Breathe. Rest. Breathe Again.

I’m embracing the concept of rest and I’m feeling super mushy today. I want you to love you and I want me to love me. I want us all to just love each other because that’s a pretty amazing feeling.

“Love is what we are; we don’t get it from somebody, we can’t give it to anybody, we can’t fall in it or fall out of it. Love is our true Being.” -Krishna Das

Once we start feeling this way love stops being this selfishly horded commodity that we’re afraid to give away or afraid that we’ll never have enough of. I think that we should all strive to just be love. In those rare moments that we succeed, it’s a beautiful thing.

Anyway, I’ve been writing in my Self Love Planner and I want to talk about a really important concept that maybe you aren’t too familiar with. Rest.

It’s that thing you do when you aren’t doing things.

Rest. Yeah, roll that word over in that lovely brain of yours. What does rest mean to you and do you actually do it? Are you intimate with each other? Are you bffs that occasionally go out for tea?

There is a very important difference between mindful and intentional rest and things you do when you aren’t really doing anything.

Five years ago, my idea of rest was sitting in front of the computer on World of Warcraft, long after my bedtime, doing my very best to pretend I was a pretty elf with a bow and arrow who did really cool stuff. It had nothing to do with me.

It had nothing to do with being healthy, it was just time-wasting stuff that I did.

Was it restful? Well yeah, I was sitting on my hiney not doing much of anything. But was it nourishing? Was it enriching my life? Was it taking all of those things in life that stress me out and make me anxious and letting my process them in a healthy way? Not really.

Rest.

Just thinking that word makes me sigh deeply inside of myself. It brings to mind delicious meditation sessions that make me feel like the pieces of myself are falling back into place, and yoga moves that make me feel like I’m going to melt into a puddle of happiness, and mornings outside in the sunlight when I’m not thinking about anything in particular but how wonderful life is in the moment.

This is what I ask of you this month:

Rest.

Don’t feel guilty about it, don’t overthink it, don’t be afraid to schedule it into your to-do list. Let it be wonderful. Rest those thoughts that keep running through your head that you aren’t enough. Rest that burden that you carry that says that you have to do everything and rest that stubborn streak that says that rest automatically equals laziness.

It doesn’t and you aren’t.

What helps fill you back up and put you back together?