This week’s post is deliberately short and simple because I’m giving myself permission to rest. In fact, that’s the whole message: You have permission to rest.
I believe it was Tal Ben-Shahar, in his Positive Psychology class at Harvard, who said that the problem is not that we work too much, but that we rest too little. Stress, he argued, is like physical exercise: It can make us stronger as long as we also make time for rest and recovery. Nonstop stress is like nonstop exercise: It leads to injury. In the case of working too much, “injury” could mean anxiety, exhaustion, high blood pressure, or some other symptom of chronic stress. Eliminating stress is unrealistic, but increasing recovery time is absolutely possible.
Sometimes this means treating yourself like a toddler and taking grown-up time-outs or naps. Sometimes this means going for a walk in the park and leaving your phone behind. This could mean the “pre-rest” of a morning meditation. This could mean staying in airplane mode, so you can use moments of boredom for genuine downtime.
And breaks don’t have to be very long to be beneficial. Even a three-breath microbreak can be surprisingly helpful. Everything counts.
No one has to give you permission to take a break; you can take one whenever you need to. And ultimately, giving yourself permission to rest is part of giving yourself permission to be human. You’re not a robot, made to work tirelessly without respite. You’re a human being, and your need to rest is normal, natural, and perfectly okay.