When you don’t feel like doing anything
Me: I am so tired. I feel like I should go back to bed. Not sure what I should do.
My husband: Go back to bed.
This is a text between my husband and me yesterday morning. I had slept OK, was not sick AND had a full day ahead of me, yet I didn’t feel like moving a muscle. I was cooked. Done. Depleted from too much activity over the weekend. So motivated by my permission slip, I headed back to my cozy bed for a morning nap. And by noon I was feeling much more energized.
As I travel around the globe speaking to men/women about how to come into balance through the art/science of self-care, I hear over and over again: things feel like they’re moving too fast. I’m exhausted, and I want off the treadmill.
As a work-life effectiveness author/speaker, I believe one of the essential strategies for mitigating speeded-up living is to REST. Rest restores our energy levels, helps us integrate and re-calibrate, boosts productivity and problem-solving, and helps us create sustainability in a world that never slows down.
When we keep pushing (like I did this past weekend), as some point our bodies rebel and say, “Enough!” My dear friend, the wise Dr. Claudia Welch shares, “If we feel tired, we think something is wrong. Nothing is wrong. We are just tired. We need rest. Sometimes a lot of it, if we’ve gone for years vetoing our body’s signals.”
Want support for finding time for rest? Read 5 Ways to Get the Rest You Need or Do Less, Experience More.
Self-care is not about self-indulgence, it’s about self-preservation. Audrey Lorde.
HOW CAN I SUPPORT YOU? HERE ARE TWO OPPORTUNITIES:
Schedule me to plan/facilitate a custom workshop or retreat for your company, team or organization on work-life balance, resiliency or self-renewal. Learn more and email me at workshops@reneetrudeau.com to discuss your next event.
Renew, replenish and recharge with like-minded women at a fall self-renewal retreat. In transition and seeking clarity/support and a weekend of deep to-the-bones renewal? Join me Jan. 24-26 at Kripalu in the MA Berkshire Mountains (highly recommended!) for my New Way of Being Retreat. View all upcoming fall retreats here.
Subscribe here to Live Inside Out, a weekly blog written by life balance teacher author/speaker and self-care evangelist Renée Peterson Trudeau. Passionate about helping men and women find balance through the art/science of self-care, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, US News & World Report, Spirituality & Health and more. She is the author of two books on life balance including the award-winning The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and 17-year-old son. More on Renee here.