One Year On…

Reflecting back…

I’ve been thinking a lot about rest recently, particularly as I’ve been reflecting on our passing the one year anniversary of the pandemic really starting to interrupt our every day lives.

When lockdown measures were first introduced here in the UK this time last year, for many of us it felt like a bit of call to slow down and simplify our lives.

Life as we knew it was suddenly interrupted beyond all recognition – meetings were cancelled, schools were shut, and offices were promptly relocated to homes. Everything was on pause indefinitely, and I for one had so many good intentions about how I would use all that extra time I suddenly had….

I intended to read more, exercise more, call more friends, love my neighbours better, spend more quality time with family, and be more mentally present in my own life…

But reflecting back now, one year on, it’s become very clear that even despite so many plans and commitments being cancelled, I still haven’t felt more rested. I’ve just swapped old forms of busyness. How about you?

Rest in this season

I wonder if part of the problem might also be that we’ve also become even more dependent on technology during the pandemic - to keep us connected with others and to save us from our boredom whilst staying at home.

Like me, do you often find yourself exhausted at the end of the day, crashing out in front of Netflix, aimlessly scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, or browsing online for things you don't really need?

Perhaps what has become ‘rest’ for many of us in this season might be physical rest; it may be sitting on a sofa, rather than rushing through our days, but it’s not always that deep soul rest and recovery space that we really need because our minds are still racing…

Maybe staying at home hasn’t actually been as restful or as productive as we first imagined, simply because even though its limited our physical hurry it hasn’t actually provided us any ‘escape’ from all of that information overload that constantly comes at us through news headlines, on our TV screens and phones.

So how do we really practice resting well? It’s a question I’ve wrestled with a lot over the past year, and I think part of the answer is in really exploring what feels truly restful to you.

Maybe that’s enjoying quality time eating or playing board games with family. Maybe it’s reading a book, or taking a bath or a run. Maybe it’s knitting, or baking, or playing music, or chatting to friends, or getting out into nature for a walk. What is bliss to one person, is often another’s idea of hell… so fill in the blanks with whatever is restful for you! 

In the end, it doesn’t really matter what ‘your thing’ is; it only matters that you make it an intentional priority, rather than just letting technology and social media steal all of your quality rest time away!

Back to normal?

But I think the biggest challenge of all for many of us will be what happens next, as we start to re-emerge from pandemic life.

Because it strikes me that if that real soul rest is still hard to come by – even in this year where our lives have been stripped right back - then how much harder will it be to maintain when things begin to go ‘back to normal’?

Will we just default back to filling up every spare moment of our time with meetings, social appointments and activities and hurrying through our days, or will we allow some of the more positive changes we’ve discovered over the past year to stick?

These questions are really worth wrestling with right now, because to a large extent, we each get to decide! Do we want to return to rushing through our days, or live at a pace that feels healthy for our souls?

Looking forwards

I believe that it was Benjamin Franklin who first coined the phrase, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” and I think it’s really true.

Right now, a lot of governments and organisations are talking about ‘exit strategies’ from pandemic resilience plans and ‘roadmaps for the future’ - but I think it’s also worth considering that we might need a more personalised plan for our own lives too. How do we want our way of living to look?

So over the coming weeks, as restrictions start to be lifted, let’s remember that just because everything is suddenly allowed again, it doesn’t mean we have to instantly schedule everything back in.

Friends and family in other countries that have largely returned to normal already, keep reminding me that if we felt a bit overloaded by life before all of this, picking everything back up after such a long break will feel like a double burden!

So let’s be gentle with ourselves as we try to find our feet in normal life again, and each take it at our own pace…

And let’s also be patient with one another, recognising that we each face differing and unique sets of circumstances that dictate our own choices and decisions…

But most of all, let’s each determine to leave hurry and mental overload behind.

Further Support

Launching my first book in the midst of a national lockdown here in the UK certainly hasn’t been a part of my marketing strategy, but I do think the launch timing of this little book that’s about learning to rest has ended up being strangely fitting for this season…

‘Sand Between Your Toes’ is both a practical tool to help you embrace a slower pace living and a call to help us stay focused on the things that really matter in our lives.

And as we prepare to re-emerge from pandemic living and re-enter ‘normal’ life, my hope is that it might be a useful resource to help readers to explore these themes further during this unique space of time we are in.

If you haven’t already done so, you can find out more about it below.