Three Way To Rest From Work

Austin Photographer

I am so bad at sitting down!! Honestly, resting is a challenge for me. I love work! I love to be busy achieving my goals and working towards something and checking things off of lists. But if I don’t rest, my work suffers. My creativity dwindles and my gratitude plummets (which honestly is probably the worst by-product of not turning off enough)! If you’re like me and you struggle with truly shutting things down, here are 3 ways to rest your soul that work so well for me, and they’re more than just turning off emails and sitting down in front of the TV!

1. GET OUTSIDE // Porch sitting. River sounds. Bugs in the grass. Hummingbirds buzzing. Wind blowing flowers. Horses grazing. Ants building. Whenever I need to truly shut things down, I step outside. Every time I do it’s a perspective changer for me. It reminds me that I am SO SMALL. In a world that feels so uncontrollable at times, when I go outside and notice that there is a whole entire world simply within the confounds of my garden, I find so much peace.
2. WORK WITH YOUR HANDS // If you sit at a computer a lot, working with your hands may be so cathartic and restful for you. I spend a lot of my time at my computer, and at the end of the day I am craving activities that rest my mind but work my hands. Things like gardening, cooking or baking, organizing and cleaning out my closet, refilling bird feeders, and caring for our animals really help to turn my mind off and help my soul to breathe a little.
3. EXERCISE // It might seem counter intuitive that to rest you actually work your body, but it’s quite the opposite! I find that when I take time to work out or run or walk every day, my mental health is dramatically improved. Not to mention, of course, my physical health! Lately I’ve taken to slow, short runs of no more than 2 miles and the way my perspective shifts from the beginning of the run to the end is truly amazing. Working out my anxiety and tension through exercise really helps me to put all of my concerns into more reasonable terms.

And those are my three favorite ways to truly rest from work! I hope this was an encouragement to you and will help you to turn off your mind and live your life a little more!