Great things hap­pen when giv­en due time to prop­er­ly devel­op. Go slow as nec­es­sary. Pos­i­tive change takes time.

“In life there are no solu­tions, there are forces in motion; cre­ate them and the solu­tions will fol­low.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Heal­ing is a slow, del­i­cate process. It can be nour­ished, but not forced. Same goes for build­ing mus­cle. Exer­cise helps exist­ing mus­cle tis­sues break down so they can then rebuild more robust­ly. Just as devel­op­ing new mus­cle requires pain and strug­gle, so too does expand­ing col­lec­tive con­scious­ness through­out society.

Change is dif­fi­cult and uncom­fort­able. A slow process mit­i­gates that pain. Humans have two cog­ni­tive func­tions: fast and slow. Our fast sys­tem is auto­mat­ic. Intu­ition and impulse kick into gear to help us avoid sit­u­a­tions that feel dan­ger­ous or to iden­ti­fy sit­u­a­tions that feel ben­e­fi­cial to engage in. Yet, we need a slow­er, ana­lyt­i­cal process to fig­ure out the nuances of our next steps. The slow sys­tem employs rea­son. It’s also fact-based and com­pul­sive­ly thought­ful. Going slow takes work. But the ben­e­fit of slow think­ing is that it checks and bal­ances our often biased and incor­rect think­ing.²

When we slow down our think­ing, we not only keep our­selves safer from error, but we also cre­ate ide­al con­di­tions for cre­ativ­i­ty. And when we are still enough to sleep we acti­vate our fun­da­men­tal mech­a­nism for home­osta­sis (sta­ble equi­lib­ri­um). Many tra­di­tions incor­po­rate rest. From the sies­ta to the sab­bath, entire val­ue sys­tems are devot­ed to hon­or­ing the impor­tance of stop­ping work to rest.

Rest­ful prac­tices, like mind­ful­ness and med­i­ta­tion, are use­ful for a vari­ety of health ben­e­fits. Inten­tion­al­ly slow­ing down phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and enabling immer­sion into the mind, allows the brain’s waves to go slow as well. Brain waves are the result of syn­chro­nized elec­tri­cal activ­i­ty caused by bil­lions of neu­rons in our brains com­mu­ni­cat­ing en masse. Our brain waves con­trol our state of con­scious­ness and mood. Alpha brain­waves occur in the fre­quen­cy range of 8 to 13 Hz and become more abun­dant dur­ing mind­ful­ness or med­i­ta­tive states. In more prag­mat­ic terms, alpha waves are also asso­ci­at­ed with reduc­ing depres­sion and increas­ing cre­ativ­i­ty.³

We even learn when we sleep. In our deep­er states of Delta and Theta-wave sleep, our men­tal activ­i­ty is actu­al­ly best set for mem­o­ry.⁴ We can look to enhance our self-learn­ing by set­ting one­self up to con­tin­ue the lessons of the day over lengthy hours of sleep.

So rest the body. Rest the mind. Rest from stress. Focus on what’s most impor­tant, and for the moment, take a rest from all the rest.