Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree
One evening we couldn’t find Patrick.
It was approaching dinnertime and everyone else was in the kitchen, but he was nowhere to be found.
I called upstairs, “Patrick!” But there was no response.
When that didn’t work, I did what any calm parent might do: I screamed louder. Then much louder.
Realizing that even my sternest voice wasn’t working, I went upstairs to get him. But he wasn’t there. After checking throughout the house, I went outside.
There, in the backyard, I saw him sitting in an Adirondack chair.
The trivial anger I’d felt during my search faded as I made my way over to him. I sat down next to him, put my arm around him, and asked, “What are you doing, Patrick?”
Without even looking over at me, he replied, “Nothing.” With a contented smile on his lips.
He made me realize that sometimes I get so focused on getting things done, propelling the day forward, and checking all the boxes that I miss the gift of simply being in the moment.
But Patrick knew what he was doing. He’d spent the day at school, hard at work, and he was about to engage in more activities. So it was time for a rest.
When was the last time you sat in the middle of the day, without your phone, without an agenda, with nothing to do?
When was the last time you weren’t worried about getting something accomplished, going through some checklist, or preparing for the next meeting?
The University of Michigan scientists who propose that we have mental fatigue due to our constant multitasking believe that what allows our brain to rest is something they call “soft fascination.”1 Soft fascination is the state your brain enters into when you watch a sunset or gaze out at the horizon, the kind of meditative trance that occurs when you are transfixed by a campfire or watching rainfall. Finding opportunities for soft fascination inside may be hard, but nature provides countless prospects.
You can gaze at the leaves blowing in the breeze.
Stare up at the clouds passing by.
Watch water tumble over rocks in the creek.
In fact, nature does much more than provide opportunites for your brain to rest. Doctors up to date on research on the curative effects of nature are beginning to prescribe it as a remedy for what ails us.
Neuroscientist Oliver Sacks said that gardens and music were two of the most important non-pharmacological therapies available. “I cannot say exactly how nature exerts its calming and organizing effects on our brains, but I have seen in my patients the restorative and healing powers of nature and gardens, even for those who are deeply disabled neurologically. In many cases, gardens and nature are more powerful than any medication.”2
Fresh air, gentle breezes, and the sounds of birds can be life-giving for us.
Exposure to nature has been connected to improved mood in those struggling with depression. It reduces stress. Yoshifumi Miyazaki, a physical anthropologist and a proponent of shinrin therapy (the Japanese art of forest bathing), revealed that walking in a forest, as opposed to an urban environment, delivers:
A 12 percent decrease in levels of cortisol (the hormone that causes us to feel stress)
A 7 percent decrease in sympathetic nerve activity (which governs our fight-or-flight behavior)
A 1.4 percent decrease in blood pressure
A 6 percent decrease in heart rate
These life-giving and restorative benefits are discovered by simply going outside.3
“Forest bathing” does not mean just taking a walk. It means practicing the art of immersion, allowing all of your senses to notice what they are experiencing. You awaken your sense of smell and breathe in the aroma of pine needles. You listen to the whispering wind caressing leaves high above. You look at the deep green of the moss on the far side of the tree. You take off your shoes and feel the mud, cool on the soles of your feet.
You stop dipping your toes. You go in, deep.
While this practice is gaining widespread popularity throughout the world, even spending just twenty minutes in a park, whether you take a walk or simply sit on a bench, can make you feel better.4
When we bring rest back into the rotation, we are able to recharge our batteries so that we can more fully show up in our relationships, our work, and the world.
I’m sometimes traveling to three different cities in a week. Because of all the travel, and the fact that I try to get home in time for dinner to see my family as much as possible, I often take early morning flights so I can get there and back in the span of a few hours. That means getting up at 4:00 A.M. So sometimes I’m running on very little sleep, fueled by a little brown beverage served by a barista.
I’m not alone. Thirty-three percent of Americans are getting six hours of sleep or less per night. For some, how little they sleep becomes a badge of honor. Because of course, there is so much more important stuff to do, right? We’re that important. Only those who don’t have real responsibilties have time for sleep.
But the research would argue otherwise.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that sleep and rest are restorative.
And guess what? If you are getting less than six hours of sleep per night, you are 30 percent less happy than your colleagues who went to bed on time!
If only we would listen to the admonition we yell at our kids: Get to bed!
Sleep also helps with engagement on the job. Getting less than six hours of sleep each night was one of the best predictors of burnout in the workplace.5
Commit to sleeping more than six hours tonight, and you’ll find yourself 30 percent happier, and more satisfied with your work! It’s a pretty good deal, isn’t it?
We think our problems are so complicated—and sometimes they are. But just twenty minutes spent outside in the open air and a little more sleep can make a prodigious difference.
So rest improves your happiness, helps you perform better, and increases your engagement.
A sixty- to ninety-minute nap can improve memory test results as much as a full eight hours of sleep. Ernst and Young conducted a study in 2006 and discovered that for each additional ten hours of vacation their employees took, their year-end performance improved by 8 percent. Those who took vacation were also less likely to leave the firm.6
I probably don’t have to tell you that in America, we aren’t so great at taking vacations. Despite the fact that we get just ten vacation days on average, 55 percent of Americans don’t even use all of them.
What happens on vacation? We rest. We play. We get outside. We explore new places, inviting the mindset of first-time living back into our daily experience.
And yet, too many of us leave that opportunity behind to stay productive and get more stuff done.
To get back to living In Awe, we must recognize the importance of rest. When we do, we’ll be happier, less burnt out at work, and more available to others.
But that’s not all! Rest also does something else even more valuable.
It reminds us of what’s truly important.
It’s time to bring back the Sabbath.
Now, I’m not suggesting that we need to follow a certain religion in order to learn to rest. But I do think that the practice of stopping that is woven into the fabric of many religions is something we desperately need in our secular lives.
With fewer Americans participating in regular religious services, combined with new technology that allows us to work 24/7, our culture no longer has anything to remind us to make time for weekly personal renewal.
More than a decade ago, I read an article by author Judith Shulevitz that moved me so deeply I cut it out of the paper. When I started the Live Inspired Podcast, I knew that I wanted her to be one of my guests, to impart some of her wisdom with our listeners. As we talked, she shared that being raised in a traditional Jewish home meant she had observed the Sabbath religiously as a child. The practice of stopping the traditional routine from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday made time for something important.
They paused work.
They came together as a family.
They united as a community.
The Sabbath was a time for adherents of the Jewish faith to follow the example set by God, who after six days of creation, rested on the seventh day. It was once such a widespread concept among Christians that there were laws requiring stores, banks, and museums to be shuttered on Sundays so that everyone could observe the holy day.
Today, most stores are open, and we get irked when one isn’t.
We use the day to hammer out the slew of tasks that have been waiting for us all week long. Laundry. Grocery runs. Soccer games. Maybe a few hours spent getting ahead of the workweek to come.
Judith was once guilty of this, too. As she grew up, she moved away from not only her faith but also its traditions. She worked hard during the week and packed her weekends with activities. There was nothing left in her life to remind her to stop and relax, to enjoy a meal with friends, to sit down and read a book.
Judith ultimately found her way back to her faith and the Sabbath tradition. The pause that the Sabbath required was so incredibly restorative and life-giving to her that she became an evangelist for it. For Judith, the Sabbath has less to do with being religious but more to do with emphasizing the value of setting aside time to step away from action so we can remember why we work so hard.
“Why should God have considered it so important to stop?” she asks. “God stopped to show us that what we create becomes meaningful to us only once we stop creating it and start to think about why we did so….We have to stop to remember.”7
There is power in the pause.
When was the last time you stopped all the striving and organizing and productivity to ask: What am I doing all this for?
Our culture’s attempt to right this wrong? Offer one more task as a solution, of course! Today you’ll find apps that remind you to meditate and offer courses on mindfulness. But unfortunately, these solutions frequently become just more of the problem: They get added to our to-do list, one more task to accomplish.
Instead, I believe we need to appreciate what it means to truly stop. Sit. Stare up at the clouds. And do nothing. Absolutely nothing!
Take a nap, or get lost in our thoughts. Become skilled in what Patricia Hampl, author of The Art of the Wasted Day, described as “the lost music of wondering, the sheer value of looking out the window, letting the world float along. It’s nothing, really, this wasted time, which is how it becomes, paradoxically, charged with ‘everything,’ liberated into the blessed loss of ambition.”8
The blessed loss of ambition: This is what rest can be. We sacrifice the constant striving and we allow ourselves to relax into the space of nothingness.
No agenda.
No problem-solving.
No productivity.
In doing so, I promise you’ll be reminded of what life is truly about.
Put that on your to-do list.
Then sit back and give yourself permission to do exactly that: nothing.