often a form of marking time until you deem it an appropriate time for sleep.
What Hobbes is speaking about is being willing to be still or idle. To be empty of thought, of goals, of ambition, of perpetual motion or entertainment.
Simply being.
In such a short and simple statement, Hobbes turns my former priority list – socializing with family and friends, work, exercise, household chores, then rest – completely on its head. He says; rest and leisure first. Then see what comes from that.
Imagine for a minute a world in which this was the predominant way of living.
And quite possibly there would be a flourishing of creative and philosophical thought. For in a nutshell, I hear Hobbes saying this; genius and inspiration slip into the spaces between moments of activity and leisure, rest and relaxation grow these spaces exponentially.
Perhaps you’ll take a moment to examine your own assumptions about work, rest and leisure. Are you like me who assumed for so long that these things were things that were to be regarded as rewards once you had achieved your goals for the day, week or quarter? Or do you view these things as an essential part of your working week – indeed, as pivotal to your health, wealth, happiness and every great achievement you’re ever likely to attain?
Photo credit: Erlin1