Labor(less) Day: A Note on the Importance of Rest

Hi lovelies!

I hope you’re having a beautiful, slow Saturday morning to kick off the long weekend ahead…mine looks like a big cup of coffee and relaxing out on my back porch…so yes please!

This weekend (and this season in life) has me thinking a lot about the importance of rest and all that it can do for us…and all that, in turn, we can do, because we are feeling well rested.

Now, I don’t mean rest in that you got a good night’s sleep last night; although I do think that that plays a role in how you feel in the day-to-day. I’m talking more about intentionally taking times to be away from the busyness of life, to seclude yourself from all the hustle and bustle for a little while and just recenter yourself.

If you know me at all, you know that I will talk openly about how bad I am at taking that intentional time away from the craziness in life but I wanted to write up this post today to encourage me (and maybe you, too) to find a few little restful habits that work for you and then collectively we can try to put them into action during this long weekend & beyond!

So what are some of the best ways to encourage rest in your life? (Keep in mind, not every one of these will work for you…so try a few of them out and hold tight to the ones that you feel work best with your schedule/personality!:

1. Meditation. This practice can be done a number of ways (with music, in silence, with deep breathing exercises, meditating on one thought/idea, trying to think about nothing, sitting in the middle of your living room floor, etc.) the key is finding what allows you to be able to enter into a place of rest in your mind & stick with that!
2. Go for a run. This may seem a bit counter-intuitive but there is a lot of truth in saying that exercise helps alleviate stress from the body & in general usually helps clear your mind, if you’re feeling anxious or overwhelmed. And bonus! It will also help you sleep a little better in the evening, when you’re ready to rest fully!
3. Take a long afternoon nap. Or plan to go to bed an hour early (or a half hour…whatever is feasible for you). It’s all about intentionality here. You definitely will thank yourself for doing this one, I can assure you of that.
4. Listening to some calming music. Whenever I’m feeling anxious, I just lay in bed and listen to this (or something similar–there are tons of videos like this on YouTube) and I assure you, it will leave you feeling much less like everything in your world is falling apart.
5. Take a warm bubble bath, accompanied with your drink of choice. That drink for me is usually a glass of wine or some type of cider…it definitely doesn’t need to be alcoholic, though. Grab a glass of milk if you’d like to and carve out an hour or so to just soak and enjoy some time literally doing nothing but laying there, covered in bubbles. You can’t be sad if you’re covered in bubbles, I mean, COME ON!

There you are sweet friends! Now let’s enjoy this Labor Day weekend by doing some labor-less work for ourselves during the next couple of days. Our bodies & our minds will thank us for it 🙂

XOXO

-Bri