How To Rest In An Ideal World To Reduce Stress & Avoid Burnout

Moving on from last weeks article which hopefully helped you understand burnout and the key signs to look out for , today I want to talk about rest.

Rest, and getting enough of it is one of the main things you can do in order to avoid burnout.

And it is adequate rest that will help us maintain good physical and mental health whilst still achieving in work and having enough energy to thrive!

One of the key components of rest and what people normally think of when we talk about rest, is sleep.

In an ideal world we would all get 7-8 quality hours a night but unfortunately many of us struggle to achieve this.

It is when we sleep that our bodies are able to both physically and mentally restore themselves. We sort through memories, discarding what’s not needed and storing the important stuff, and we allow our bodies systems to slow down and make any repairs to physical tissue as needed.

When we don’t get enough good quality sleep, it starts to effect our mood,  our ability to perform both physically and mentally, and even effects our hormones, particularly those linked to hunger signalling.

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It also has a huge impact on on behaviour taking us even further away from health by making us or more likely to drink alcohol, reach for unhealthy foods, drink more caffeine which then tends to boost anxiety, and by reducing the amount of movement and exercise we do because our energy levels are low.

There are actually studies that show that 5 hours of sleep or less will impact your cognitive ability to that of someone who is drunk and maybe more alarmingly, there are large links between poor sleep and risks of dementia when we are older.

So we know that sleep is key, however what else does rest actually mean and how can we get enough of it outside of sleep?

There is a difference between rest for the body and rest for the mind, and I would say most people end up at burnout due to rest for the mind being neglected.

Rest for the body is where we allow it to physically recover and includes;

Rest days from exercise

Sleep/napping

Sitting on the sofa

Massage

Rest for the mind is something people tend to find harder to do and it is where we let our brains recover from the constant stimulation and attention we have to give throughout the day. We are living in a world where unless we actively and intentionally build this in, are minds can very easily stay constantly stimulated.

When thinking about rest for the mind, you want to think about going back to basics to create a state of mental rest. It also incudes activities that fully immerse you, are enjoyable and take you away from thinking about the stresses and strains of life.

Activities include;

Reading

A walk in nature

Listening to music

Doing a crossword

Taking a long bath

Breathing practice

Journaling

Yoga

Puzzles 

Lego

Exercise - especially when skill is involved 

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For me, when I really feel stress levels start to build the most effective thing I do when the weekend arrives is to take myself away for a walk where I have to follow a map and am surrounded by nature. Nature has been shown to help lower cortisol levels, as well as animals, so if you have a dog to accompany you even better!

It is an activity where you can avoid crowds of people, minimise your interactions with technology and if you are following a trail or a map, you will immerse yourself into finding your way around. I can’t recommend this highly enough as someone who has to closely monitor their stress and anxiety levels ( and learnt the hard way!).

Building just one of these activities into your life each day, even if its just for 10-15 mins can make a HUGE impact. But as I said, you need to intentionally plan it in to your day with the same commitment as you would book a meeting in to your diary.

A few other tips for helping stay on to top of you stress levels, particularly if you find yourself in a chronic or high stressed state are;

1.Doing everything at a slower pace. The more we rush through life the more we signal to our bodies that we are in a stressed state and we continue to drive cortisol up. Slow down!

2.Choose the right type of exercise. If our cortisol is already sky high, doing activities that put more stress on the body is not going to help. Exercise like spin or any HIIT class might feel good at the time but the impact of this is to drive our levels up even higher. Opt for more controlled weight training, walking, 5-10k  steady jog or run or something like pilates or yoga.

3.Reduce alcohol. This will help improve sleep, reduce anxiety and allow your body to recover instead of adding another burden to an already taxed system

4.Reduce caffeine - Less caffeine means better sleep, recovery and less anxiety.

5.Have cut off points with technology. Don’t allow yourselves to be contacted 24/7. Our phones or smart watches constantly pinging at us with a notification for emails, calls, whatsapp is another reason our minds are struggling to rest. Set yourself some work boundaries so there are set hours each day where you aren’t interacting with them, particularly in the evening.

I hope you found todays article interesting and have at least one or two things you can try and implement into your daily routine to help avoid burnout in 2025!

Have a great week

Lizzie

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