Why “Rest” is a Skill You Need

Recently, my husband and I came back from a dreamy Caribbean vacation. At one point while lounging poolside, it occurred to me that “rest” is a skill that, for most of us, needs to be constantly relearned and honed.

I’m not talking about the quality of your nightly sleep or how much sleep is necessary for basic functioning. What I mean is the pause, the cessation of doing.

We all have things to do, places to go and people to see. Always, all the time. We live in an age where we live and do (or die) by our calendars. Making an abrupt change to the process of what we habitually do on a daily basis requires concentrated recalibration.

I’ve come to the slightly shocking realization that resting is a skill, and I don’t do it well.

Like most skills, it takes time and practice as well as opportunity and effort to perfect. Much of which is in short supply for a busy person who works for a living. I imagine that if I had endless soft blue days of idle, I’d be really good at resting. But alas, I don’t, so I’m not.

It wasn’t until the later part of the third day of our tropical island vacation that my husband and I actually began the process of resting. In hindsight, it seems like pulling the breaks on a speeding locomotive - the halt was initiated, but it took some time to actually happen. Once it did, we stopped asking each other if we wanted to “do something” and began to embrace the flip flop and floatie life.

Rest is something I’ve learned that I need in my everyday life. I need to build in space and moments to unclench, stop plotting and not worry. Just typing that was so much work and makes me wonder if there are others who feel as rest-less as I do…?

I want to hone my rest skills. I want to get good at listening to the sound of the ocean and letting my shoulders drop, even if only for a few minutes on a Wednesday afternoon. There’s no reason why 11:00-11:15am on a Tuesday morning shouldn’t include some deep breaths, a cup of tea, and a cuddle with my pupper.

Relearning how to rest only on vacation is exhausting, and it wastes precious vacation time. What if we incorporated rest skills into our actual lives? Rest shouldn’t only happen near a swim-up bar and while slathered in coconut-scented sunscreen. If we treated the concept of rest as a necessary skill, how much better off might we be?

How much lighter and happier might we feel if we spent a little time working on resting?

LB Adams is the CEO of Practical Dramatics, LLC and the author of “The Irreverent Guide to Spectacular Communication.”