Rest is for sure experienced very differently from person to person. Today we live in a very hectic and stressful world. We teach our children to perform, to work, to do marathons. We are constantly online, play games, chat and interact. Even when we talk about staying at home and „doing nothing“, what we actually mean is to check the stock market, to turn on the tv, to have some friends over for dinner, to read a book or listen to music. This is actually quite and active program for "doing nothing“
Real peace, however, has a very different quality. It is the time, when we have no other pursuits
than to go about and be alone with one's thoughts and feelings. The highest level of this „doing nothing“ is actually to do nothing: to think and to feel nothing. Oh, that is a challenge for us. We are trained that doing nothing, has no value. We produce nothing. It couldn’t be more wrong. This is when we connect to our selves. When we are connected to our selves, we have everything we need. Strength, stability, creativity, guidance, clarity and so on and so worth.
According to the Swiss research from 2018 „Job-Stress-Index“ (this is not only a phenomena in Switzerland) around a quarter of all working people in Switzerland (27,1%) have more workload at their workplace than resources.The fatigue rate is equally distributed across regions, sectors and educational qualifications. People without leadership function are more exhausted than people with leadership function.
Consequently with stress follows increasingly complaints such as burnout, depression, sleep disorders or chronic diseases such as back pain. This in turn leads to a decrease in performance, decision problems, work loss, illness treatment, rehabilitation, reintegration measures or even disability pensions. All of which are very expensive for us as individuals and for our society, hence has a huge macro economic impact.
In my own life there was a time, before I decided to change my path. I was very close to being too exhausted. I am so thankful, that I became aware of the situation in an early stage. I noticed this, when the weekends were to short to recover. Once a friend came for a visit for a long weekend with her newborn baby. I think we where staying on the sofa in my home, more or less the whole time. I was too exhausted to really do anything. Another time I went for a long hike and needed to sit down every 15 minutes for a rest. The alarm clocks did make a noice. Something inside of me told me, to listen and to do something about it.
Here are my five steps I did to come back to balance.
1. I bought a dog and started to spend less time in the office and more time out in the nature.
2. I started to do yoga regularly and did my first Ayurveda treatment.
3. This helped my to find my purpose - coaching and supporting other people to look inwards.
4. Yoga opened the door to a steady practice of meditation.
5. The meditation took me to a very calm place. Here I can still hear my inner voice very clearly. I followed that voice, which has led me to love, a life with more time, rest and an office very close to the beach.
Please take a rest, do sometimes nothing, take care of your self and your loved ones.
Namaste
Quelle: Gesundheitsförderung Schweiz
