It's important to factor in rest and recovery to not only your workouts and training, but also with your everyday life. Life is stressful! Life is hard! And if you're not careful, Life can be the Death of you! haha (bueller....bueller...)
I joke, but only slightly. Increased stress has been shown to elevate risks for various diseases and well as simply take a mental and physical toll on the body.
In terms of training, recovery is just as important as what you do in the gym to make significant progress and reach your goals. Your muscles repair when you sleep, various hormones/chemicals in the body are shutting down or booting up to get to work. Much like a manufacturing plant, your body has a day shift and a night crew that comes in. If you don't let that night crew come and relieve the day, you overwork your body and get calls from the union, in the form of aches/pains, headaches, upset stomach (and more), and gradually performance decreases as well - all spiralling further and further into overtraining, giving up, or even physical shut down of one or more processes.
Now, I'm not one to talk about getting enough sleep, because honestly, I don't sleep well. I know the importance and value of sleep and therefore try to at least 'rest', but as for actual hours of shut eye - I'm way behind. For me it is 'Restless Mind Syndrome'. Not unique in anyway, I know many that have trouble shutting off the part of the brain that keeps telling you what you need to do, what you can't forget, how much pressure you are under, deadlines, who last pissed you off, etc. And I've tried many ways to stop that little hamster up there and make him get off the wheel of issues, but very few things seem to work, and all it takes is one little spark of something for a whole blaze of mental noise to start. But I at least make an effort :)
If it is something that I want to make sure I don't forget that is spinning up there, I get up and write it down. I have pens and paper, whiteboards, post it notes everywhere - so when an idea comes up or I need to remember something I can write it down, put it someplace visible and move on.
If something is bothering me or I'm worried about something I repeat to myself something that my friend Seth (aka coach) said to me. "Why are you worrying?", "Can you do anything about it?", "Can you do anything about it right this instant?" Usually the answer to that last one is 'no', and if it's not, well then you do what you can do right then and move on.
As for when someone/something has pissed you off and you can't stop stewing about it, the only thing I have found so far to help with that is to spout off some obscenities (in private....mostly), say how stupid the person is or how lame the situation was, and then find something funny to laugh at and.....move on. Granted I'm running out of funny material with today's political and economical atmosphere and have resorted to a deep sigh and shaking of the head whenever I happen to have the news on.
Basically, it is important to find ways to relax and let go, even if just for a moment. You can always pick up where you left off if you feel the need, but take a minute to breath deep, and as the starfish said in Finding Nemo - "Find a Happy Place"
