This week I’ve been re-learning what, for me, is a long-standing lesson – putting ‘me’ before my tasks. I’m not talking about doing things for others, which I covered in the post ‘I don’t have time to (not) look after myself‘. I’m talking about my own stuff – my shopping, my laundry, my housework. The things I need, and want, to do for myself.
You see, when I have a week off work I tend to load the beginning of my week with all the things I need and want to do now I’m at home. And I leave rest and chill out time until the end of the week. I decide that I’ll get all the ‘stuff’ done at home, then I can relax. And what happens is I experience a mini burnout as I put pressure on myself to do things, when what I really need is to rest.
And the ridiculous thing is, I know this! I know I need to rest. I feel it in my body. I get a ‘tired but wired’ feeling, an exhausted restlessness. But rather than finding ways to relax, I figure I’ll capitalise on the wired bit and just get on with stuff. Which exacerbates the whole situation! On top of which, I’m not even necessarily doing the things I need to as well as I’d like, because I’m too tired to concentrate properly.
It’s a lesson I’ve been learning on and off for years. You’d think I’d have it nailed by now! And this time I topped it off by trying to relax.
I don’t know about you, but when I try to relax I find it anything but relaxing. I think the key is in that word ‘trying’. If I’m ‘trying’ to do something then I’m working at it, and relaxing is less of a ‘working at’, and more of a ‘letting go’ and a release.
So eventually, after a good friend helped me realise what I was doing, I swapped my to-do list around, and put rest at the top of it. I stopped ‘trying’ to relax, and listened to my body – do I need a walk, a snooze, to read my book. And in listening to my body, I then relaxed.
Of course, once I feel more rested, then I have the energy to get on with my tasks and do them to the best of my ability.
Not everyone works like me. Some people need to get stuff done in order to rest, otherwise it plays on their mind, making relaxation impossible. The key is to understand how you yourself function. And if you’re someone who needs to clear the decks in order to relax, then make sure you put time in your schedule to rest – it’s so easy to keep the list topped up so you never get down time.
It’s all a matter of prioritisation. If we’re not rested we won’t be able to function and do our tasks as well as we would wish. So prioritising ourselves above our tasks is important, regardless of which way round we do it. (And yes, there are certain situations in which rest is hard, and that’s for another post…)
So which type of person are you – rest first, do later, or do first then rest? And how can you prioritise rest and relaxation in your life?
Making Time for Me 