“Rest and be thankful.” — William Wordsworth
It is the line that opens my 2016 essay on deep relaxation — and it is also, quietly, the whole argument of Pitfall 5 of my book Unshakable Self-Esteem: “Not Taking Time to Recharge Your Batteries.”
Life can be hectic. There are a million distractions in our lives. We have work, personal life, chores, notifications, social media, projects, and appointments to keep.
It seems that if you feel caught up with everything, new things keep coming your way. And somewhere in that pile-up, one small thing quietly disappears from the schedule: you.
The Pitfall: Going On and On
The chapter opens with a question I still have to ask myself: are you among the people who just go on and on without some self-care? Do you not stop to eat and hydrate yourself adequately?
When you lose sight of self-care, it becomes difficult to maintain self-esteem levels. That is the part we miss. We treat rest as a productivity question — will I get more done? The book treats it as a self-respect question.
Because every day you run yourself empty, you are sending yourself a message: everyone else’s needs are real, and yours are negotiable. Repeat that message often enough and it stops sounding like a busy week. It starts sounding like a belief about your worth.
Michel de Montaigne, whose words open the chapter, put the opposite belief plainly:
“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” — Michel de Montaigne
You cannot belong to yourself if you are never, ever with yourself — fed, rested, and unhurried, even briefly.
Rest Is Not a Reward
The chapter’s Going a Little Deeper section says it directly: rest is not a reward you earn after you are exhausted. Rest is part of how a human being works, the way sleep is part of the day and silence is part of music.
We do not apologize to the lamp for refilling its oil. We do not call the garden lazy for lying quiet in the winter.
When you rest, you are not falling behind. You are telling yourself something important: that you are worth caring for even when you are not producing anything. That message, repeated gently over time, becomes self-respect.
And Parker Palmer, quoted in the same chapter, removes the last excuse — the fear that stopping is selfish:
“Self-care is never a selfish act—it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.” — Parker Palmer
You cannot offer a gift you have run into the ground. Recharging is not time taken away from the people you serve. It is how the serving stays possible.
If you want all twenty-nine pitfalls — each with a reflection and a Try This Today — you will find the book here: Unshakable Self-Esteem.
In Real Life: A Stone Seat at the Top of the Climb
The words “Rest and be thankful” were not invented at a desk. They were carved for tired travellers.
At the head of Glen Croe in Argyll, Scotland, the old military road climbs to a pass about 860 feet high. The road was built under Major William Caulfeild’s command in the 1740s, and a stone seat was erected at the summit bidding travellers to “Rest and be thankful” — hence the place’s modern name, Rest and Be Thankful.
Think about what that seat assumes. The climb was laborious. Nobody was expected to power past the top without stopping. Rest was not left to willpower or mood; it was built into the road, in stone, at exactly the point where people would need it most.
In 1803, William Wordsworth visited the pass with his sister Dorothy. He later wrote the sonnet “Rest And Be Thankful! — At The Head Of Glencroe,” which opens: “Doubling and doubling with laborious walk, / Who, that has gained at length / The wished-for Height, / This brief simple wayside Call can slight, / And rests not thankful?”
The seat is the lesson. The travellers who built rest into the hardest part of the road were not weaker than us. They were more honest about how human beings actually work.
Going Deeper: What Recharging Actually Looks Like
The chapter keeps the prescription disarmingly ordinary. Do you stop to take care of you? To eat regularly and hydrate? To exercise and meditate? To take some personal time to charge yourself? To dress well and put in some thought about how you look? To plan your days and weeks with plenty of time to get to places, so that you are not always in a tearing hurry?
Notice that none of these is a holiday. Recharging, in this book, is mostly small and daily: food, water, movement, unhurried margins.
My relaxation essay adds the practices that refill the same battery from the inside: slow, deep belly breathing; a short walk in nature; more sleep, and a nap if you can manage one; a few minutes of sitting in silence and letting thoughts pass without clinging to them.
You may not have time to meditate, exercise, or do yoga every day. But if you make a habit of a small and regular amount of time for self-care, the book promises, your levels of self-respect will soar — and you will radiate the glow that comes with it.
Build Your Own Stone Seat
Here is a small addition I would offer alongside the book. The seat at Glen Croe worked because nobody had to decide, mid-climb, whether they deserved a stop. The decision had already been made — in stone, in advance.
So make your decision in advance too. Choose one small pause and give it an address: the same bench, the same window, the same cup of tea at the same time each day. Put it in the calendar like an appointment with someone you deeply respect — because, as the book’s Try This Today insists, you are the someone you respect.
And keep a short recharge menu where you can see it: three pauses that actually restore you, written down before you are depleted. A tired mind is a poor chooser; it will pick the phone every time. A rested self, choosing earlier in the day, chooses better.
Try This Today
Schedule one small pause today and guard it like an appointment. A cup of tea in silence. A short walk with no phone. Ten slow breaths by a window.
Keep the appointment. Then notice, honestly, what the pause returns to you — and whether the guilt you expected was telling the truth.
From the archive: this post grows out of my 2016 essay “21 Soothing Practices For Deep Relaxation-Part 1” — read the original essay here.
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