After three pretty intense weeks back into the school year routine, this weekend it was time for me to have some rest, to gather my strength again and prevent tiredness from taking its toll on my body.

Although on Friday I could not pass on the opportunity to drop by Culture Night (the equivalent to "la noche en blanco" in Madrid and other cities), which is one my favourite evenings of the year in Ireland. Only this time, instead of going to Dublin city centre, I walked to the nearby village of Lucan, where there were also several events programmed, including the art exhibition where I found this lovely painting:

(Painting by Stephen Dowling, @stephendowlingart on Instagram.)

Like I´ve already mentioned on this blog, I generally find it difficult to stop and take a break to rest, even though I´ve been learning to manage that better, for my own sake and also for my family. Because sometimes we forget that we cannot become the best version of ourselves if we´re constantly exhausted... Our performance is not the same, and our relationships are not the same, and we don´t have any energy left to do anything other than survive.

There´s a quote that I really like that I think illustrates this idea very well; according to Google, it´s attributed to both American general George S. Patton and American football coach Vince Lombardi:

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

What thoughts come to your mind as you read this phrase? You´ve probably also experienced this in some shape or form: feeling that you don´t have the energy to tackle a project or make a big life change, no matter how much you´d like to do it in theory. But maybe you never thought of connecting that directly to your habitual state of tiredness, or maybe you thought that your tiredness was only temporary, and that, miraculously, tomorrow, or next month, you´ll have more energy (or more time, which is another side of the same problem) and you´ll be able to get on to it.

Because the other thing at play here is that chronic tiredness is completely normalised in our society these days, as is filling up all our waking hours with activities, be it work, learning or leisure. If you bump into someone in the street and ask them how they´re doing, chances are they will answer that they´re very busy, and you will think that that´s completely normal. But by keeping this up, we´re not doing ourselves any favours, because, even though staying constantly occupied makes us feel like we´re being "productive", in reality we may be doing no more than spinning round and round in the hamster wheel, without making any progress or arriving anywhere new.

So today, I invite you to reflect on this topic for a little while: what project or life change are you postponing because you don't feel you have the energy? Try incorporating more REST into your daily life (by the way, watching TV or scrolling social media don´t count as rest!) and I can assure you you will notice the difference.