Resting your way to success is not the lazy man’s guide to getting ahead. It's vital to keeping your mind creative and your body healthy. It can be as passive as napping on the beach or as active as going for a run...whatever recharges your batteries. Although the body is winding down during rest, the brain maintains background activity that often leads to "light bulb" moments.
Here are a few tips on how to rest over the holidays:
Absence makes the mind grow fonder
It takes eight days away from work to disassociate from it but this is less likely to happen if you’re still engaged via email. You'll have fresher perspectives and new ideas about work if you disengage from it.
Do a digital detox
Unfriending social media frees up emotional energy. It’s hard to read about someone’s emotional reactions without also feeling those emotions.
Get high on endorphins with exercise
Exercise pushes the body but resets the mind. Physiologically, it brings down stress hormones and increases the mood-elevating ones.
Un-schedule your life
Release yourself from the rush of getting from one engagement to the next. Let the day unfold without the stress of having to be somewhere at a certain time. In fact, take off your watch and find your natural rhythms again. Sleep when you feel tired, eat when you feel hungry and if you're still tired, sleep some more.
Get to a green space
Being in nature (anywhere from your garden to the seaside) has a buffering effect on stress. Unlike our urban landscape, natural sceneries do not bombard us with stimulation that deplete our mental energy.
Unleash your creativity
Creative activities such as painting, cooking, dancing, knitting or playing music actually have similar benefits to meditating. Activities in which we lose ourselves (and our problems) stimulate the release of dopamine, an anti-depressant.