Hello, my loves. Today’s episode had a twofold inspiration: firstly, my partner shared a skit on his Instagram from the Holistic Psychologist, and she was doing a little skit about how so many of us don’t allow ourselves to rest. Secondly, this has already been such a big topic for me lately that it just made sense to talk about it.

In this skit, this psychologist was playing a parent, as well as the child they’re speaking to. The idea is that the child is resting, and the parent is saying, “You need to get up. You need to do something. You can’t just lie around all day.”

The psychologist then pointed out that in this moment, the child is learning that it’s not okay for them to simply rest.

I thought this was a great topic to dive into, because a lot of people—women particularly—struggle with this idea that they can’t rest. It comes up in my mentorship program, The Connected Woman Experience, all the time. People are always saying, “How am I going to find the time to do the embodiments?”

Girl, if you can’t find ten minutes to have to yourself every day, we’ve got a bigger problem. Let’s talk about why we don’t allow ourselves to rest.

Mental Rest, Not Just Physical

When I’m not talking about not letting ourselves rest, I’m not talking about getting enough sleep. I’m talking about whether you can take time to just lie out and read a book in the sun, or if you can take yourself on a walk, or if you can just lay on the couch and watch TV for a bit without feeling like you’re doing something wrong.

If you try to rest and find yourself thinking, “This is useless,” or “There’s no point to this, so I shouldn’t be doing it,” or “I’m being lazy,” then that is a dead giveaway that you are operating predominantly in your wounded masculine.

Rest, receivership, rejuvenation…these things are all part of the feminine. But if we have a distorted relationship with the feminine, then none of those things are going to feel good. They’re going to feel like we’re being lazy—which is the absolute last thing we want to be seen as.

Like most things, this fear of being lazy and the equating of laziness and rest often comes from something in our childhood.

At some point in your childhood, whether it came from your parents, from movies, from school, from past relationships, whatever, you were taught that resting equals being lazy. So when you actually stop to try and take care of yourself, you start shaming yourself for holding still and not doing something productive with your spare time.

The Pendulum Of Burnout

Now, I truly believe that the more fun I have, the more pleasure I have, the more relaxed I am, the better my life is. But for a long time, I thought that if I wasn’t constantly doing, then I wasn’t useful. I wasn’t worthy. I was being lazy. I didn’t deserve anything, because I hadn’t earned it.

You can imagine how exhausting that is, because that just leads to burnout. And when you get to that point, the pendulum actually ends up swinging to the other side; rather than your need for rest being expressed in a healthy way, the pendulum swings to the other side, and it actually does manifest as you being lazy.

It leaves you feeling lethargic and apathetic. It results in you looking at everything that has to get done and going, “I don’t want to do anything. I don’t feel like it. Mmm, it’s just not aligned.”

You know what happens then? Your life starts to fall apart, because you’re literally not doing anything. You’re not working, you’re not showing up, you’re not doing what you need to do. So when things start to fall by the wayside and everything goes to pieces, you go, “Oh my God, see? That’s why it’s not safe to rest!”

You then react by diving back into the hustle mode: constantly having to do, being trapped in your head, and not being able to stop without shame—without telling yourself that resting is being lazy, and being lazy makes you unworthy of…well, anything.

The Truth of Trust

But what if that weren’t actually true? What if you could rest and still be worthy? What if you could rest and still be deserving of things? What if you could rest and still know that you’re going to do your part?

What if you resting right now doesn’t mean that you’re being lazy? What if it doesn’t mean you’re going to lay on that couch forever? What if that’s a momentary thing, and you trust yourself to know when to stop?

If you trusted yourself to know when to move and when to rest, you would actually be able to build a deeper relationship with yourself. But that requires you to find a way to decondition yourself from the belief that resting equals being lazy.

Take Care of Yourself to Take Care of Everything Else

In the end, this is about taking care of yourself.

You are not going to be the best partner, the best client, the best coach, the best parent, the best friend, or the best person you can be if you are constantly on the verge of burnout.

If you’re inches from burnout and your boss puts one more project on your plate, you’ll fall into overwhelm and reactivity because you don’t know how you can handle one more thing.

If a friend messages you and needs your support, you might have no capacity to do so.

And if you have a coaching business and want another one-to-one client, but you’re exhausted, those things are in direct conflict. You won’t be able to call in more when you can’t even hold what you have.

One of my favorite analogies is the analogy of the feather, the brick, and the train.

The idea is that the first time life tries to teach you a lesson, it throws a feather at you. It’s just enough to get your attention, but it doesn’t hurt.

If you don’t learn the lesson the first time, life throws a brick. This time it hurts; it doesn’t obliterate you, but it definitely steps up a notch.

And if you still don’t learn the lesson, life sends a train to run you the fuck over. Can’t ignore it anymore, can you?

Take my advice…learn the lesson at the feather.  It’s like… Just take the first sign at the feather. Why do you need a fucking train to hit you before you finally realize something needs to change?

Allow yourself a fucking break…before you end up breaking.

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