Good morning and welcome to Morning Chat for March 28, 2022
Do you rest? How about sleep?
For the longest time I didn’t or did very little of each. I knew that I needed to take time during the day to let my mind rest, but very seldom gave myself time to let my body rest. I had to get stuff done. I needed more hours in the day but since that wasn’t going to happen, I would take that precious time from the one place that it seemed to not be needed… at night.
One thing to remember is that rest and sleep are very different. When you rest you know what is going on around you and you are allowing your body time to be. Whereas when you sleep you are oblivious to the world around you, and your body is in control not your mind.
5 weeks ago today, I was outsourced. When I lost my job and figured that nothing would change with my sleep habits. I had suffered from insomnia for years and figured that it would just keep going. I figured that good sleep was a relegated to the ‘fairy tale’ land, and except for the occasional full night of sleep that I would get – nothing was going to change. And the first couple weeks it didn’t. I had a bad cold, and it threw my sleep cycle on its head, but now it is different. Today I was late getting on to write this post (sorry by the way) because I was sleeping.
The crazy thing is that the first couple weeks I felt guilty about it. I am a ‘up early’ kind of person. And the last few weeks my wake time has been a couple hours later then ‘normal’. After thinking about it, I realized that it wasn’t a bad thing, and since I didn’t have a set-in stone schedule anymore, I could allow myself time to sleep. My body needed it, my life has changed, and I am in transition. I had to tell myself that it was ok, and since then it is ok. I go to bed when I am tired, get up when I am rested. Don’t laugh, but it’s a whole new concept for me.
Rest, on the other hand may take a little time to get used to. What I need to remember is that I don’t need to stop everything to rest. I can actively rest – take a relaxing walk, meditate, do yoga, or read a book.
How do you rest?
-D
