You could say Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith wrote the book on rest. And that’s because she did. After five years of practicing clinical internal medicine and caring for two young children, the author of the book Divine rest experienced an extreme case of exhaustion. At first she thought she needed it sleep more.
“At the time, there wasn’t much discussion about burnout. The main conversation is about Sleep,” Dalton-Smith recalls. “That was around the time Arianna Huffington was making the big sleep revolution. So when I burned outMy initial thought process was based on research that said if I got enough, high-quality sleep, I would no longer feel exhausted.”
That’s when the doctor started digging a little deeper. While Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommending at least seven hours of sleep a day, Dalton-Smith found that even nine hours of sleep was not enough.
“I was getting seven, eight, nine hours of high-quality sleep recorded in the sleep lab. I mean, I’m so passionate because I’m trying to figure out how to solve this problem,” she said. “What do you do when you’ve been asleep for eight hours and everything is telling you that you have perfect sleep And you’re still exhausted?”
That’s when she realized Sleep not equal to rest. After completing various tests and all determining that she had no medical problems, Dalton-Smith started thinking about other ways people could be exhausted. And that’s when her revolutionary 7 Types of Rest framework was born.
“I started asking the question that became the foundation of my work: How tired am I?” she said. “And that took me on a journey of realizing that if I was feeling tired, something needed to be expended. What exactly has been drained? If I can find out what has been drained, then I can rebuild that reservoir so it is healthy again.”
7 types of rest frames
The premise is simple: to feel rested, you need to put energy back into the places where it’s been depleted. After making a list of all the reasons she feels exhausted, Dalton-Smith identified seven types of rest we all need to feel our best, most energized selves. The seven types are:
- Physical
- Mental
- sense
- Creative
- Emotion
- Society
- spirituality
“When I look at the physiology of some of the things I write about, there is an overlap in physiology and how the body works,” Dalton-Smith explains. “People will ask me if mental and emotional rest are the same thing and I say no. If we think about it, the mind, emotions, and senses are all related to the brain or nervous system, but they are all affected completely differently. So that’s the approach I’m looking at: the physiology, psychology and environmental aspects related to each type of rest.”
What kind of rest do you need?
Determining the type of rest you need requires personal assessment. To help, Dalton-Smith has developed one online questionnaire that can help you get to the root of your burnout. If you prefer an offline approach, Dalton-Smith encourages you to start with awareness.
“It starts with the awareness that you can be tired in many different ways,” she says. “Most people have never thought about being creatively drained or socially depleted.”
Next, Dalton-Smith invites people to consider all the ways they use energy during the day—both at work and in everyday life—and consider whether they don’t have a system in place to recharge that on specific things. energy bucket.
“Most people don’t need to focus on all seven types of rest,” she says. “Most people already do some of these things naturally. But often if they’re tired, there will be one or two categories that they haven’t thought of and those are the ones that can come back to bite you because you’re not doing anything to improve in that area.”
If you find you need rest in all seven categories, Dalton-Smith recommends starting with the area that is most deficient. Once you’ve taken an honest look at where you’re expending the most energy in your life, you can start to think of ways to replenish that area.
“You can’t eat the whole elephant,” she said. “As you start to fill the area that is most depleted, you will start to feel better by improving that biggest gap in rest.”
Develop your personal rest strategy
“If you are a high performer, you cannot continue to operate at high capacity for long periods of time without recovery,” Dalton-Smith explains. “So if you want sustainability, continuous innovation and high performance in your career, you need to have the right rest strategy.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean paying more PTO, taking longer vacations, or even taking a sabbatical. The most beneficial rest strategies are those you can incorporate into your daily life, says Dalton-Smith.
“Recovery processes can be integrated into our lives,” she continues. “For me, that’s really what work-life integration has to focus on.”
Each type of rest has a corresponding set of recovery methods, specific to the person and the type of environment they are in. For example, a person working in an open-plan office may be using a lot of sensory energy. to eliminate background noise and block conversations taking place near them.
“That adjustment process is using energy,” Dalton-Smith said. “Your brain is actively working to filter out that noise. If you do that eight hours a day, chances are you’ll experience some symptoms of sensory overload, such as irritability and agitation—those psychological experiences that happen when you’re feeling overwhelmed. .
In this case, Dalton-Smith recommends using noise-canceling headphones. However, it’s important not to play music, although white noise can help you concentrate.
“There’s no need to overwhelm your senses in that situation, especially if you’re trying to do deep work,” she says. “You will clear your brain space and brain energy by being mindful of how you are using energy.”
For those who may be expending large amounts of creative and mental energy throughout the day problem-solving, Dalton-Smith suggests considering mindfulness activities, such as walking, jogging, or jogging. , yoga or meditation.
“Most leadership skills can be optimized with better recovery methods. Our ability to communicate improves when we incorporate more emotional and social rest into our lives. How we can think more creatively and innovate through better creative rest. How we feel even in our bodies improves when the body is better rested,” she said. “If top-level athletes need to understand how to rest and recover to perform at their best, shouldn’t every other type of high-level position need similar information?”
More information about sleep and rest:
