20 Apr FATIGUE: 7 Reasons You Could Be Tired
If you’re waking up tired of feeling fatigued long before your workday is done, it could be that you’re losing out on rest. Now you might say, ‘Well, I’m getting my full eight hours of sleep every night so I don’t know what you mean.’ Consider this:
“Most people, when they think about rest, have a very one-sided approach. They lounge around, don’t do anything, and think that’s what rest is,” Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith, shares. “We try it, and when we’re still rest-deprived we think it doesn’t work,” the author of Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Renew Your Sanity adds.
So, it seems, physical rest – while the most obvious form – isn’t the only type of rest we need. Below are seven areas our bodies, minds and souls need regular breaks from if we want to be at our best:
PHYSICAL
It’s fairly easy to identify when you’re physically tired. When you’re running and you notice your body losing steam or you’re up late binging The Goop Lab of Netflix and your eyes get heavy, you’re clearly physically tired and need to rest. Slowing your pace or crawling to bed are the obvious remedies in each cast but what rest can offer yourself from the other forms of exhaustion?
EMOTIONAL
Your brain cannot fully function when you are in need of emotional rest. Have you ever noticed that toddlers who act irritable or agitated often just need to be put down for a nap? Similarly, with adults, volatile behaviour is a symptom of emotional exhaustion. Rather than suppressing your emotions, share them with a close friend or therapist. If you wall up your emotions instead of letting them flow freely and in healthy ways, the dam will eventually burst and flood every aspect of your life.
SPIRITUAL
Can we agree that we are all spiritual beings on a human journey?
When we do, we can appreciate that people, spaces and experiences have the potential to hold spiritual energy that we are affected by. Sometimes spiritual fatigue can feel like a heavy soul, and other times you might feel unanchored or disconnected. In both cases, meditation is an effective way of shaking off any negativity and centering yourself.
MENTAL
Ever walked into a room and immediately forgotten why you were there in the first place? Maybe you’ve used your cellphone to try call your cellphone because you just can’t seem to find it? How about misplacing your reading glasses only to feel your head and there they are.
We all tend to brush off these brain farts as trivial and laughable but it’s your brain telling you it’s exhausted and cannot work at its optimum.
Take a break. A proper one. Don’t step away from your laptop and reach for your phone. Step away from everything and let your mind juice itself up. Repeating a calming mantra might help, or going to your happy place.
SENSORY
If you’re struggling to settle in bed at the end of the day, this is an obvious sign of sensory overload. Our computers, televisions, cellphones, tablets all stream blue light into our eyes, keeping our brains heavily stimulated long before we’ve put them down. So even when you close your eyes, you’ll get a flash replay of images, headlines and video clips.
Take regular breaks from gadgets and please, PLEASE stop using tech for at least 60 minutes before bed. Don’t bring your phone to bed, read physical books.
CREATIVE
Writers, artists, actors, dancers, designers, and professionals who tend to use the right side of their brain might get this more often than people working more with the left side of their brain. Spending time in nature or listening to music can help. Free-flow writing or mindless doodling can be great ways of letting the proverbial tap in your brain run too.
SOCIAL
We tend to categorise our social personas into one of the three: Introvert, Ambivert, and Extravert – most if not all of us know what group we belong to. Whether you consider yourself a people’s person or not, every one of us reaches our cap at some point, and it becomes necessary to retreat to our personal spaces to recharge.
Social rest doesn’t look the same for everyone. While some need to be alone to reacclimate, others are perfectly happy spending quality time with someone they can be their true selves with.
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