Rest 🔁 Rejuvenation ➡️ Resilience

Wellness is a reflection of our habits or the behaviors we repeat over and over. In turn, our habits help shape our character.

There are three critical behavioral categories related to wellness - Movement, Nutrition, and Rest. There are others, like how we socialize, but today we are not focusing on those.

Our culture does not promote Movement, Nutrition, or Rest well and so to be healthy today we have to be contrarians and set out on our own path.

I’ve written about these three before in this newsletter entry called Simplicity and I’ll write about them some more. 

Out of the three, Rest is kinda the redheaded stepchild. There’s a lot of noise about Movement like, “These Five Exercises Will Firm Your Butt or Give You Abs” or whatever. And there’s an absurd amount on nutrition too, most of which is also trash.

Much less on Rest though. 

We’re just as bad about Rest as we are about Movement and Nutrition. It’s always On with us in the States. Go Go Go. Frenetic. Frantic. Some of both. 

This contributes to injury, anxiety, substance abuse, obesity and a bunch of other nasties.

So let’s frame Rest in a way that makes it clear how it compounds. Here’s a model:

Rest 🔁 Rejuvenation ➡️ Resilience

Rest is what we do in the moment when we are spent if we are attending to ourselves.

This holds for being exhausted physically, cognitively, or emotionally.

We get some good rest and we feel energized but also maybe calmer. Rejuvenation is the outcome. Rest leads to Rejuvenation.

Now, Resilience. 

Repeating this Rest 🔁 Rejuvenation process over and over contributes to Resilience. It’s not the only factor but it’s an important one.

Resilience is more characterological. It’s a part of our personality that remains stable over time. It’s more of a trait than a state. We are either people who bounce back well or we are people who do not.

This Rest 🔁 Rejuvenation cycle affects not just how we feel that day but who we are over time and how efficiently we tend to recuperate.

So if there’s anything worth being a selfish prick about…