Rest to Fight for Your Mental Health

Oftentimes when we think of rest we instinctively associate it with ceasing all physical activity. Historically, rest is primarily an opportunity to get physical rest from blue collar or agricultural work. However, in 21st century America the vast majority of labor is part of the “knowledge economy.” Basically, for millions of Americans work is no longer intense manual labor in a factory or working the ground on a farm. Rather, work is primarily done on a computer, requires problem solving, and demands us to use our mental capacities in processing through ever changing and complex scenarios. As a result, our rest needs to consider our mental health as much as our physical health. 

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In this article we’ll process through ways to promote mental health, as well as identifying ways to make the most of our overall health by focusing on holistic activities that rejuvenate our minds and bodies. For some this may sound like a bunch of hippie nonsense, but the fact is the leading causes of mental illness in the United States is anxiety and stress. Because God cares about the whole person we should take the time to think through how we can pursue rest for our head, heart, and hands. 

An easy tool I learned years ago that helps discover where we find rest is called “fills and drains.” The name of the tool and its application is simple enough. The premise of is everyone does things that either fills them or drains them. Let’s start by examining fills. 

Fills

When thinking through both fills and drains it's important to process through your entire self. This includes spiritual, emotional, physical, and relational fills and drains.

For example, as Jesus teaches that he is life, living water, and the good shepherd who calls his people to rest in him. Therefore, when we seek spiritual rest we go to Jesus through spending time with him through reading, praying, fasting, meditating, journaling, and spending time doing activities that stir our hearts toward God. 

Sadly, for most of my years following Jesus I was taught rest meant doing “spiritual disciplines” and the expectation was to do every discipline, every day or rest, or else I was a bad follower of Jesus. Allow me to lovingly say...THAT’S BULLSHIT! If you’ve read Don Whitney’s aptly titled book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life you’ve seen he unpacks 12 disciplines.

Based on the logic of doing every spiritual discipline every sabbath we’d have to participate in a new discipline every 2 hours without rest the entire Sabbath! Where’s the rest in that?!

Rather than trying to obey every discipline every day or rest a healthier option is to create regular rhythms that naturally move you toward intimacy with God. I recommend to start by picking your top 3 activities that spiritually fill you the most. Every week on a day off choose 1 or 2 of them and decide ahead of time to dedicate a block of time to being with Jesus. 

Once you’ve identified your top 3 restful activities and have scheduled a block time to practice them, take time to do the same for your emotional, physical, and relational health. 

Some examples of activities that promote emotional health are:

• Exercising (this is also a physical activity)
• Listening to music (maybe a little Enya for your ear hole?)
• Using meditation apps like Calm to slow your mind down
• Or reading a book just for fun.

***Pro-tip***When processing through fills consider activities you may not want to do in the moment but you know if you do you’ll feel rested and rejuvenated on the back end. 

Something for the Introverts…and Extroverts

For some introverted people (like me!) relational rest means time alone with our thoughts. Which is great! Introverts need time alone, please give us our alone time! That’s how we recharge and get ready for those dreaded things called conversations. However, what can also be very restful for introverts from a relational perspective is getting together with 1-2 close relationships and grabbing a cup of coffee (or tea). Initially, the idea will feel like our rest is being hijacked, but by the end of our time with others we feel refreshed by the quality time spent with people we genuinely care about.

Extroverts need to find time to put the phone on airplane mode, get off social media, and make yourself sit alone with your thoughts for a bit. The reward for contemplating and reflecting (emotional rest) can be throwing the biggest party ever to make up for the time alone. 

After creating a list of your top 3 fills around spiritual, emotional, physical, and relational rest, create a plan deciding when you will do them. For some people they have the freedom to do activities in all four buckets every week, others alternate between 2 areas one week, and 2 areas the next. Crazy, some people even focus on one area a week and alternate weekly. There are numerous ways you can engage in life giving activities that fill you during your time of rest. There is no right or wrong way to rest, apart from neglecting to rest.

Drains

Drains are like eating Taco Bell. It seemed like a good idea at first, but after 45 minutes you’re only left with heartburn and regret. The dangerous thing about drains is that they are so enticing on the front end. 

Let’s take an emotional activity for an example. Say you had an emotionally harder than normal week at work. This can look like someone you were trying to care for blowing up on you, or receiving your care but being completely ungrateful for it. This can look like plans you’ve been working on for a specific project falling through, or the team you needed buy-in from not getting onboard. Whatever the cause, you’re emotionally exhausted. What do most people do once we’ve become emotionally exhausted? We decide we’ve had enough with people and we park our asses on the couch and binge watch Ted Lasso, have an impromptu Game of Thrones marathon, or decide to invite our friends Ben & Jerry over and blow through the entire series of All of Us Are Dead. In the moment doesn’t that sound good? Yes! But at the end of the weekend when you’re stuck like velcro to the couch do you feel rested and emotionally restored? No!

That’s the problem with drains, they drain you. What’s worse is we tend not to realize how draining these types of activities are until we’ve wasted our time to rest. So instead of being rejuvenated we start the next week full of guilt and shame and feeling worse. 

To avoid what has been lovingly entitled the death loop of drains be proactive in identifying the activities that drain instead of fill you. Think again through spiritual, emotional, physical, and relational grids and identify the top 3 worst offenders that rob you of rest. In the same way that you plan ahead to determine when you’ll do filling activities, you also need to plan ahead to avoid draining activities like the plague. 

Creating Margin

Throughout this article I’ve talked a lot about thinking, and planning, and block scheduling, and restful activities, and binge watching, etc.. Some of you may be thinking “it sounds like hard work trying to rest!” And in one sense that’s true. Because most people don't rest well, making the necessary adjustments to rest, especially resting our minds, initially feels like work. The good news is over time it becomes a natural rhythm of our lives. 

The way we create space to plan our times of rest is through creating margin. Margin is the time and space we create to rest and rejuvenate. In our 21st century digital lives, there is something vying for our time 24 hours a day. If we don’t decide where our time will go there are people, advertisers, or apps that are happy to make that decision for us. 

How to Create Margin

A simple exercise to help you create margin in your week is what we call “a zero time-budget inventory.” The gist is you write out everything you do in a given week that consumes your time. I mean everything. Ev...ery...th...ing. Some are easy like work, sleep, eating. Others are less obvious driving, social media scrolling, going down YouTube rabbit holes, etc. 

Once you’ve listed everything you can think of that consumes your time you’ve “zeroed” out your time budget. Next, you decide what are the best uses of your time. Definitely keep those. Then good uses of your time, most of those can stay. Once you get to things that are neutral uses of your time or just bad start cutting as much out as you can. By cutting out these time wasters you’ve created margin. 

Another thing you could do is list out all things that consume your time and then run them through the Eisenhower Matrix. Anything that is important and urgent that fills you keep doing, anything important but not urgent schedule, and everything else assume is a drain and don’t do them. 

Intentional rest that fills our hearts, minds, and bodies requires self-discipline. John Maxwell once said,

“anything worth doing is uphill”

The sentiment is true for rest too. The same way we prioritize a thousand different activities in our lives, we have to prioritize and fight for regular rest. Without it we’ll survive for a while but eventually we will burnout. Remember, God’s been running things long before we ever showed up, and God will still be running things long after we’re gone. God’s in control, God’s got this, so prioritize your rest, and enjoy the goodness of God spiritually, emotionally, physically, and relationally. 

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