REST: ease up, unwind, recharge, put your feet up, take a load off, just chill.
Because when you don't rest, you wear out, wear down and start running on empty. Then you're not much good for yourself or anyone else. Try to nudge your schedule in a more restful direction, refusing to add new tasks to your own bucket, taking more breaks or simply helping your own mind be less busy with chatter, complaints about yourself and others or inner struggles.
Easier said than done, right? Incorporate these 7 small steps in your daily life to rest and rejuvinate your day.
1. Upon first waking, bring to mind your fundamental purpose in life, whatever it is, and rest in the felt knowing of it, in giving yourself over to it, like resting in the warm cradling current of a great river.
2. At meals, pause for half a minute with your food before you start eating.
3. Be aware of that little space between the end of an inhalation and the beginning of an exhalation (or vice versa). From time to time each day, notice that space and rest into it.
4. When you complete a task, take a break for a few seconds or more before shifting gears to the next one.
5. Promise yourself that you'll take a minute or more each day to sit quietly and remain present with yourself while doing nothing (this is an essential type of meditation).
6. Have real times each day when you truly "clock out" -- no longer on task or accountable to anyone.
7. Encourage your mind to come to rest at least occasionally. Tell yourself you can worry/problem solve/grumble later. The mind/brain is like a muscle, and it needs to stop working sometimes to replenish and rebuild itself.
When you rest, sink into its pleasures, its rewards, and sense them sinking into you, like a warm rain falling on thirsty ground.
When you get more rested, you have more energy, mental clarity, resilience for the hard things, patience and wholehearted caring for others.
by Rick Hanson, Ph.D., a neuropsychologist and author of the bestselling "Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom"
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