On… Rest #1
How can we make time for rest when the planet is burning?
This is the first of a two-part mini series on rest, and how to make our living in the world more sustainable personally and ecologically.
Over the past few weeks I have avoided looking at the videos of the Californian wildfires for fear that they will break something inside of me.
Remarkably, many redwoods are surviving the current wildfires because that’s what they are designed to do (like this tree).
I was in California exactly one year ago, gazing up in awe at those famous redwoods now making the headlines, with two thousand years of their magnificence buried in layers beneath my feet.
I’m hesitant to admit that because I flew there.
Or part way there, at least. To cut air time and save carbon, I took the train to San Francisco from New York. It took me three weeks, with stop offs, which were arguably some of the best of my twenties.
And on that trip, for the first time in a while, life appeared to me in full colour.
Full and glorious colour.
The contrast to how I had become accustomed to feeling was so startling that I decided there and then to take some time off work.
So in March of this year I began a 6 month sabbatical from my role as the Director of Hope for the Future and I took some time to rest.
This fortnight my blog posts will focus on rest. Cats have been so far neglected in my regular cute animal offerings, so I’ve done my best to begin rectifying the imbalance!
The Self-Care Craze
A few years ago, when I was engaged in a serious battle with anxiety, I began to think about self care intentionally for the first time.
Self-care is the idea that we have a duty of care to ourselves, beyond our basic needs, for our own physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. That we do not need to rely solely on outside support for help, and that we shouldn’t wait for something to ‘go wrong’ before we prioritise our wellness, even though this might sometimes be inconvenient.
In response to the drastic increase in mental ill-health (a rise of 20% between 1993 and 2014), there has been a growth in the language of self care, with the need for rest being a major part of that movement.
Originally when I thought of self care, I had visions of bubble baths and chocolate, taking a long nap, or curling up to watch my favourite film.
These are some of the recommendations you will find in this ‘how to practice self care for free’ article from the Blurt Foundation, which is an organisation I would highly recommend for anyone wanting to know more about self-care.
This was the kind of image that self care originally brought to my mind, but the reality has been oh-so-different.
But whilst those things are really great, my experience of self care has been much more like waging a war than cultivating warm, fuzzy feelings inside.
Self-care has meant making some of the toughest decisions of my life.
Letting go of people I love but who aren’t in a place to love me well. Risking the feeling of having made a huge mistake by clumsily having a go at prioritising myself. Facing the deepest, darkest places of myself that don’t feel deserving of care anyway.
And more than once I have asked myself, why on earth is it so incredibly difficult to do what we need to do to care for ourselves?
Self-Care and Earth-Care
We’re told we should eat, drink, sleep, and exercise well. That we should spend more time outdoors, get off our devices or sit up straighter.
But it’s notoriously difficult to do.
These kinds of lifestyle changes require ongoing and personal resolve for the long haul.
They are not one-off decisions that, once made, take on a life of their own and carry us through any future wavers in commitment. And there is no one looking over our shoulders to check that we’re doing what we’ve resolved to do.
It’s on us to make these changes.
Anf it's also for ourselves, which can make them even harder. Especially when we’re tired, pushed for time, or having a really bad day (week, month, year…)
And then, for those of us who have awoken to find that the future of planet earth is to be decided by the lifestyle changes the world makes over the next ten years, there’s an additional set of hoops to jump through.
Reducing our meat intake, stopping flying where possible, going plastic-free, turning down the heating, investing in solar panels, giving up our car… the list goes on.
The trip I took to California last year helped bring my soul back to life, but just the flight from London to New York alone released more carbon than the average person in 54 countries produces in a year.
I was so ashamed of myself that it was something I felt I ‘needed’. I had resolved many times not to fly, and yet there I was. And now that beautiful place is burning.
Even when the stakes are as high as they can possibly be, it is apparently very difficult to make the changes we need to make for the long haul.
Willpower Alone Cannot Save Us
There is a reason that most of us cannot live up to the standards we set for ourselves, and that is because our decision making function lies far more in our bodies — the unpredictable realm of emotion and sensation— than it does in our rational minds. (For more in this, see my recent blog On… Feelings.)
We can resolve to make all sorts of changes, but the real battleground is in the body, such as the physical wiring of our brains, how our emotions are responding to the thought patterns that wiring creates, and also our external environment.
Our will has far less to do with the way we live than we might think (roughly about 20% according to research consensus).
And if we make the mistake of thinking that all these changes require is will power alone, we will likely find ourselves sinking in shame that we are not strong enough or that we don’t care enough to live our lives in the way we ought to live them.
And shame is one of the most exhausting emotions of them all.
But this does not make us, nor the changes we know we must make, a lost cause.
Willpower alone will not be enough to help us make long term changes in our lives.
Rewiring Ourselves
Recent breakthroughs in neuroplasticity show that we can intentionally strengthen certain muscles in our brains for the better because our neuropathways are constantly changing in reaction to our surroundings.
So the brain scan of a person who practices a few minutes of meditation every day for a few weeks, for example, will show an increase in the grey matter in certain parts of the brain (such as processing power) and decreasing in others (such as stress production).
Which is why taking time out for ourselves is so important.
Because activities such as meditation, or spending time outdoors, thinking about what we’re grateful for, and clarifying our feelings through journaling (the recommendations of my Eco-Anxiety series) help us in the short term, but a habitual practice actually changes the wiring of our brains so that we experience the benefits outside of those practices also.
Because, incredibly, our brains continue to adapt throughout our lives, it’s possible for us to cultivate within ourselves a greater predisposition to, for example, feel greater clarify about what’s important to us, experience more gratitude, and yes, grow our willpower.
The Power of the Nudge
Another sign of hope can be found in Nudge Theory, which has proven that subtle changes in peoples’ environments can have drastic impacts on their behaviour.
Smaller dinner plates, for example, consistently show that people will eat less and it’s a tactic that’s been successfully used to help people lose weight.
For that reason Nudge Theory is increasingly used in public policy to make it easier for people to make good choices.
For example, in 2012 the Government mandated that employers must automatically enroll their staff in pension schemes so that the onus was on the employees to opt-out, rather than to opt-in.
It was a small change but it was so effective that pension enrolment nearly trebled within four years, voluntarily.
Nudge Theory shows us why political action on climate change is so important.
Relying on each of us to develop an adequate understanding of climate change, to research what lifestyle changes need to be made and then to cultivate the willpower to implement them is incredibly inefficient.
(And if you want to find out more about how to help drive political change on climate change, take a look at Hope for the Future’s resources).
Is There Time for Change?
The downside to both of these practices is that a degree of up-front investment and will power is needed in the first place.
When we (or our political leaders) are already exhausted, stretched for time, or feeling such an overwhelming sense of urgency about everything that’s going wrong in the world right now, these changes can feel like another set of criteria to add to an already insurmountable list.
Which brings me back to the topic of rest.
Trying to overhaul our lives, either for our own health or that of the planet, can feel overwhelming, even if we know it’s good for us.
Because what had come clear to me during my time in the USA last year was that I was burning out, and for me, this was a nightmare scenario.
I had worked myself into the ground growing Hope for the Future from a small initiative to a national charity. It was my pride and joy, and seeing the work being done was what kept me sane when I felt most scared about climate change. I also knew I would miss our team enormously.
So, knowing that burnout is a major issue for the environmental sector, and as a personal quest to understand my own struggle with it, I decided to use my sabbatical to research how to build emotional resilience to the mental health impacts of climate change, which birthed this blog and a new line of research which I am now excited to take forward.
My recovery has also involved a lot of resting and doing enjoyable things. Which has been lovely, but it’s also been surprisingly difficult because I’ve had a nearly constant voice in the back of my head whispering something like…
‘Shouldn’t you really be getting on with something more productive? You could use this time out to get fit, redecorate the house, read all those books gathering dust on your shelf…’
Or…
‘Don’t you feel guilty that you can take this time our when others can’t? And what’s the carbon cost of doing this [insert nice activity here] anyway?’
Or the worst one is…
‘There isn’t time for this, Jo. Don’t you know the planet is burning?’
Despite committing to a period of six months to rest, it was still hard for me to let go of my expectations to be productive. I still felt like there wasn’t time.
Hyperfocus and Scatterfocus
Chris Bailey’s book, ‘Hyperfocus’ is full of helpful tips about how to ‘work less and achieve more.’
A few months into my sabbatical I shared this dilemma with a good friend who recommended a book called ‘Hyperfocus’ by Chris Bailey.
It’s a book on ‘how to work less and achieve more’ which was something I had suddenly found myself very interested in!
The first half of Bailey’s book is devoted to hyperfocus— how to cultivate a single-minded concentration on the task at hand which is frequently associated with high levels of efficiency and productivity.
That had some really useful ideas such as working in one hour bursts, turning off devices, and training our brains to stay present, but what I found most interesting was that in order for hyperfocus to be effective, Bailey advises us to give our minds a rest and just let them wander freely.
So the second half of his book is devoted to the idea of scatterfocus which is when we give our minds a break, often by doing something that doesn’t completely consume our attention such as a craft, watching birds out the window, or going for a stroll.
For scatterfocus to be effective Bailey advises that we are intentional about it. We must avoid being drawn into ‘problem solving mode’ or trying to make it a productive time, and set boundaries so that this rest time isn’t swallowed up into the business of the day.
Rest as our Route Home
It was interesting to me that a bestselling book on efficiency, particularly in a business setting, should devote so many of its pages to doing nothing.
This time of rest for our brains is apparently essential for making better plans for the future, fostering creativity and increasing output.
As someone working in climate change, concerned about how much there is to be done and how little time there is to do it in, I found it encouraging.
But as my sabbatical— meaning ‘a period of rest’— progressed, I began to find it a bit disconcerting.
Because if I have found myself only able to rest because of its benefits to productivity, and if I only value rest because of its benefits to the outcomes, then what does that tell me about what is worthy of my time and ultimately my life?
Such a view would leave me to believe that the value of my life is based on my achievements and not on who I am.
And I don’t think I'm alone in that.
Increasingly we live in a world that has expected us squeeze in our time for for loving, exploring, resting, and being around our working, achieving, and producing (if we are not fortunate enough to be able to combine the two.)
Which might explain why we have struggled to protect the planet we live on.
Because if the benchmark for value is how productive something is, then nature will be valued in the same way. As a resource and commodity, rather than a living entity with value in its own right.
In mainstream public life nature has been seen as a resource and commodity, rather than a living being with and within which we are living in partnership.
Of course, just as it turns out that rest is essential for productivity, so too is the planet essential for human survival and flourishing, but why have we needed to justify those things on those terms in the first place?
And if this constant pushing to achieve and acquire lies at the heart of much of our environmental challenges, then maybe rest isn’t just a good thing to fit and and make time for. Maybe rest is actually our route back home to ourselves, each other, and a healthy planet.
Maybe halting climate change, or reaching for many of the things that matter most to us, isn’t about doing more. Maybe it’s actually about doing less.
Which is what I’ll be exploring in next week’s blog, On… Rest #2.
About Me I’m Jo,
formerly the founder Director of national climate change charity, Hope for the Future. I am currently researching eco-anxiety and how we can build emotional resilience in our response to the climate emergency.
Welcome to Climate.Emergence- a place to emotionally process what on earth is happening to us and our planet.