If there’s one thing I believe more than anything about leadership other than we can’t do leadership alone is that leaders need to find rest. Rest is critical to your personal development, even if it seems counterintuitive.
The Role Of Rest And Renewal In Personal Development
Photo by Aleksandar Cvetanovic on Unsplash
There are multiple reasons why rest is essential in your personal development. Rest does the following:
- Recharges our minds
- Recharges our bodies
- Gives us clarity
- Allows us to process our day
- Helps us to process our situations
As you can see, rest isn’t something we choose to do. Rest is something we must do. But we struggle with rest because we’re told to hustle all day, every day. That’s terrible advice. We have to find ways to slip rest into our days.
But how do we make rest important? How do we get rest in our days?
Practical Ways To Find Rest In Your Schedule
I’m not going to lie. I understand why you may not be getting the rest you need. Your schedule is already busy.
You may be spending 10-12 hours in the office. This leaves little time for rest. Or you may work an 8-hour shift only to run home, cook dinner, spend time with your husband, and then run the kids to soccer practice.
We’ve packed our days with activities. Activities overrun our days and our lives. So, what do we do about it?
Here are some practical ways to get rest.
Schedule rest:
This may sound silly, but scheduling rest can be one of the most relaxing ways to get rest. Ensure you block off enough time at night to get a good 7-8 hours of rest. You’ll wake up feeling refreshed and renewed and ready to take on the new day.
Limit your activities:
It sounds great to be busy. You have so many things going on. Busyness makes you sound important.
Instead, busyness makes you tired, worn out, and irritable. It’s not as great as you think it is.
Because of this, you need to limit the extra activities you bring into your life, even the good ones. You may need to reconsider the church board position you’ve taken on, the recreational basketball team you’ve joined, or the side hustle you’ve decided to pursue.
None of these are bad. Yet, these activities can contribute to a sense of burnout and tiredness. If you’re not allowing yourself time to rest, you won’t.
Meditate on scripture:
Our minds get so busy thinking about our earthly needs that we forget about our spiritual needs. Create a practice of meditating on scripture from the Bible.
Meditating on scripture not only helps you get the word of God into your mind, but it can also calm your anxious soul. The words found in the Bible are life and healing and truth. You can rely on knowing what is right, true, and just by diving into scripture reading and meditating on what you’ve read.
Journal your thoughts:
Take time to write out what you’re thinking. Your mind is going a million miles an hour. Focus it, harness your mind.
By journaling, you can figure out what you’re feeling, what you’re doing, and why you’re doing what you’re doing. Use journaling as a way to calm the mind, slow down, and rest.
You Need Rest
We all need to find more rest in our lives. Our lives are out of balance with the constant drive to produce. Get out of the rat race.
Instead, find ways to carve out pieces of rest throughout your day. The more rest you find, the more open to new experiences and ideas.
Find rest through scripture, journaling, scheduling, and limiting.
