If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.
Banksy
In a 2016 scientific paper,* Claudia Hammond and Gemma Lewis discuss The Rest Test, the world’s largest survey into people’s subjective experiences of rest, devised by an interdisciplinary team at Hubbub. The Rest Test report recently grabbed my attention as I had realised, during my ten-day spring fast, that my body needed substantially more rest than I had anticipated. The experience told me that we can sometimes be fooled into staying in the rat race, especially its more subtle manifestations such as anxiety and worry, long after this has become detrimental to our well-being. We don’t get burnout, we do burnout!
As the first large survey on rest administered to the general population around the world, The Rest Test included a broad cross section of people – anyone over 18 years old was welcome to participate. More than 18,000 people from 134 countries took the survey, making this the world’s largest ever survey on rest.
The survey asked people to choose the activities that they find the most restful. The results show that the top five most restful activities are those often done alone:
- Reading (58%)
- Sleeping or napping (55%)
- Being in the natural environment (53.1%)
- Being on their own (52.1%)
- Listening to music (40.6%)
The Top 25 activities, in order of popularity, are as follows: Reading, Sleeping or napping, Looking at, or being in, a natural environment, Spending time on my own, Listening to music, Doing nothing in particular, Walking, Taking a bath or a shower, Daydreaming, Watching TV, Meditating or practising mindfulness, Spending time with animals, Spending time with friends/family, Making/drinking tea or coffee, Creative arts, Gardening, Travelling on long train journeys, Engaging in physical activity, Chatting, Drinking socially, Eating, Sexual activity, Running, Grooming, and Thinking about the past.
Many of these activities are familiar to me. As an introvert, I am more inclined to engage in activities alone, in the peace and quiet of nature. My daily practice includes rituals such as morning meditation, teatime, breaks spent walking, running, or cycling in the outdoors, working with plants, listening to music, and spending time on my own. Here it is also interesting to reflect on the relationship between rest and silence.
Many of the activities listed would best be experienced in silence, which has become a rare commodity in our helter-skelter world. As William Penn once noted: True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body; nourishment and refreshment.
I also enjoy regular passionate participation in several vibrant communities, and catching up with family and friends. My life is blessed. I do not take this for granted, being fully aware that the cultivation of my daily practice is necessary to prevent me from getting sucked into the ubiquitous stress and negativity of 21st Century life.
What is evident to me though, is that the activities in themselves are not the only determinants of mood, sobriety, and well-being.
Have you ever driven for several hours from A to B and, on getting out of the car realised that you have no recollection of what you passed along the way? This has happened to me in situations when my mind was fully engaged in thinking about things; perhaps something in the past that still gripped me in anger or resentment, or indeed, something I feared might transpire in the future, resulting in anxiety and tension. Or it could simply have been working out a strategy for a new enterprise.
Here is where Mental Fitness plays a crucial role. Mental Fitness is defined as my capacity to be in the present moment, in a state of blameless discernment, seeing things for what they are, rather than allowing my Saboteurs to hijack me with judgement, fears, zoning out, or any of the many forms of negative states with which we are all familiar.
In some circles, this incessant chatter of the mind is referred to as `Stinking Thinking´. Many of us are caught up in it for most of our waking, and indeed, sleeping hours. The trouble with Stinking Thinking is that it cannot be combatted by even more thinking. In fact, that would be tantamount to pouring highly flammable oil on the fire that you wish to dampen.
Mental Fitness, as defined in the Positive Intelligence (PQ) Model, developed by Shirzad Chamine and his team in San Francisco, entails recognising the Saboteurs of the human condition: the Judge, Controller, Hyper Achiever, Stickler, etc. There are ten in all, whereby the Judge is always the main culprit. Of the remaining nine, we each have an individual constellation, depending on our childhood experience, culture, and where we find ourselves in the life cycle. These Saboteurs were initially developed to protect us in our fragility as we were confronted with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), and to secure our survival. The problem is that, once ingrained, they become self-perpetuating and may prove to be detrimental to our development and mental well-being later in life.
The second component of PQ is the recognition of another set of powers which we all have at our disposal: the so-called Sage Powers of Empathise, Explore, Innovate, Navigate, and Activate. These are powers we can cultivate and strengthen in our PQ practice. Exercises designed around healthy modes of communication and creative imagination help us reach this goal. These powers are activated in the context of the `Sage Perspective’ which states that every situation contains a gift for our further growth and our collective well-being. While not always obvious in the given situation, many of us have, looking back, realised that what we considered a catastrophe at the time, turned out later to be a blessing in disguise.
The third element of PQ mental Fitness is the ability to switch from Saboteur to Sage mode, with increasing speed, ideally in real time. This `Mind Command´ capacity is built up by means of an array of body-based exercises which interrupt the Stinking Thinking and bring us back into the present moment. Concentrating on the sensation of my feet hitting the ground while jogging, is a good example. Resilience is defined as the speed with which we can bounce back from setbacks, which are always created by our Saboteurs in their attempt to hijack our minds. The shorter the recovery time, the greater the degree of resilience.
These PQ Mind Command exercises, just like those of the Saboteur Interceptor and Sage Enhancer, are made available through the PQ-App, a highly developed and easy to use tool which can be downloaded onto any device. A series of five new 3-minute exercises is provided throughout each day. Over and above these, the App contains a veritable Mental Fitness Studio, made up of a broad selection of exercises which can be done at leisure.
It has been demonstrated that any person who practices PQ Mental Fitness daily for 40 days or more, experiences palpable benefits. The metric for PQ is that, for every negative thought or feeling we experience over a day, we have at least three positive ones. This is as true for our self talk as it is for our communication with others.
Which brings me back to rest. While the activities outlined are, without doubt, beneficial, the real benefit comes from doing them with a quieted mind, a mind free of anxieties, anger, tension, and stress. The level of `rest efficiency´ is substantially raised when we engage in relaxation in a state of high mental fitness. This not only benefits our mental and physical well-being, but also leads to improved relationships, better teamwork, higher performance, and especially fulfilment, – because our lives become fuelled by a sense of purpose and our deeply held values.
My recommendation is to combine the daily practice of PQ Mental Fitness training with regular periods of rest. You will be amazed at the improvement in quality of life, even after an initial period of seven or eight weeks. By that time, most of us recognise that, like physical fitness, mental fitness is a choice that is best practiced for the rest of our lives.
*Hammond C, Lewis G. The Rest Test: Preliminary Findings from a Large-Scale International Survey on Rest. In: Callard F, Staines K, Wilkes J, editors. The Restless Compendium: Interdisciplinary Investigations of Rest and Its Opposites. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan; 2016. Chapter 8.
