Resting Your Body Can Reactivate Your Creativity — Here’s How

Having the flu can light up your mind.

No one likes being sick or having a fever. But what if I told you I achieved unexpected new things each time I had a minor illness?

Thanks to fever, I started a Master’s degree four years after my first one. During a cold, I rediscovered my love for painting. And, just after the seasonal flu, I started keeping a journal, which helped me discover the joy of writing and eventually led me to Medium.

Alright, I didn’t achieve these things because of my sickness. I am not saying “Hey, wanna be more creative? Get sick.”

But I still am thankful to my illnesses for what they allowed me to do.

My body has always been more sensitive than my mind. As a child, I would catch a cold every few weeks. Things got better as I grew up and improved my fitness, but staying sick in bed for fever is still a quarterly reoccurring event.

Surrounded by family members and rushing to “get back to normal”, I had not enjoyed the healing magic of “staying in bed” until I was living alone.

What changed? Here’s how I do it — maybe you can use the same process next time you’re sick.

1. I was prioritizing my recovery.

Of course, it’s unpleasant to be sick. The fever, nausea, and all the other awful symptoms. But after all these years, I learned to accept and live with them. I got to know how my body worked, how long usually it took to get rid of the worst symptoms, what I needed to eat or drink.

And something more important changed. I started to appreciate the idle time between the “worst day” and “normal”: The 1–2 days when you’re still too weak to do or worry about anything, but well enough to have only a limited reminder of your illness.

I would usually watch the worst crap on whichever platform I had access to. It was me, my laptop, and food (usually a very light rice soup, or an apple). Other than choosing what to watch next, I had nothing else to think about.

On those days, anything else can wait. Because my priority is to give my body time and space to heal. I treat it as a temple. I sleep like a baby.

2. I was giving my body time, without rushing to get back to normal

I am again grateful for my discovery of the Body-Mind connection. I don’t believe in this theory, I know it is true for me.

So many times our mind is stressed, upset, “out of creativity”. Not because we are not creative anymore, but because we want too much from ourselves. We tire our body 18 hours a day; we don’t get enough sleep; we don’t eat well. We don’t take enough care of it, rushing through our hectic schedules. How could we expect our mind to give us its best creations when it’s so exhausted?

Don’t tell me we can be creative any time. At least I cannot.

We could recover our sleep time by sleeping in on the weekend. But do 2–3 hours on Sundays make up for the sleep deprivation on all the other days of the week?

My guess is no. Because I know when my body is well taken care of: I feel the best on the 4th day of my seasonal flu time.

That is after 1 day of “worst symptoms” and 2 days of recovery. By then, I have slept 30 hours (10 or more hours per day, or 67% more than my average daily sleep time). I have only taken healthy food and lots of liquids. I have entertained myself with the latest Netflix hits or movies.

3. On my 3rd day, even before my body recovers, my creativity peaks.

After some “sick time”, my brain gets sharp. It recovers much faster than my body. It’s so relaxed from doing much less than usual that by the time I approach my 3rd day, I’m bored of all the binge-watching.

Now my mind needs to work on something. But my body is still too weak for serious work.

So this is the time. I discover new subjects I might be interested in. I subscribe to new courses, or I go back to finish the ones I already was on.

This is the time I explore things and bring my mind to work on stuff that I had never imagined.

The magic of my sick days is here. Each time it brings me somewhere new, somewhere exciting. Sometimes it brings my life to a new turn.

Welcome, magic.

Now, let it go wherever it wants to take you.

Final Thoughts

I hope this story does not trigger any negative memory of yours if you happen to have had long periods of illness. I refer to the short periods of time when I could take a break from my daily routines and just focus on recovering my body.

And what if we actively put this magic into practice?

I believe “flu time rest” could be a replicable strategy whenever we want to reach new levels of creativity.

It’s very simple: we just need to block everything else from our focus, treat our body as a temple, and enjoy some “idle” time. Stop thinking about anything productive. Whatever you try to be creative about can wait.

Eventually, we will get relaxed, and especially bored.

Now our creativity will come out to play.

Love, Jessica

Join Medium as a member and follow me for more. If you are already a member, subscribe to receive my stories in your inbox whenever I publish!