Are you able to rest?

1)You are allowed to rest and you are allowed to rest often.
Notice all the thoughts, judgments, as well as physical sensations and emotions that come up when you read this sentence.  
Write them down
Ask yourself : what is true about I think? What else is possible here?
 
If you are thinking things along the lines of: “I would love to but I can’t, I don’t have time; I have too many things to do; I am responsible for this and that; people are counting on me; my to-do list is very long, etc.” I would like to invite you to question attention and amount of time you give everyone else and everything else, and how much  attention and time you give yourself. Are you less important? What makes you give more space and time to others’ desires rather than yours? What is the value you give yourself? What are you trying to accomplish?
 
If you tend to fill out your calendar as much as possible, I encourage you to create special time slots called “rest”, “void”, “nothing”, or “me-time”.
How do these words make you feel? Observe once more what is happening inside you. Most of the time, nowadays, most people don’t encourage or celebrate the idea of doing nothing, it’s not well perceived. Our current society pushes us to always do more, faster. As if we should be proud to be always busy? What about changing the paradigm, let’s start being proud to do nothing.
Why? Did you know that when you are doing nothing, in the silence, you can truly regenerate your whole body, hear your soul, connect to yourself, develop your creativity and have your best ideas! These moments are really precious!
Resting, regenerating will also help you fulfil your tasks with more joy and energy. You will see them from a new perspective.

​2) Why wait to be in a really bad state to stop?
Do you often get sick when you go on holiday ? It means that your immune system is always working hard to fight chronic stress. When you finally allow yourself to stop, your body relaxes too and the whole system can finally evacuate its accumulated toxins.
  Shoulder pain, digestion problems, car accident, pneumonia, cancer… Our society gives us permission to stop only when we are at the end of the rope. But if we’d like this to change it’s our responsibility to start with ourselves. By allowing ourselves to stop before it’s too late, we recover faster. If you deny your burnout for 6 months, it might last 2 years. If you accept it after 2 weeks,  it will be over in no time
 
In medicine, we talk about homeostasis. It is our natural state of well-being, which we should always be in and always tend towards. But in order to do this, we need to adjust our choices, otherwise we just collapse. The longer we wait and we get away from this balance, the more we need to make efforts to go back to it.
The more we know ourselves, the more we can see the warning signs, and so the more we can spend time to rest when we feel the need. All our physical illnesses are a lack of balance: they happen when we are not listening to ourselves. We get sick because we have separated ourselves from ourselves.
To come back to ourselves and become whole again can take time. And nowadays it seems we have a hard time accepting that things can take time. So we take a pill, we have a Reiki session, we get a massage, and we feel better, temporarily, for a few hours, maybe for a few days. Great! Except this is just a band-aid. It won’t last because our crazy pace is not bearable. It’s our whole way of living we need to change.
 
3) What are you avoiding ? What are you waiting for to be happy?
Not doing anything, the notion of void, is scary. On one hand we underline that “doing”, producing something is important, and on the other hand there is a sense of shame to admit the need we have to rest, we fear people won’t get it. The notion of doing nothing is unacceptable. And yet it is so necessary to our well-being. Action is important, it is the masculine energy in us. Resting is also important, it is the feminine energy in us. We all need both to maintain balance.
I also know that avoiding to do nothing is  a way to avoid oneself : if I rest I will have to face myself. And I don’t necessarily want to.
The request to produce more and faster, to have goals, to get results, to be around for you job, your family, the external world, is preventing us from going inwards and listening to our needs.
What are you avoiding by always being busy? What makes you happy? Is running around from your office, to your fitness class, then to your family and friends is really fulfilling? Don’t you want to slow down? What are you trying to prove? What is so important? If you get sick and end up not being able to do anything, duties will suddenly seem less important. So were they really important in the first place? I’d like to invite you to go back to the basics, what really matters. If you want to serve the world, your only obligation is to be happy, to shine your own light, to do what you are supposed to do with joy, pleasure, passion and energy. And as long as you don’t rest properly, you will feel depleted and won’t be able to really find your purpose. The only way to do that is to sit in silence with yourself.

3) If your mind is hyperactive, or your brain is constantly polluted by thoughts about what you have to do, it’s time to give yourself a break.
We never stop thinking. The idea that we can stop thinking is a myth.  When you fight against your thoughts and you reject them, you are fighting against and rejecting yourself. Your mind is part of you and its intention is to protect you. So be grateful, welcome it for all the information, even the scary thoughts. And then invite your mind to rest by telling it is safe, that you are safe, that you’ve got this!
 
4) If you are highly sensitive or multipotentialite (ask me for a quiz if you need to check), you are probably overstimulated by your environment and by your thoughts and ideas. You have the great capacity of anticipating and you are very creative. But it can wear you out quickly so you’ll need a lot of rest. It does not take that long. It just means you need real rest, quality rest. So make time for yourself to do nothing. Have a look at what happens then for you. Be curious. Be kind to yourself. Let go of trying to control everything, and trust the process. If you feel guilty, welcome that emotion, accept it, it will go away faster.. Remember that you are probably quicker and more efficient at everything you do than the average, so you are allowed to rest more. You don’t need to justify.
 
Let me know how it goes!

If you need help to learn how to rest, book a discovery session with me