Do NOTHING - the Art of Deep Rest

Posted on 12th April 2025 at 20:08

I have a question for you. When was the last time you did nothing? Just looked up at the clouds, turned your face to the sun, no agenda, no schedule, no doing, just being. I wouldn't mind betting that you, like me, haven't done that a lot since you were a child or a teenager.

And then you get on with life and it's all go, go, go, do, do, do, catch up, do this, do that, always got to be somewhere, always got to look after somebody else and you just don't have time to be you become a human doing instead of a human being. The problem is if we don't take time to just do nothing

If we don't allow all that noise in our heads to clear, don't allow ourselves to feel where we are and connect with who we really are on a regular basis, we're in danger, aren't we, of burning out.

Have you ever suffered from burnout? I have and it's not a pleasant place to be. Now you don't have to be the CEO of a company to suffer from stress. Stress is whatever you do that puts you under pressure and that you don't feel that you can cope, and/ or that you're not living your truth, so you're not being fully yourself. So you might have a nine-to-five job where you're, say, working as an accountant's assistant. And you go into work every day and you earn the money to pay your bills, but your heart isn't in it because what you really want to be doing is playing your music, or you want to be developing your art, or something else that you feel that is impossible for you.

Maybe you've always wanted to be a nurse, but you don't feel that you can go and train. Or maybe you've always wanted to work with your hands, but you've ended up in a white collar job, and it's just not filling you up.

This is when stress starts to pile on us, bit by bit. So maybe we've got day-to-day stress with a job that we're not enjoying. Maybe we have stress then on top of that in our relationship, a divorce perhaps. But even if it's not that big a deal, you've still got that little drip, drip, drip of knowing that you're not getting on. And it's stressful. You go home at night and you're not feeling comfortable in your own home with your own partner. Sometimes stress can be caused by illness or worrying about other people, your pet, your children, your parents, the state of the world, the state of the politics of the world, or whatever and it goes up and up and up and eventually there'll be one small thing and it's too much.

This is what happened to me and I know that it happens to a lot of people in their 50s and beyond, and younger. I mean it's just endemic isn't it? Worry and stress is endemic in the world. The sad thing is that we think we can't escape these situations. We think we're trapped. It is the case that we do need to provide for our families. We do need to go to work every day. We do need to put money into our retirement funds and so on and so forth, support children, do the caring roles that we do.

But if we're not living our truth, then we're heading for difficulty. The thing is, you take your car in every so often for a service. But we take that as read, don't we? That we need to service our cars. Otherwise they're not going to keep going. But we often fail to service our own bodies.

More than our bodies, we forget to service our minds. So what happens when we don't pay attention to these things? Well, like a car, we break down. It can start simply with a feeling of unease. It might not get any further than that. It might be that you start getting run down and you get more illnesses than usual.

Very often our bodies will tell us how stressed we are before we even realise it mentally. Our bodies and minds need regular rest but we deny ourselves. Why on earth is that? Why would we deny ourselves the self-care, the proper self-care beyond the candles around the bath, that we need to continue to function as human beings?

Actor, Jim Carrey put it very well. He famously suffers from depression, and I've seen him talk before about depression actually being about your body needing deep rest. I guess it means that we'll have a functional breakdown if we don't stop and rest. And we don't necessarily just need sleep. We think we'll go to sleep, we'll sleep more, but when you're going into burnout, it doesn't matter how much sleep you get, you just don't feel refreshed. You still feel tired, you still feel lacking in energy, you still feel low.

I've had a period over the last few months where I felt that way, and I've kept going and I've kept going and I've kept going, and then recently something happened that just tipped me over the edge slightly, and I suddenly recognized, my goodness, I'm going to that place again, that place where the world suddenly starts to go grey and I don't see the colours and I don't feel the joy that I can objectively see is around me, or there for me. So I pulled back and I took myself off, just to retreat.

Jason Vale who runs a juicing company called Juice Master says, "Sometimes you have to retreat to move forward," and I'm a really great believer in that, and so that's what I've been doing. I've been sleeping when I want to. I've been sitting in the garden and just watching the birds and putting feeders out for the birds so I've got more birds to watch. I've watched the seasons start to change and I've made myself - and I really did have to make myself - slow down.

I think that we need to look at our energy levels and the way that we go up and down on a daily basis as well as a weekly or a monthly basis or an annual basis. We need to become more aware of when too much is being put on us, whether that's from outside influences or whether that's within us and we're pushing ourselves too hard.

There's no judgment here. There's no kind of government leaflet that says you must do x hours of work a week and you must exercise this much and... well there is isn't there? I'm talking rubbish ignore that bit because there are so many government directives telling us, and maybe that's part of the problem as well you know you've got to exercise 30 minutes three times a week, you need to walk every day it's all pressure, pressure, pressure when you're feeling pressured

So getting back to what I wanted to say, there are different types of rest. Now my friend, Sam Palmer, who you've heard me talk about before and who's been interviewed on the podcast, sent an email out recently where she described nine different types of rest. I'd love to know if you relate to any of this or if you think that you can incorporate any of this into your life so that you don't burn out. Let me know in the comments.

So let's have a look at those nine types of rest and let's see what resonates with you.

The first and most obvious one is to have some time away. That's something that we all tend to do, don't we? We look forward to our annual holiday. We go off to the sun somewhere. We lie on a sun lounger because we're absolutely exhausted. And I don't know about you, but very often I'll catch a cold while I'm out there and I'll be off half the time I'm there because I'm so run down and the virus doesn't catch up with me until I actually stop. We all know that feeling, but time away is valuable, especially when it means that you can reconnect with the people that you love and do some of the things that you love to do, and reconnect with yourself, whether that's reading a trashy novel on that sun lounger, or going and looking around an art gallery, whatever fills you up. But there are other things that you can do as well.

You can do something unproductive. What does that mean? Now this is one I really struggle with. Everything that I do has a purpose, whether it's to write something or share something or to help somebody, like if I'm looking after grandchildren or something like that. So if you need permission to do something unproductive, then this is it. I'm going to give it to you with my love. So do something unproductive, whether that's just sitting in the sun or going for a walk, not going for a walk to exercise, going for a wander.

Which brings me also to appreciating nature. That's a restful thing to do because it connects us to the world around us and to whatever you perceive the source to be, whether you have a God that you worship or a sense of being more than just yourself and being part of a oneness. You need that, that kind of spiritual filling up of being in nature and being part of the changing seasons. That's a really good form of rest is to wander in nature.

Going to an art gallery. If that fills you up to look at the paintings, just stand and stare, or in my case, go find a seat and stare! That fills you up spiritually as well as emotionally and gives you physical rest as a result.

Listening to music, know, just cranking up the volume, dancing around your kitchen or just sitting in your recliner with your headphones on listening to a symphony. that fills you up, that's restful. It's taking you out of your everyday and it's giving you that time to regroup and to come back again into your life fully, fully present and able to carry on.

Spending time alone at home. Some people never get that. They've got people around them all the time and it's really important to have a safe space that you can be alone in. Even if that's just retreating to your bedroom for an hour to put on a meditation.

Doing something creative. That always takes you out of yourself, doesn't it? And we think of it as being productive, but if it's something creative, it's actually taking you into a different part of your brain. So it's giving you a rest from your day to day.

You know, as human beings, we need solitude to recharge our batteries and we need stillness to decompress.. But there are certain activities that also count as rest,

Anything that involves creativity, whether that's gardening or painting, whatever you'd like to do that's more creative, that's nothing to do with work, it's nothing to do with helping someone else, we can't be helpful all the time and again here's your permission to not be helpful. just for a little bit of time to help yourself, to give yourself the help and care that you give to others.

I really hope that that's given you an overview of why doing nothing is so important, whether that's literally nothing or nothing in terms of being unproductive or not doing something that's helping others or so on and so forth.

I'm finding for myself that the fog is beginning to lift and I'm starting to come alive again. The sunshine helps I'm sure. Forgive yourself if you're having one of those periods in life where you're just not on your game. You know, these things happen, and beating ourselves up because we're not being as productive as usual or not being ourselves isn't helpful at all.

Doing nothing should be part of our lives, part of our weekly routines, even daily routines, even if it's just 15 minutes a day, lie in the bath, stare at the ceiling. Whatever fills you up, that's what you need to do. You're worth it. You mean something. I see you. Until next time.

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