The 'Wellness' myth

There is a lot of talk about wellness at the moment; an increased interest in mindfulness, meditating, retreating and simplifying life. We can almost be sold this idealistic picture of slowing down. And it makes sense; there is an epidemic of busyness and burnout. So many of us are feeling pulled and stretched to our limits. And so there is a counter-movement. And a lot of these things can be healthy and good, but like anything presented to us in neat little instagram squares, it can also feel pretty disconnected from real life. It becomes another thing to feel bad about, because no matter how much we’d love to have a quiet day by a lake, life simply doesn’t allow it. Wellness becomes something we can buy into if we have the luxury of time, freedom from responsibility and enough money to be able to afford getaways, classes and treatments. 

And yet, I’ve been on a twenty year journey (or wrestle!) with how to feel more ‘well’, and a lot of this blog is about living differently. How can we find depth in a society that wants to keep us distracted? I know what burnout feels like. I experienced it chronically for a year in my early twenties, and I was able to do little else except recover. And I’ve experienced coming close to burnout since then, teetering near to the edges of my mental and physical limits. It is an epidemic, and it is a symptom of a culture that is not set up to help us thrive. Even for those of us who haven’t experienced burnout, it is still so easy to live distracted lives, spinning many plates at the same time. And because of this, I believe with all of my heart that one of the first steps towards real and tangible wellness is learning to live more slowly, within our limits and present to the moment. I wonder if the wellness myth is this: that we need to escape reality in order to find a sense of inner peace. We need to buy into a product, or go somewhere beautiful or shut out the negative things of life. This might offer a quick fix. But what if real wellness can be found by learning to inhabit what is real, rather than trying to escape from it?

For Christians, it is almost harder to live slowly and in the moment because we have been given a mission to do good in the world. It is all too easy for our desire to do good and see the kingdom grow to lead us to a place where we are functioning in perpetual busyness. And it is easy to forgive busyness in ourselves and in those around us because there can be a lot of good testimonies and stories of God working to go along with this. But the thing is, God dwells in the present moment. When our mind is focussed on lots of different things, when we have a constant buzz of information and activity, we are no longer present. We are no longer inhabiting that moment with God. If we can’t be led to reject God, we will almost certainly be led to constant distraction instead, even if that distraction is seemingly Christian activities. To days, weeks and months passing without us breathing, pausing, processing, and living at the pace of God. What if, actually, one of the main ways we as Christians could stand out and be a hopeful and peaceful presence to the world around us would be to do less (and do it from a centred and rested place), rather than more?

The thing is, most of us want to slow down, but then reality hits. If it’s not about mimicking a wellness magazine, then what does real slowing look like? This is a question I’ve lived with for a long time. And what I am learning isn’t a quick fix, but I think it is something most of us can apply, whatever stage of life we are in. Slowing to me isn’t necessarily about cutting a lot of things out of life, although it is important to question the things we have a choice over. But as a mum of three there is a certain amount of busyness that I don’t have much choice over, and there are many others that don’t have a lot of choice about what they do. What has helped me instead is doing one thing at a time, trying not to rush through what I am doing, and being present to whatever is taking my time and whatever is going on inside me.   

Sometimes I can be cooking tea and I am just powering through, trying to get through it so I can do something else. But sometimes I enter into the task, letting my mind still and doing things with purpose and presence. Often we power through the menial jobs in life trying to get to the more important stuff. But what if we see all the things that we do in life as important, and worthy of our focus and attention? It’s not necessarily the level of busyness that is the problem (although it can be), it is the amount of things our brains are trying to do in one moment. We can be doing a practical job, whilst planning something else in our minds, whilst ready to respond if our phones make a noise, and then we notice something else that needs doing halfway through and get distracted by that. Some multi-tasking is required in life, but when we become machines that focus like this most of the time we can start to feel like we’re spinning away from ourselves. 

We function well when we are whole. When our minds, bodies and souls are all integrated and doing the same thing. Distraction is when our bodies are in one place, and yet our minds are elsewhere, or we are doing lots of things at once and so we find we are away from ourselves, unaware of how we are feeling and struggling to connect well. And it isn’t easy. This isn’t a post that is trying to condemn you or say that you need to change everything straight away. Instead, this is about being kind to ourselves. It is about recognising that we have limits, and that we have permission to live within these limits, even if we wish we could bend and stretch them. And like steering a ship, it is about noticing our overall movement - where we are headed. We won’t approach everything in our day with presence and attention. But we can make small changes that mean that gradually the ship begins to change direction and move towards something more healthy. Some of us have been moving away from ourselves for a long time, but there is a quiet and gentle invitation to come back home, to a place where we can meet God in the normal and day to day rhythms of life. 

Here are some things that have helped me:

(These aren’t tips or rules to follow because we’re all different.)

-Focussing on one thing at a time

-Having set aside times for things like emails and messages, rather than checking them as they come in

-Having a ‘sabbath’, a day for fun, God and family, where I won’t plan or do extra jobs

-Treating everything I do as important, rather than seeing some things as better than others

-Trying to be interruptible, whether that’s by a spontaneous chat on the street, or something my kids want to show me

-Having a short (between 10 and 30 minute) nap if I can, as a ‘brain break’

-Treating every interaction and conversation as the most important thing I could be doing

-Walking places if I can

-Embracing times of the day when my mind can wander and process, instead of being on my phone (e.g. waiting for things)

Some quotes I like:

'God walks “slowly” because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed… It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is “slow” yet it is Lord over all other aspects since it is the speed of love.'

-Kosuke Koyama, Three Mile an Hour God

'Hurry and love are incompatible'

-John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

‘We, for every kind of reason, good and bad, are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion. It is not that we have anything against God, depth, and spirit, we would like these, it is just that we are habitually too preoccupied to have any of these show up on our radar screens. We are more busy than bad, more distracted than nonspiritual… Pathological busyness, distraction, and restlessness are major blocks today within our spiritual lives.’

-Ronald Rolheiser

‘The danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them'

-John Ortberg