The Success of Rest
The secret to getting more done is not in what we do, but in what we don’t do. Always adding to our life but never subtracting equates to a lower quality of life over time. Your capacity to keep building on what you’ve done is only as strong as the foundation you lay it upon. Failing to get adequate rest eventually erodes your foundation. Over time you’ll find yourself unable to carry the weight of success.
The relentless pursuit of trying to be more successful is the very thing that keeps us from being more successful. It’s in the tension of pulling back that propels us forward.
Rest is essential in the race of life. In fact, you can’t become all you’re capable of without keeping a groove in the rhythm of rest and recovery. But when you understand how to live in the complete rhythm of success you can go further than you ever thought imaginable.
In the book, The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz explained how they spent years training and developing Olympic athletes in performance management. This led them to the corporate world where they trained world-class leaders in productivity with the same principles they taught athletes. They made a significant impact on the efficiency of many organizations by enhancing employee performance. They wrote this about the importance of balance:
“In a corporate environment that is changing at warp speed, performing consistently at high levels is more difficult and more necessary than ever. Narrow interventions simply aren’t sufficient anymore. Companies can’t afford to address their employees’ cognitive capacities while ignoring their physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. On the playing field or in the boardroom, high performance depends as much on how people renew and recover energy as on how they expend it, on how they manage their lives as much as on how they manage their work. When people feel strong and resilient—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—they perform better and longer, with more passion. They win, their families win, and the corporations that employ them win.”
Get a copy of The Power of Full Engagement here…
According to their research and real-life applications, the whole key to performance rests on the ability to renew and recover from stress. The rhythm of productivity hinges not just on what you do, but also on what you don’t do. Taking time to refresh enhances your productivity when you are working.
This is seen in every aspect of life. For example, there is a very effective form of physical exercise called high-intensity interval training. This training is based on the science that our bodies are designed to function optimally when they are subject to short bursts of energy followed by moments of recovery. This approach can be applied to our emotional and mental health, too.
There is tremendous power in learning how to rest.
