Today I did my normal 20-minute workout routine, and, having some energy left over, I decided to shake things up by trying a new dumbbell workout, which was also only 20 minutes.
Or, as I did it, five minutes, and then four minutes, and then four minutes, and then four minutes, and then three minutes, with panting, sweating, and mild cussing in between. It was harder than I was expecting! It turns out routines specifically designed for middle-aged women are easier than routines that are not. Guess which kind this one was!
But I did it. Eventually. With lots of rests.
My ten-year-old gets some perverse pleasure out of watching me struggle, so as she lounged on the couch, I took the opportunity to give her one of my favourite mini TED talks: Don’t quit; rest.
I told here there will be lots of times in life when things get really hard, and you’re going to want to give up. You will feel like you just can’t go on anymore, and you just want to stop. And that will be okay! You can stop.
But don’t quit; just rest, and then see if you can start up again. I told her that getting in the habit of taking a break, rather than giving up entirely, will serve her through every aspect of her life. (I waved my arms around a bit, at this point. EVERY ASPECT.)
I wish somebody had told me that when I was ten, because it’s taken me 50 years to figure it out. There are very few things in life that absolutely have to be a full-bore, all-out, no breaks, start-to-finish push. But there are quite a lot of things that you really must not quit altogether, but which have room for some rest, so you can get yourself together and then keep going.
This rhythm of work and rest and work again is really baked into how we’re designed. It’s how we give birth, with the contractions coming in waves, with rest in between. It’s how we get through the week, with five or six days or work, and then a sabbath – not so we can quit, but so we can rest. It’s how our bodies and minds are made. If we do not ever sleep, we really will quit: We will die.
“Rest” doesn’t always mean stopping completely. Sometimes it means lowering your standards.
Now here’s the important part. What if, halfway through the dumbbell workout, I was starting to black out, or throw up, or there was an audible crackling sound and my ulna popped through my skin. Should I still just rest not quit?
Obviously not. Sometimes things are going so poorly, for whatever reason, that keeping going is the wrong thing to do. And that’s why the phrase I keep in mind is “don’t quit; rest” and not “rest; don’t quit.” Seems like a distinction without a difference, but the idea is that the first thing you do is decide you’re not quitting by stopping, and the second thing you do is rest.
Sometimes the clarity of rest will help you realise that it is, in fact, time to stop long-term, maybe permanently.
But sometimes it will help you step away from the crisis of distress and exhaustion, give you a chance to recall your goals, and help you feel more in control. Times of rest will almost certainly be more fruitful and clarifying if you choose them deliberately with intention, rather than being forced into them.
This approach is, of course, extremely Biblical. God rested after making the world. He didn’t quit; he rested, and the rest of the book tells what he did afterward. He also put rest into the Ten Commandments, in the form of a regular sabbath. There are also laws requiring periodic rests for the land itself, because if the land never rests, it will eventually quit producing.
It sounds like Sunday-school level facts, just trotting out the old idea “yes, even God rested, so we should rest, too.” But stop and think about what it means. Americans, in particular, tend to feel guilty about resting.
They feel like it’s something you do when you’re soft or weak, childish or unserious, rather than something we are literally made to do. It is just as important a part of our bodily functions, our daily activities, and our overall lives, as work and progress and achievements are.
Simple, but so important: Don’t quit; rest.
