Knowledge Flow & Flourish

I’m now going to take a small break from our Knowledge Management (KM) series because, as I mentioned in my first post, this blog is about the convergence of disciplines and ideas to create something new.

So far, my posts have spoken to those interested in knowledge management. However, my intention for this blog is larger, to make a space for all leaders and aspiring leaders to learn how to develop and use their own knowledge and the knowledge of their organizations in order to reach their true potential. By exploring the relationships between various topics, my hope is that you’ll come away with some new ideas to incorporate into your work and life. I’m so glad you’re here!

What is a leader?

I had the great opportunity to take part in a leadership program at my company, hosted by the Leadership Research Institute (LRI). This is how they defined leadership:

Being a leader is about being reflective, strategic, and intentional about where you put your time, energy, and resources.

If you want to learn how to become a leader, you are most likely a leader already. You might have an official title as a leader, or you are leading your own life, your family, your community, an idea, a conversation, or a movement. I believe that all leaders (anyone who has decided to focus their energy to lead something) need balance and a variety of skills and mindsets to reach their full potential. This includes rational knowledge as well as what’s intuitive. These two “sides” create a whole, which I believe is the wisdom, or deeper knowledge, that’s required for powerful leadership.

I’m interested in how two “sides” or “opposites” connect or converge into a whole, when two sides of the brain meet, the rational and the intuitive, when we allow ourselves to do and to be. When we balance, we meet ourselves as we really are, as our authentic whole. And when we lead from this place, we inspire others.

Many of us leaders are restless. We have the tendency seek out more opportunities to do more, to make more progress, to have a greater impact. We often feel that it’s never enough and we’re never quite satisfied. This is, after all, what our fast-paced technological society portrays as the success we need in our lives.

Paradoxically, though, I’ve found that the true progress is more powerful when we allow ourselves to slow down, to quiet our restlessness, to unplug, and to balance ourselves with rest.

Why is rest important?

Joelle K. Jay, author of The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership, suggests that in order to open yourself to the possibility to solve the toughest problems, you can make it easy by stepping away from your dilemma or work to rest. This activates a different part of your brain that allows your answers to come to you.

I researched this topic more and found that rest allows for the mind-wandering state required for creativity:

Over 40% of the participants’ creative ideas occurred when they were engaged in a non-work-related activity and/or thinking about something unrelated to the topic. Moreover, although creative ideas that occurred during mind wandering were not rated overall as more creative, they were more likely to be characterized as involving an “Aha!” experience and contributing to overcoming an impasse. These preliminary findings bear out many anecdotal reports that important creative ideas occur during mind wandering.

The Science of Mind Wandering: Empirically Navigating the Stream of Consciousness, Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 66, 2015, Smallwood, pp 487-518

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang studied this topic and published an entire book, called Work: Why You Get More Work Done When You Work Less. In a Scientific American interview, Alex says:

The critical thing to recognize is that when we are mind-wandering, when our minds don’t have any particular thing they have to focus on, our brains are pretty darn active. When you do things like go for a long walk, your subconscious mind keeps working on problems. The experience of having the mind slightly relaxed allows it to explore different combinations of ideas, to test out different solutions. And then once it has arrived at one that looks promising, that is what pops into your head as an Aha! moment.

Q&A: Why a Rested Brain Is More Creative, by Ferris Jabr

As a creative person, I can absolutely attest to these experiences. My best ideas come to me while brushing my teeth, going on a walk, or staring off into space. I can spend hours trying to solve a problem only to have the solution come to me when I step away and focus on something else.

What happens when you don’t rest?

On the other side of this spectrum, there are days or weeks when I completely forget to rest, and the consequences are disastrous. I know I need to rest when:

• I get tension or dehydration headaches
• I have trouble sleeping, winding down at night, or wake up too early
• My mind is foggy during the day, even when I’ve had enough sleep
• I’m easily irritated and start picking fights with everyone around me, especially those I love

If I wait too long and ignore these early signs, the symptoms result in burnout, apathy, and self-doubt. In extreme cases, the result is chronic illness that serves as a wake-up call that something needs to change.

What is rest?

I was first introduced to the concept of real rest by my beloved yoga teacher, Nicole Anami Becker. She says that rest nourishes the body, mind, and spirit and heals many of our chronic issues. When we can’t sleep, we might just need rest. When we have physical pains, we might just need rest. The most profound concept I learned from her is that rest is not the same thing as sleep, and that watching Netflix is not rest. Rest is not leisure. Rest is when we simplify the input into our senses. I highly recommend watching her YouTube video, Sleep and Rest Are Not the Same Thing, to learn more.

I also came across The 7 types of rest every person needs by Saundra Dalton-Smith MD through Leslie Santibanez, Information Architect, and Stephanie Barnes, Chief Chaos Officer at Entelechy. The article states that we should focus our rest on all types of rest – physical, mental, sensory, creative, emotional, and spiritual. I love that there is a focus on all of the parts of our selves.

The great pause of the pandemic allowed me to truly experiment with rest in order to keep myself balance and resilient. Here’s what I found useful:

• Rest can happen in very small increments with 2-5 minutes of putting my legs up the wall or on the couch and closing my eyes midday before hitting that afternoon slump, going for a lunchtime walk, or taking a quick pause to center myself
• A larger restful session is helpful about once a week and can be something like yoga nidra (yogic, conscious sleep), gazing at a candle, a quiet walk in the forest or on the beach, or laying down listening to a beautiful, peaceful piece of classical music

I found that when I am consistently rested, I am inspired, creative, and joyful. I can move forward into the world with grace while tapping into my inner wisdom. As Erich Schiffmann, one of my favorite yoga teachers and author of The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness, says, “relief feels good.”

And a couple of quotes of inspiration from Joelle K. Jay:

When you practice personal leadership, you use every ounce of your potential with inspiration instead of perspiration, synergy instead of sacrifice, and wisdom instead of work.

You are whole. How you feel affects how you act; how you act affects how you work; how you work affects your results; your results affect the way you live. It’s all connected. You are connected; you are one.

The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership

Please share!

How do you know that you need rest and have tipped your personal balance point? How do you keep yourself aware of your need for rest? What rest practices and techniques do you find helpful? How often do you need to rest to keep yourself balanced? What kind of wisdom comes to you when you are in rest or rested? Let me know in the comments!