You can be completely inactive and be completely exhausted by the energy around you and, indeed, inside you. The rest is not inactivity.
The rest is an empty headspace. Peace does not equate to a passive state, although it certainly can be. If your head is busy, you are not at rest, it doesn’t matter what you are doing or not doing at that moment.
Try sleeping while your head is busy chewing on a stressful thought.
Often at times, we are more at rest in training than we are sitting at home on the lounge. What a paradox, right?
Imagine a situation where you don’t have to escape your own head. What are you really capable of then?
Sitting on the lounge feeding your fears is not contributing to your rest, nor is your constant over-analysis. Rumination is not passive, it’s an exhausting state that is having drastic impacts on your psyche and, as a consequence, your nervous system.
For my athletes in race week, their own head is a much more formidable foe than anything they will face on the course on race day.
If you feel like it has a dream state quality to it, it’s probably because it does.
When we ruminate, we leave the plains of reality to take part in a projection, it feels like a dream state because we are no longer grounded and present.
So, in a sporting context, you have to move fast and think slow.
That is the recipe that keeps the whole being in homeostasis. You are not leaving the spot without your own agreement dude.
So, as you begin to take notice of what keeps your energy level in homeostasis, you find out what drains you. We find out that ‘no’, it’s not events that drain us, it’s our reaction to them.
Little by little, we have to let go of the attachments that drain our energy, negative people, noisey environments, rumination, over-analysis, social media noise, comparison, judgment and the collective polarisation that says it should be this way or that. Life is not like that. It is the way it is for you and you alone. Allow it!
Life, in all its forms, doesn’t care for resistance, it shape shifts through every moment. How then, are you going to stay in sync and flow with it?
Rest in the moment you are in! Rest in what is here now. Stay out of tomorrow, it’s not here yet.
Nothing you can do will change its shifting nature. The idea that you have control is just another dream we take part in. That dream is wearing you down and wearing you out!
If it’s tough, say yes, if it’s really tough, say OK, yes, even this.
Why?
Because the second you come with a no is the second you are moving against the flow of life and rest.
The rest and the down-regulation is built into our acceptance of what is here now. Just be wise enough to make the changes you can make and know when you are in resistance to what is.
Be conscious enough in your life to realise that control is the ultimate form of exhaustion.
Life will eventually take away all control. Panic, fear, worry, doubt and rumination take away your peace, they take away your rest.
Be ruthless with your rest, be ruthless with your inner peace. It is, ultimately, the only thing you will ever have control over.
Realise when you are in resistance, that it’s a choice you are making.
Give peace a chance.
Gilesy