Listen to Yourself: a Reminder of the Importance of Rest and Self-Care
My blogging calendar has a different post scheduled for today, but I came down with a bad head cold this week and that other post didn’t get written.
Actually, partway through the week, I gave myself permission not to write it. As I weighed my options (not posting at all, writing a quick “I’ll be back” post), I kept coming back to my choice to give myself space and time for nurturing, for rest, for ease.
Even before I got sick, I’d been thinking about ways to invite more ease into my life, about building time and space for nurturing myself and my creativity into my days. Coming down with this bug, proved just how much I need it.
Whenever I get sick (which, granted, isn’t often and hasn’t happened in a long time), I know my body is trying to tell me something. It’s a blatant sign of disEASE.
In our society we have no time for this. Just look at the messaging around cold medicine — you take it so you can get back to work. Isn’t the very fact that you’re sick a sign your body needs rest?
But waiting till we get sick, till we have no choice but to rest, doesn’t make sense. At the end of an illness, do we feel rested and rejuvenated?
I know I don’t.
And it’s more than just my body that needs rest. My mind needs it, too. My creativity needs it. Rest energizes us so we can tackle the next exciting project.
Because maybe you could use it, too, I decided not to skip blogging this week and instead to share a little reminder (and a nudge)…
Take time for rest. Take time for self-care. Take time to nurture yourself and your creativity.
As with any time I have something on my mind, I keep running into examples and reminders of these ideas. I thought I’d share a few here to help inspire you, too:
In a recent video Sandi Hester talks about taking part of the day off on Fridays for creative adventures and also about how she’s moving to posting videos every other Friday instead of every week.
Margo Tantau recently wrote in her newsletter: “I believe creativity is fueled by the brain's ability to mind-wander. In order for that to happen, we need to STOP & REST.”*
Kelly Rae Roberts writes about rest on her blog: “I like to think of it as my own personal and radical protest. I take my time. I linger. I do a lot of puttering and lounging. I let all the ideas drop into that spaciousness without activating immediately. I wander. Daydream. I see it as my work as an artist to do so.”
I’ve been taking Liz Lamoreux’s Five Things class and just over halfway through she gave us an extra day to pause for breathing space.
It’s good to know I’m not the only one who feels the necessity for rest. Coming across example after example makes me even more committed to the idea of creating spaciousness in my life and in my creative practice. I’m not sure what this will look like for me moving forward, but it’s going to be fun to figure it out.
What about you? Are you good at giving yourself time and space for rest, for self-care, for nurturing? In what ways do you invite ease and slow down? What does breathing space look like for you?
*because of the way her newsletter is formatted I can’t link to it. Her notes are inspiring and you can sign up here.