Rest = recharge. But is that enough?
Many look forward to the weekend as a time to rest, do things they enjoy, connect with loved ones, or even just spend time alone. Regardless of how the free time is used, many would also agree that the weekend seems pretty short. All the more reason to make the very best this privilege.
While 7-8 hours of good sleep may be enough to recharge, there’s more we can do to maximise this upcoming long weekend (or ANY free time off for that matter).
Think about your phone for example. At the start of the day, its important to have your phone charged to let’s say a good 80 to 90%.
After a few hours of browsing, video watching, Waze-ing, and phone calls, the charge in the battery naturally drops. So, you either plug your phone to a power-bank, or look for a power socket to recharge your phone.
Although this can be done rather easily and even frequently, the battery’s ability to retain electrical charge reduces over time. As in, you may find yourself needing to recharge more often than before.
What happens then? Some may grumble as they walk around with the bulk of a phone AND a power-bank while some others may just…get a new phone with a bigger battery capacity.
This phone example although highly relatable, is more than an analogy.
Think of how as children we used to wake up full of energy. Even though naps were short, we would feel highly energetic again after that.
As we grew up, we got busier and couldn’t afford naps as often as we used to. So we’d take our few hours of free time a day to rest and recharge just enough for another tomorrow. Then when the weekend came, we’d rest just a little more.
Over time, our bodies’ ability to retain energy started to reduce and we needed to find other ways to recharge. These came in the form of eating more delicious food because it made us happy/feel good, or hanging out with friends and family because it was fun, or making plans to try new things because it was exciting, or even just lazing at home more (binge watching maybe?).
These examples are akin to carrying around our phones together with a power bank as we constantly need an external power source to stay recharged. These recharge activities may give us a needed boost in energy, but it may lead to dependency on these external sources.
Better phone = bigger battery capacity. But what about a better you?
So let’s say you get fed up with carrying around your phone AND your power-bank. You decide to buy a better phone with a longer lasting battery. You can do all the things you love with your phone for longer periods. Yay! (That is until this brand new phone is no longer new.)
But what does buying a better phone look like for us as human beings?
Imagine someone who feels tired very often. Despite sleeping regularly, this person still feels low in energy. This leads to him/her gaining weight, being easily irritable, and seemingly apathetic about most things.
After awhile, this person decides to make some improvements. Besides just sleeping often, he/she reads up on improving the quality of sleep. This leads him/her to discover that quality sleep is a combination of several factors such as the right pillows and mattress, nutrition and diet, even exercise and mental health. So this person starts to pursue improvement in the various aspects of quality sleep.
Over time, what do you think will happen to this person? There’s a high probability that he/she will be feeling more energetic, is relatively healthier than before, has a more positive state of mind, and maybe sleeps just enough to recharge instead of most of the time.
Rest = recharge, rejuvenate = grow.
All of us have our own ways to boost our energy and keep ourselves motivated to face the days ahead. But not all of us consciously find ways to improve ourselves so that we can do more with less energy.
We can continue to find “power sockets” to recharge ourselves, or even carrying around “power-banks”, but we should probably start asking ourselves “what could I do with a better version of me?”.
So this long weekend, make time to recharge. But also make time to rejuvenate.
Ask us about our Recharge, Rejuvenate, Thrive Programme where we explore key areas to build lasting RESILIENCE. Drop us an e-mail at [email protected] today!
