Disheartened. Demoralized. Depressed. These shouldn’t be the words that come to mind so soon after the beginning of a new year. We hoped the beginning of 2021 would mark a turning point in our battle against COVID-19, rising unemployment, and the divisive political rhetoric that’s fractured our nation… Sadly, we find ourselves deeper in the maelstrom. Checking out or giving up is not an option—the stakes are too high. We must take stock, renew ourselves, and summon our best creative thinking.

Last week I shared the personal annual review tool (Your Annual Review Workbook) I developed with Glen Lubbert of Stamina Lab. The annual review exercise is a powerful tool for sharpening your focus on your personal values, refining your vision for your future, and building on your successes. It also helps you clarify your goals for the year ahead and establish systems that will keep you on track.

We know we have a tough few months ahead (at a minimum). Achieving your personal goals, and achieving our goals as a nation, is going to take energy and focus—resources that are scarce these days. Things will get better, but it will take time. This article is part one of a two-part series on rest and creative renewal. The series focuses on building a necessary practice of self-care and creative resilience that will help you navigate your way through the inevitable twists and turns ahead.

The Seven Types of Rest

Rest is not the opposite of work. Reframing of the concept of rest is the first step in understanding how to renew your inner resources. In his book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writes “Rest is not work’s adversary. Rest is work’s partner.” He frames rest and work as “different points on life’s wave,” adding “You can’t have a crest without a trough.”

It’s also important to understand that rest and sleep are not the same thing—sleep is just one kind of rest. To fully renew yourself you need to engage in different kinds of restorative activities. Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, author of the book Sacred Rest, identifies seven types of rest:

1. Physical rest: Physical rest is targeted at refreshing your body. We typically equate physical rest with sleep, napping, and couch-time. These are forms of passive physical rest. Physical rest can also be active. Restorative activities such as stretching, yoga, and massage therapy improve the body’s circulation and flexibility. Some people are also energized by active forms of physical rest, such as walking, running, and bicycling. Active rest and passive rest are related: a little exercise during the day improves your sleep at night.

2. Mental rest: Mental rest means turning off your brain. Taking a rest from concentrated thinking and constant brain chatter. Embracing moments of stillness and quiet gives your mind a chance to process, organize, and synthesize information. It also improves learning. Give yourself a break from work when you can: use a day or two of your vacation time to turn a weekend into a more refreshing four-day break. If a vacation isn’t an option right now, take regular brief breaks during the day. Even a few minutes of quiet time will help.

3. Sensory rest: Turning down the lights, minimizing background noise, and eliminating other sensory distractions gives your senses a break from overstimulation. Sensory rest reduces cortisol, the stress hormone. It also helps you focus and improve cognition. You don’t have to totally eliminate sensory stimulation to refresh your senses. Dialing down the number of sensory distractions you’re dealing with and their intensity helps. Some types of sensory stimulation, certain scents and types of music for example, can also help you relax. Experiment to see what works best for you.

4. Creative rest: Creative rest re-awakens your senses of wonder and awe. Today’s work environments demand creativity, both personal and organizational. It’s easy to get burned out, to focus on the limitations of the constraints you’re working with, not the opportunities for innovation the constraints afford. You know you’re burned out when you’re more focused on why an idea or project is impossible than what is possible. That’s when a change of perspective helps. Nature is a powerful catalyst for creative rest. It connects us with the cycle of life and reminds us that life is about change. Art is also a powerful catalyst. Grandeur, beauty, human achievement, persistence, the long-view, and emotional connection are just a few of the things that pull us out of our limiting beliefs and subjectivity, opening us up to ideas and possibilities larger than ourselves.

5. Emotional rest: Many of us are people pleasers, more inclined to tell others what we think they want to hear instead of expressing our genuine feelings. Being authentic and sharing our true feelings takes energy. If you’re holding back it may be a sign that you need emotional rest. One way to get emotional rest is to share your feelings with a willing listener—a family member, friend, or therapist who you can be honest with and who can listen without judgement. Another way is to journal. Both strategies give you the opportunity to verbalize your authentic feelings—offloading the weight of unspoken emotions.

6. Social rest: We are social creatures. Socializing is fun, but can also be exhausting, especially when most of our social interaction takes place online, as we are experiencing now because of the pandemic. Social interaction requires reading and processing cues. Online interactions, whether via messaging or over video, make it harder to read social cues. Socializing can also be stressful when we fail to distinguish between relationships that energize us and those that drain us. Be conscious of how much time you’re spending socializing online. Sign off when you’re feeling drained. Focus your social time on engaging with the positive and supportive people in your circle—the ones who bring joy into your life.

7. Spiritual rest: Dr. Dalton-Smith defines spiritual rest as “the ability to connect beyond the physical and mental and feel a deep sense of belonging, love, acceptance and purpose.” Some find spiritual rest in their religious practice and community. Others find it in meditation. Research shows that giving of yourself—your time, energy, and compassion—also leads to spiritual renewal. Helping others lifts us out of our subjective feelings and provides us with new perspectives on our lives, our gifts, and our strengths. No one can tell you what will refresh your spirit—you have to study your inner life, your soul, to find the thing that enables you to attain the spiritual rest Dr. Dalton-Smith describes. The important thing is to recognize the need for spiritual renewal and make room in your life for the activities that connect you to something larger than yourself.

Dr. Dalton-Smith’s online rest quiz helps you assess your rest deficits. After you complete the quiz, you’ll receive an email with your rest deficit assessment. Once you understand your rest deficits, you can explore and try exercises targeted at repairing your specific deficits. Below you’ll find some book recommendations that may help you further explore rest and renewal.

Next week’s article will go deeper into techniques for creative rest and renewal.

Coda

It feels appropriate to end this issue with a poem. Charles Simic is a former U.S. poet laureate, MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” winner, and Pulitzer Prize winner to name just a few of the accolades he’s garnered throughout his prolific career. Simic, who immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager, writes with unflinching clarity, deep compassion, ironic humor, and joy about a wide range of subjects—from the brutality of authoritarianism, to the inner life of a magician’s dummy, to the foreboding quality of black cats.

Stone

Go inside a stone.
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill—
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.

© 1971 by Charles Simic

Watch a short video of Charles Simic reading “Stone”

Further Reading on Rest and Renewal

• The Art of Rest: How to Find Respite in the Modern Age, Claudia Hammond

• Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May

• The Enlightened Heart, Stephen Mitchell

• The Enlightened Mind, Stephen Mitchell

• How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell

• Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

• Sacred Rest, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith