Whenever I read articles about success in magazines, I hear so much about how successful people never sleep – because they are so busy hustling.
I used to think that the only way for me to be successful would be to hustle like those people and get into that mantra – I will sleep when I’m dead.
And then I discovered Thrive by Arianna Huffington
By all accounts Arianna was successful, she had everything that she could ever dream of, but she wasn’t able to enjoy her success because she was always working hard, and she rarely gave herself time to rest and get rejuvenated. That was until she fainted, hit her head and was hospitalized for a while. This experience made her to re-think success, and she started researching the benefits of sleep and rest.
Now when I first started reading the book, I though about all the single mothers in one-income households who don’t even have the opportunity to rest. I wondered, does this apply to them as well?
I also thought about how people talk about the importance of rest, but oftentimes these people are already successful… so I began thinking perhaps rest is only for after you’ve succeeded.
What I realized later was that, rest is important at every stage. Granted when you are just starting out, you have to drum up a lot of attention, you have to do a lot of work, so you may not be able to rest in the same way as someone who has been in the industry for a long time.
But if your life and your health are important to you, then you have to find ways to add rest to your routines. Otherwise you will find yourself being forced to rest, and to spend lots of money and time trying to get back the health you once took for granted.