rest like you mean it

I can proudly say that on most days, I can walk confidently by the magazine rack without indulging. I can usually find better ways to spend $5.75CDN (plus HST!) than on 100 glossy pages of ads.. but not today. Today, the mass marketing machine worked brilliantly and I couldn't help but pick up the newest O Magazine. On the cover is a newly coiffed Oprah (apparently only a wig) with a splashy green banner that reads, boldly, "The Makeover Issue: Transform Your Look, Luck, Life". A quick flip through and the magazine came home with me. Here's why.

The first month of my happy, healthy project has been, bluntly put, a disaster. It started out well, but I got sick, and then quite a bit sicker. After ten days of barely functioning, I can just now make it to work with feeling completely winded and food is barely, barely staying down. It started so well, and then went so horribly wrong. So yes, the tag line about transformation was a little appealing.

A few articles in and I felt even more justified in my purchase. In her monthly column, this month titled "Lying Low", Martha Beck writes,

When things fall apart, your urge is to do something - anything - to put them back together. But what if you can't do that right now?

The answer, quite poetically:

Until things improve and something starts to work, let's lie down in the shady valley... and rest like we mean it.

I can't help but think that my purchase of this mag was a bit serendipitous. My instinct is always to add more, schedule more, and demand more of myself, and then to beat myself up when I can't keep up with my own expectations. While I still think vitality was the perfect place to start, after the last two weeks I've had, and those brief few words of wisdom from Beck, I now can't help but think that my approach was all wrong. I don't need to do more to feel vital, I need to do less, quite a bit less. I need to breathe, to sleep, to slow down, to putter around, to be lazy, to eat ice cream (coconut milk ice cream of course), to enjoy soy lattes and skip my runs to sit by the lake. I need to do nothing for awhile. I've been ignored all of this for a bit too long and I fell apart at the seams. Perhaps it was all meant to happen so that I could stumble upon the following little nugget of wisdom: I need to rest like I mean.

This is Charlie. She's a pro at resting.

mxo