When Did Rest Get So Complicated?

For years, when my children were young, sleep felt like water in a drought — essential, but always out of reach.

I didn’t need more sleep. I just needed some.

Those were the years of night feeds, cold tea, and the kind of tiredness that settles into your bones.

Back then, what I needed was relatively simple: a stretch of uninterrupted sleep.

Now that my children are older — and sleep comes more easily — I’ve noticed something quietly surprising:

I’ve had to relearn how to rest.

Not just lie down. Not just stop working.

But truly rest — in a way that reaches my nervous system, my thoughts, my heart.

This month, as we enter the summer holidays here in the UK, I’ve been thinking about how elusive rest has become — at a time when we need it more than ever.

We live in a culture that, as Brené Brown writes, "sees exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth."

So choosing to rest can feel radical. Countercultural. Even indulgent.

Which means many of us ignore our need for rest, or treat it like another item on the to-do list.

But here’s the thing: without rest, we lose touch with ourselves.

We grow restless. We overthink. We stretch ourselves thin, waiting for a pause that never comes.

Rest, I’ve come to believe, is not a reward.

It’s what allows everything else to make sense.

And that’s not just philosophy — it’s neuroscience.

Dr. Joseph Jebelli reminds us: rest isn’t passive. It’s an active process that restores clarity, resilience, and health.

In a Thinking Environment, we know this too:

The quality of our lives depends on the quality of our thinking — and we only ever think as well as we feel.

Rest is not a luxury. It’s a necessity.

It’s the foundation for all the things that make life feel rich and real:

• Space to think about what you truly need and want

• Time to appreciate what you already have

• Conversations that nourish, not deplete

• The quiet courage to be who you are — without apology

• A body treated with care, not criticism

• A mind calm enough to notice glimmers of joy

• The comfort of being with people who truly know you

• The strength of showing up — fully, freely, as yourself

These aren’t indulgences.

They are how we stay connected — to our wisdom, our people, and our lives.

So — what kind of rest do you most need?

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith speaks of seven kinds, and each one holds a different kind of medicine:

• Physical — sleep, stretching, stillness

• Mental — a pause from planning, fixing, deciding

• Sensory — less noise, fewer screens, more calm

• Emotional — spaces where you don’t have to perform

• Social — solitude, or time with people who restore you

• Creative — unstructured beauty, just for its own sake

• Spiritual — connection to meaning, mystery, and something larger than yourself

We each rest in different ways. What restores one person may deplete another.

Susan Cain, who writes so beautifully about the power of introversion, reminds us that for some, rest means solitude and space. For others, it means conversation and shared presence.

There is no formula.

The invitation is to notice what brings you back to life.

You don’t have to have all the answers.

You just need to begin.

Rest is not laziness. It’s how we come home to ourselves.

To see more clearly. To love more deeply. To live more intentionally.

So this summer, I hope you get to soften, listen, and tend to what matters most, to you.

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