Run Hard, Rest Hard

Pragmatics

• -Here’s a WebMD piece on sleep deprivation and its myriad consequences.
• -Here’s the link to the Spent book I mention below. Page down on the Amazon page to check your level of “Spent-ness”.
• -The way we push ourselves can carry over to our children. Here’s an article on the signs of pushing your child too hard, with tips to help ease stress.

Prose

I heard a public radio piece about a couple who has done the Iditarod and many other dog sled races together. Asked about their strategy for long-haul races, they summed it up in four words: “Run hard, rest hard”. When they take breaks, they make sure to rest at least as many hours as they raced.

To adopt this motto for personal use, I’d convert it to read, “Run not-so-hard, rest hard.” But some harsh realities lately, including crises in my extended family and a daunting workload, have had me running much harder than I’d like. Last week, exhausted, I came down with an awful 48-hour bug. This was my body’s way of screaming that I needed rest. I took to bed and took care of myself for the first time in quite a long stretch.

This lifestyle of running hard is true for most of us, and one of the reasons the simplicity movement is so appealing. I know I’m not the only one to ask, "When does this crazy ride stop?” But I know that I have some control, at least some of the time, over slowing things down.

Most of us don’t rest as often or as long as we should. If we can’t get enough rest, we can at least make sure the rest we do get is of high quality. Dr. Frank Lipman’s recent book, Spent: End Exhaustion and Feel Great Again, is a sign of our times. I admire Dr. Lipman’s efforts, and want to buy the book, pronto! But I also know that, like the dog sledding couple that grabbed my attention, I need to make my own plan. Not an elaborate plan, but something simple to get me started on the right path.

“Resting hard” means incorporating those things that relax me, like walks, good books, and writing, into every day. It means clearing a space and time for rest, separating what really must get done today from those things that can wait. It means going beyond postponing stuff--how about crossing some things off the list entirely? Eventually, it may mean bigger changes, like reducing work hours.

One comfort of my personal dilemma is knowing that I am not alone in my “quest for rest”. Please add a comment—let me know what helps you “rest hard”!

The Art of Saying No

Pragmatics

Saying no is a hard-won skill. Here are some links to learning the art:

• -Online organizing.com supplies 20 ways to say no—a great cheat sheet!
• -Real Simple did a spot on saying no to requests for money. It may come in handy this holiday season!
• -About.com’s stress management column offers some practical tips for naysayers. I like the time-tested “let me get back to you” option.
• -Even the Mayo Clinic deems saying no a worthy cause.
  

Prose

Pursuing simplicity is an act of embracing. Embracing what and who you love, embracing your beliefs and ideals. At the same time, it is a turning away—from demands and expectations that threaten to overshadow the good stuff; from possessions and practices that clutter your home, your mind, the environment.

Embracing comes naturally to most of us. After all, we are embracing those things we already love. But saying no takes practice and skill. Today I insisted I really needed some time to write and relax. This meant no to a family ice cream outing (definitely a tough call), and it also meant disappointing my husband. But now I am happier: I got to slow down a bit and write; I got to play Cat Stevens (major childhood memories) in the kitchen and make crab cakes with Gavin. I feel refreshed and much less cranky—and hopefully more fun to be around.

Christmas is not far off and we are starting the season, as we do every year, vowing to have a simpler approach. Tom and I don’t really need gifts, and have agreed that just having a long-postponed date would be more rewarding. But already I feel the vortex pulling me in: maybe just stocking stuffers, maybe just something small. It is hard to stop that snowball effect of buying more, incurring unneeded debt. I want a clever scheme that will save me from The Ghost of Christmas Must Have. Still working on that one.

Then there is that backlog of stuff you didn’t really need in the first place, or maybe you outgrew it. Gavin, only 5, is already experiencing some of that hanging onto stuff, and it seems tied in with sentimentality. In anticipation of Christmas we started to clean out his (several) toy storage bins, starting with a big hallway trunk. The emphasis on charity didn’t work as well as I hoped. What worked better was my allusion to Santa’s assessment of toys already owned, and how he might bring fewer toys to boys that seem overloaded. That resulted in a small garbage bag filled with forgotten toddler toys, although the barking dalmatian toy that he no longer walks had to stay.

As a mother, I struggle with sentimental clutter every day. The volume of artwork that comes home from kindergarten and daycare is staggering. I might trial a weekly “art sale” where we pick the top 5 “keepers”. Gavin’s baby clothes are packed in giant Rubbermaid bins in the attic. I can’t bear the thought of losing them; they all carry such memories. And yet, maybe some little boy out there could really use at least some of them. Do I really need 50 onesies and T-shirts to hold my memories of babyhood?

A local author and artist, Jill Butler, wrote some columns in our shoreline paper. I liked the term she came up with: rightsizing. She wrote about how downsizing sounds so deprived, while rightsizing sounds so, well, right. This is a great way to put it. I don’t want fanaticism. I don’t want deprivation. I want sanity—a clear head and clear surroundings.

What is it about saying no that’s hard? In my case, I don’t want to be difficult. I don’t want to be a “stick in the mud”. I want to be fun and easygoing, not the “bad guy”. And yet, a few carefully placed “nos” have yielded some great results. I said no to being a manager and regained some workplace sanity. Before that, I said no to a career at a large, prestigious company and got a short commute and a much better rapport in exchange. I say no to the ringing phone when I am absorbed in something else and get far more done. I say no even to mothering when I feel the need for escape, and come back much more patient, ready for any challenge.

I like this quote by Linda Breen Pierce: If you say yes to one thing (like a job promotion), recognize that you are saying no to something else (perhaps more time with family). Live consciously and deliberately.

Coming into Focus

Pragmatics

I chose today’s links because being aware of the need to step back and focus and actually focusing are two different things, and most of us need all the help we can get:

• -This Green Living Web page offers 8 tips to focus your mind in a brief, digestible, and doable format.


• -Bella Online has an article on keeping track of your focus over the longer term.


• -Here’s a very pragmatic look at dealing with distractions, written for unfocused writers but probably helpful for anyone whose mind insists on straying from the project at hand.


• -Duane Elgin’s article Garden of Simplicity in Yes magazine talks about avoiding distractions through a variety of simplified approaches. It gives me hope: so many ways to try simplicity—even reading about them has a calming and hopeful effect!
  

Prose

It’s been a thought-provoking week. I’ve been privileged to read the draft of Simple Living America's Get Satisfied: How Twenty People Like You Found the Satisfaction of Enough, which is coming out in October.

I am one of the twenty. Like the other authors in the book, I am not purporting to have all of the answers. My essay, like many others, is about the search for what is really important, the attempt to eliminate whatever is superfluous, whatever distracts or detracts from a thoughtful or meaningful life. I have managed to make some good decisions in this direction, but just as often I get caught up in the whirlpool that many describe: working too hard, overindulging when I do get a break, sacrificing rest to get things done, neglecting my health, not seeing a way out of the cycle.

Today, for example, I filled my day with errands. I ate too much for lunch. I made some reckless purchases. I did too much and wore myself out. Certainly not the end of the world (I consider myself lucky if this is my biggest complaint), and often this seems to me to be the American way. But when I stop to focus I know that this kind of mindless march through the weekend isn’t the best I can do. I can take a breath and make better decisions with my time. I can “neglect” tasks that add to my already heavy load, knowing that in truth most of them can wait. I can create the space to write my blog, and pause for a few moments to more thoughtfully schedule the rest of my weekend and the coming work week.

I think about the small conversations that spring up in the lounge at work, and so often the refrain about the weekend is, I have so much I have to get done (before the weekend), or I did a lot of running around (after the weekend). I ran into this quote by Florence King on a Google search on distractibility and stress:

The American way of stress is comparable to Freud's 'beloved symptom', his name for the cherished neurosis that a patient cultivates like the rarest of orchids and does not want to be cured of. Stress makes Americans feel busy, important, and in demand, and simultaneously deprived, ignored, and victimized. Stress makes them feel interesting and complex instead of boring and simple, and carries an assumption of sensitivity not unlike the Old World assumption that aristocrats were high-strung. In short, stress has become a status symbol." (from "The Misanthrope's Corner", May 2001)

Do you ever get the feeling that people would look at you oddly if you reported that your weekend entailed “just relaxing” or “doing some thinking”? Or if, around the holidays, you offered not one complaint because your holiday was deliberately understated, low key, and smartly planned to avoid any last-minute hassles? It is hard for me to picture, while living in the real world, to ever get to the point where I had no stress to report. But I am going to try to avoid the peer pressure, so embedded in our media and even our daily small talk to be busy, stay busy, and continue complaining about it! Busy is not a bad word, but the only way to stop the potentially endless, mindless race through mountains of tasks is to apply some mindfulness to the whole mess.

Here’s to the pause that refreshes—originally a 1929 slogan for Coca Cola, but also a great approach on a much deeper level.