You can listen to the full episode here: Listen to the full episode now
Hello! This week we're going to talk about rest and breaks boundaries and the natural tendency that we have to resist resting and our ideas about productivity and what it means, but the reasons that rest actually makes all of that hard work possible.
Right now, if you're in the US, this is the beginning of the week and Thanksgiving is on Thursday.
There's going to be a great deal of people gathering and people driving and it's, you know, you're hearing all over the news about travel and flight delays and all of the things, and it can get so stressful and tie up your whole body and knots.
And I actually want to talk about that particularly because this is something that I've been working with lately in my life, is learning how to undo actual physical knots in my muscles as just a person by myself and not going for a massage or having my husband massage a knot out of my back or my leg because sometimes I just prefer to do it myself because it can be so painful and so hard.
But tension arises. You know, you use a muscle or you have emotions and things get clenched and tight and difficult.
And to be able to have the capacity to move and have that flexibility again, to be able to bend my body and stand and move the way I want, I need to release that tension somehow.
I think this is a pretty universal human experience. So I've been looking at using these rollers, right, that you like roll your muscles out. So if you've gone to a yoga studio where you've gone to the gym and they have these big foam rollers. This is what I'm talking about that I'm using in my home. I have one that's smooth and I have one that's like really bumpy and the bumpy one is just a torture device, man, but it's so effective.
I'm going to describe my experience of using it and then I'm kind of going to use it as a metaphor for how we release tension and what it actually feels like because I think we have like such a stigma against slowing down and resting or taking that moment for recovery, but we need it.
So I find when my muscles are tired, when I'm already in pain...
I'm gonna go back in time actually, let's talk about last month. I hiked a mountain with my dad and my daughter.
And it was hard and it was like climbing a gazillion staircases and I didn't make it and I was really disappointed in myself for not making it up the whole mountain.
But I was also proud of myself for getting as far as I did considering how out of shape I am and completely unprepared I was for this hike.
At the end of it, coming home, the next day, my legs were just, they were done.
I could barely get up and down the stairs. I felt like my legs would just collapse underneath me. And I realized in order to get those muscles to work again, I had to get all of the acid out that had built up in those muscles. Just touching them was so tender and it hurts so bad and I recognize though that it was just gonna hurt and feel bad. It wasn't anything that I did wrong. It was just what had happened.
So I got out these rollers and I would put on the TV and my family would be watching shows and I would just kind of lean forward onto my thighs or my calves, putting my weight on it with my hand kind of cupping my chin so that I could get all the weight into my thighs while I'm watching TV on the floor.
And it hurts so bad. And I've learned from the past, you can't just roll back and forth and hope that it'll do the work.
You actually have to go really slow and stop where it hurts the most and just stay there and apply pressure until you feel the muscle kind of go, "Bootwang!" and go back and forth.
And it's terrible. And eventually, it stops doing the springy motion and it actually melts in that one particular spot is gone.
But then there's more and you have to keep working them out. It took me a whole week of doing this, like three days of every day spending maybe 15, 20 minutes working with the rollers on my legs in different areas to release that tension. Every time I did,
The experience itself was not that pleasant doing it. I've become acclimated to it. I can tolerate it now, but it was awful.
And then if I would have my husband try to poke at it and help it even more.
He could do that and he was even more effective because he could use thumbs like and get like really into small spaces and it would hurt monstrously. I hated it so much.
But then I would stand up and be like, oh man, my range of motion is so much better. Things could move again. And then I'd find another spot that would be tense and we'd work on it the next day.
So I talk about this because I think taking a rest when we need it in our lives feels like that. It feels like this hugely inconvenient thing.
that we don't want to do, and we kick and scream about it, and we complain, and we try to run away, and we try to make excuses about how we don't really need rest, and we don't really want it, because we're so uncomfortable with it.
And yet if we do, we get this range of motion back and ability to feel that we didn't have before.
The capacity to do things that were easy earlier but became hard.
All of that. And I wonder why that is. I think there's this false productivity loop.
that we have where we equate our worth with our output. And maybe that's especially around the holidays when gratitude starts getting tangled up with guilt. Like I should be doing more to deserve this or I need everybody to come and experience things in a certain way.
It's kind of tough if you feel like your worth is tied up in how much you got done or what you've already done.
And yet I think that's what we've been taught. That, you know, we grow up and we go to school and we're graded on everything and it's about how much we got done and how well we did it, not that we showed up.
Or if it was because we showed up, we kind of have guilt about that, like it should have been harder and we wanted it to be more meaningful somehow.
Ah, we've got a lot of complicated feelings about what it means to be busy.
And if you've grown up feeling like you've had to accomplish a lot or that you needed to prove that you were worthy of love or affection or even being noticed because you did something or had something to deliver and show, un-learning that takes a long time and it can be really hard and painful.
And particularly if you felt that way. Any time you take a rest, you can equate that with feeling really lazy.
Or feeling like, "Oh, that's a bad quality and I don't want to be associated with that." So that's not the face that I want to show to the world.
I've definitely felt like that. I thought, gosh, all the way, growing up and going to college and beyond, I was really afraid that I was this deeply lazy person and that was my secret guilt is that I just didn't want anyone to know how secretly lazy I was.
And that I didn't want to be busy all the time. And that if I didn't have to do things, I probably wouldn't do anything at all.
It's been a lifetime now to realize that how could I have thought that I was lazy when somehow I get bored so easy, of course I do stuff. Like I don't actually like being bored for very long either, so I'm gonna find stuff to come up with to do.
And I like sharing things with other people and telling stories, and I like making things with my hands like I'm constantly doing stuff.
But yet, it didn't feel like it was ever enough.
So I guess that was the myth for my life, is just feeling like nothing was ever gonna be enough. And when I finally identified that that was the story I was living, is that no matter what I do, it's not enough.
I was able to focus on how I could deconstruct that for myself. Now I don't know what your personal myths are or how you feel about yourself or if laziness is your secret fear as well.
But for me, going into that and going, "Okay, what if it is true?"
I guess that's where I started, rather than trying to make it untrue because I'd spent a lot of energy and time trying to make it untrue, which actually just made me burn out. It made me do even more than I wanted to do. It made me resentful of the activities I was doing because I was not doing it for myself or because it was innate.
I was doing a lot of things because I was trying to be who I thought the world wanted me to be.
or who the people that I love I thought wanted me to be. And it turns out, you know, I don't know what the people I love want me to be. Maybe they just love me because I'm here.
I like that idea a lot more, and if I could trust them when they say that, isn't that beautiful?
I know that not all of us can't. We have our stuff. We all have our stuff.
However, I'm in a place now where I can trust people and... part of getting there started with me just going and asking myself.
What if these things I'm scared about myself are true and not trying to run away from them anymore?
So I faced my fear about laziness and what if it's true that I am lazy? And that sometimes...
The only thing that motivates me to do stuff is not wanting to disappoint other people.
And I had a lot of feelings about that and I had to learn how to feel through all that shame and guilt and fear around it. I can't really break all of that down just into this podcast and like... help solve anyone else's guilt and fears and all of that.
But I can say that through the process of facing it, and allowing myself to feel it and learning how to feel things without letting it completely define me allowed me to release the worry about that particular fear.
I no longer look at myself as a lazy person or fear that I'm lazy or more lazy than anyone else.
I've now come to realize laziness is just a quality that everyone has sometimes and it is not my defining quality. And I'm not even sure what my defining quality is because I think as a human being, we're so many things.
And we're constantly showing up in a different capacity at different times. Ah, I got sidetracked a bit there talking about laziness, but part of it was about...
this connection to rest and feeling like we're not allowed to have it or that it's not for us.
And that we think somehow we'll earn it, that if we work hard enough in our life, maybe by the time we retire or we're old, we'll be allowed to rest.
And then we kind of get there and we still feel like we don't have the time to rest because there's still more things to do.
And we never give ourselves permission to enjoy what rest gives us.
It's like something that we reserve only for infants or something, or it's something as a parent that I'm constantly trying to get my child to do, but they seem like they don't want to because they just want to live so much. They're awake and running around. But here's my other observation is that as much as kids fight about not wanting to rest and not wanting to slow down when they finally do go down,
They rest so beautifully. Like, it's incredible to watch a kid sleep and I think back to when I was a kid and like, man, to be able to embody that level of not caring and just conking out and being difficult to rouse.
It's a beautiful thing and I wish that for all of you that we all get massive amounts of sleep and rest and feel amazing and wake up so recharged and energetic afterwards.
That is my wish for you this week. One of the ways that we get there is in recognizing that it's a human need. It's not a luxury.
I am very tired of thinking of rest as this luxury or something that we earn or something that we have to do.
Because that almost makes it sound like it's this chore that we also need to check off of the box, is like get an excellent night's sleep.
Here's a quick survey. How many of you feel threatened by all of these apps that are trying to track your sleep and tell you how well or how badly you've slept?
And it just gives you anxiety thinking about, "Oh no, I didn't get enough rest." Or it wasn't the right quality of rest. And what if I end up with Alzheimer's because I'm not getting enough rum sleep at night?
I feel like there's a gift in all of these apps and things that are tracking our sleep, but there's also this level of productivity that we're now trying to assign to our rest. And I think it's destructive, and what if we're just allowed to take a break and get some sleep and just enjoy it for what it is and not analyze it constantly?
I do think we live in this society of analytics and we're constantly analyzing how we are compared to everyone else and how good we're doing today compared to how well we were doing yesterday and how well we'll do in the future.
It's like we're trying to be productive even in our downtime, all the time, and it's exhausting.
It's exhausting. What if we didn't need to do that? What if you were allowed to just like set aside all of the apps and the trackers and the step counters and all the things and just go, "You know what?
I probably, as a human being, can sense or tell if I needed more or less walk.
If I needed more or less sleep than what I've been getting. I guess what it asks of us if we were to give away all of these trackers is to be the sovereign power in our lives and be able to recognize for ourselves what we want and what's important and what we need. And I think we are so used to doing this for other people and not for ourselves, but I'd want to ask you this week:
What if you could for yourself? Just trust that you know what you need. And if your answer was, "I'm going to need two more hours of sleep this week,"
What if you could make that a priority and what would need to give in order for you to get that?
Here's what I also want to say. When you make a change like that, if you decide, "Hey, I need more rest than I've been getting," and you demand to get it,
Either by sleeping in on the weekend or changing your schedule so that you've got 15 more minutes every night for rest.
It doesn't change right away. I wish I could say that it changes immediately. It just doesn't.
We aren't built to change fast. And I think that's part of the beauty of this season is seeing reflected in the world how changes aren't really fast most of the time. Things are slow.
When you decide that you're going to change your sleep schedule, most of us aren't able to just flip it in one night and go, "Oh, I get an extra hour of sleep forever now."
If I've set my alarm 15 minutes later or 15 minutes earlier, like I don't know anyone or really I'm mad at people who are able to just fall asleep on a dime like that. It takes me a long time to change my natural rhythm.
And if I've been going to bed at 10 every night, I'm not gonna be able to just say, "Oh, a better bedtime for me would be nine. I mean, I might know that."
But making that a reality requires so much, so acknowledge that and have kindness with yourself and go, "I can move in the direction of getting more sleep."
And here's some things that might help. Recognize that it might take a while to do it, but that it's so worth doing and that you are worth doing that for.
I think that we can equate rest with gaining the capacity to appreciate our lives with being able to learn and be able to assimilate everything that's happening.
It's in the rests that we're able to figure out what to do with everything that we've gathered.
Like when you eat food, digestion takes place when we're resting. It doesn't take place when you're running from tigers and climbing up walls and going to the gym.
You might need the food to be able to do that, but you're not growing muscle when you're at the gym.
You're breaking down muscle at the gym. You need to go home and sleep to build muscle. You need to go to sleep at night in order to form a memory of what happened yesterday or this morning.
All of these things, like I think of rest as our ability to make meaning out of our life.
So I don't want to deny myself that. And I don't want to deny you that. We're all very worthy.
of creating meaning in our lives and having the time and the space to do that.
As we're going into this holiday week, it may be stressful, it may be full. There might not be a lot you can do about it at this point.
And that's okay. But if you just have this idea that it's okay for me to rest and it's okay for me
to take the moments that I need, every now and then, particularly after.
to just assimilate and relax and re-regulate myself. That's beautiful.
What I would love for everyone in the world to know is that rest shouldn't have to be a rescue.
It shouldn't have to be the thing that we do to save ourselves from all the hard stuff that we've done, although that's often how we're using it. It can also be this really lovely ritual that we return to on a regular basis and I think it should be that.
And I think if we build in these moments in our weeks and our days and in our months and years where we're expecting ourselves to slow down a little more than we typically do. Take the breath, have a slower meal.
A slower conversation, put a phone away, not be constantly plugged into everything and be present with ourselves. That gives us the capacity to build up our own sense of self, our own meaning, our own memory.
It's the consistency of returning to rest that's more powerful than the intensity of it.
Being able to know that you're worthy of a pause.
Building in moments where you're able to take that pause for five seconds a minute whenever you need it, to just say, "I'm too engaged in my work," or, "Gathering was too loud for me," or whatever is going on, or I can't really take the kitchen right now. This is the one I'm thinking of in advance is, okay, we're gonna be everybody in the kitchen and it's gonna be loud and maybe you don't wanna be there.
If you notice in that moment that it's too much, what if you're able to go, "Oh, I'm recognizing it. I'm recognizing that this is too much." And that's a victory in itself.
And I'm just gonna take a few moments in my head. But if I have the capacity to, I'm gonna take a few moments outside of this room.
And if I have the capacity to do more than that, I might take a few moments outside of this building and then return to it as I am.
Hmm, rest is beautiful thing. We all need it.
And if we can recognize the need for it in ourselves, I guess if we give permission to others to have it too.
It lets us have it more. I've definitely noticed this for myself, that when I recognize a human need in someone else, particularly in family members and friends and I'm able to articulate to them, hey, it seems like you're a bit stressed out or you might need a break or why don't we take a rest.
It's normalizing it for them, and it's normalizing it for me. That the next time I'm feeling stressed out, and I say, "Hey, I'm a bit stressed out, and I can't handle this. I'm gonna go take a break."
They can very much understand and allow and support that in part because I've given them permission to rest and I've shown them how it's possible.
If we're able to start doing that for each other, we benefit as well. So I want to put that out there too. If you're not willing to take it for yourself yet, what if you give it to someone else this year?
because the experience of doing that will allow it to reciprocate. And you'll be surprised at how fast someone might offer it back to you or how much it'll be easier for you to ask for it next time. If you've been able to share with someone else, hey, it looks like maybe you need a break.
What might help. I am hoping for you that you're able to feel into what you really need this week and I would invite you to take a moment right now to just pause with yourself and notice how you are in this moment as kind of a practice for what's coming up this week.
So that when we're in the thick of it with all of our family and we're driving and the roads are crazy and all the stuff is happening, then maybe it's a little more normal for you to have the thought, "Hey, what if I needed to take a moment?"
So feel into your body.
And notice the quality of your breath and how you're breathing. And notice how you're feeling.
Is there tension somewhere in your body? Do you feel like you want to run or pause or hide or punch something?
Just be there with yourself and notice what those feelings are. You don't have to do anything about it.
Just check in. And if you do this again later tonight, if it's time to sleep at the end of the day.
And you notice the quality of how your energy changed from the middle of the day to the evening.
What might you give yourself? What is your body asking for and what would feel good? The more we ask ourselves that question, the more we give ourselves those opportunities to recharge.
I think the healthier and the happier we can be and the more we're able to truly give thanks for everything that we have. I'm really grateful to all of you for listening, for being a part of life with me.
I'm grateful for your stories and I'm grateful to be able to share mine. I'm thankful for that. So when things get crazy, this week for me.
That's what I'll be tuning into in my body, remembering that I was able to share stories and feel like I'm connected, and that that actually makes me feel really good on a cellular level, and I want to carry that forward into my life.
And I'll also probably think of all of you when I take a break and go, "It's gotten too loud in this house, and it's too hot with all the cooking, and I'm going for a walk outside."
So I'll think of you then too. I am wishing you all an absolutely excellent week, and I'll see you again next time.
✨ Ready to feel calmer and more connected?
Download your free Emotional Alignment Starter Kit - a soul-centered guide to ease overwhelm and reconnect with what truly matters.
👉 Get your free kit here
Comments