For some of us, sitting still is like pulling teeth…

we don’t rest well. we don’t do silence well. we don’t know how to function when our to-do lists aren’t filled to the brim.

I get it. Like I said in my article and blog about silence, I used to be exactly the same way. But rest is so important to recovery. And I’m not just talking about recovering from your workouts. It’s important for recovery from our lives. And a lack of rest may be exactly why you’re so exhausted all the time.

01. we think we can get more done if we don’t.

For so many of us, that is the reason why we don’t rest enough. But what we’re forgetting is that rest helps us get more done. Mental downtime helps us make better decisions, be more creative and innovative, and more. I mean, take meditation for example. I dove into the science behind my all-time favorite mindfulness practices a while ago, but, in a nutshell, meditation was tremendously beneficial to our brain. So, stop fooling yourself into thinking rest is a bad thing for productivity: it’s not.

There’s a reason why the Pomodoro technique, one of the most famous and most often-cited productivity tactics on earth, is 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off. Because we just can’t focus for longer than that. And if we try, we often need to mentally recover.

Tips:

• Utilize pockets of rest time. Like the Pomodoro technique, rest doesn’t have to be hours long to be effective. Instead, you can rest for 5 minutes here or 5 minutes there and still get tremendous benefits from doing so.

• Don’t force yourself to “earn” rest. Simple getting up, going to work, and doing your job entitles you to rest.

02. we define ourselves by our productivity and what we get done.

It’s the straight-up achiever in us, the part of our brain that says our day isn’t “good enough” if we didn’t get the maximum amount of stuff done. It’s the hustle culture and mentality that is engrained in so many of us as business owners even that says, “if you didn’t work from 9 to 5, you didn’t actually have a good day,” even though the perk of having your own business is that you don’t have to do that.

See, I firmly believe that for most of us, it’s not about “having the time” to rest. Not at all. Instead, it’s about whether or not we let ourselves rest.

For most achievers, our productivity and level of accomplishment is a defining part of our personality and, I think, there’s a fear there that if we let ourselves “slack off,” we start to question our very identity. That sounds extreme, but we do. Especially if we are trying to make a lifestyle shift away from working so much. We’ve spent so long defining so much of our identity on our level of productivity, achievement, and accomplishment that we don’t know who we are without those things.

Tips:

• Look for other ways to define yourself. You’re not just your job or your work. You’re not just how much you get done or accomplish. Think about the other qualities or characteristics you value about yourself, the other roles you play that you’re proud of.

  • Example: I’m not just a professional tutor and burnout coach. I’m a fierce friend, a loving Aunt. I’m sassy and passionate. I’m athletic. I’m goofy. I’m musical and creative. I’m an artist and musician. You have lots of facets to yourself too.

• Establish a resting ritual or wind down routine. You can do this at lunch or at the end of the day. The idea is that we can’t expect ourselves to switch from go-go-go to stop. It’s just not practical.

03. we fear silence/boredom/stillness.

I wrote another blog about how I used to not like silence and in it, I talk about how, for most of us, busyness is a distraction. We distract ourselves with busyness, whether that busyness is music, TV, menial tasks around our house, or work-related tasks. Those things serve as a wonderful distraction because, frankly, most of us aren’t comfortable with being alone or in quiet. We don’t like where our brains go when it’s quiet or when we’re bored. We don’t like the insecurities, fears, concerns, etc. that come from the surface. Hell, I’m a firm believer that many of us overwork not because we’re high-achieving, because our companies force us to, etc. but because we’re numbing and avoiding things.

Think about it: why do you always feel the need to keep your hands busy? Why do you turn on the TV or radio every single time you’re in a quiet environment? Where are you afraid of your brain going? I think that’s a big reason why we don’t like quiet. We don’t like where our brains go in silence.

Tips:

• Accept your anxiety. Don’t fight it. Reframe it. Like we’ve already touched on, that anxiety is coming from some place. There is some sort of insecurity or feeling you’re avoiding. So, instead of focusing on “I’m anxious” or “I don’t like how this feels,” what can you focus on instead? Can you focus instead on what you do like? Can you focus instead on what thing you might be avoiding?

• Build up to it. If you don’t like silence or boredom or stillness, okay. Don’t go cold turkey. It’s just like with meditation. I never recommend someone start by doing a 15-minute meditation. I recommend starting with 2-5 minutes. It can be the same thing with silence, stillness, and rest. Start with 2 minutes and then build up.

• Be intentional with your rest time. This actually relates nicely to the last one because sometimes it’s not about spending a lot of time resting. Sometimes it’s about less time but more intention, which can give us better rest! Check out more about types of rest here >>

04. You’re a perfectionist (& feel the need to spend your time “perfectly”)

I’m never one to vilify social media, but this is one place where I think social media does us a disservice because, for some of us, we struggle to rest because we feel the need to spend your time “perfectly”. There are so many cultural inputs and perfectly curated social media feeds that imply and churn up insecurity in us that we’re not doing enough with our time. There’s the mom who creates the perfect bento box lunches and so you feel the need to do that to be a good mom. There’s the business owner who answers ever DM within 30 minutes and gloats about it, so you feel like you need to too. There’s the person who always seems to go on the most amazing adventures and vacations, and you feel like your weekend off under a cozy blanket painting by the fire isn’t “enough.”

There’s a lot of content out there that, if we’re susceptible to it, can make us feel like we’re not doing “enough” and that we need to do “more”, which runs counter to our desire to rest. It makes total sense.

Tips:

• Change the content you’re consuming. Is there anyone you’re following that is triggering you? If so, maybe you need to stop following them.

• Ask yourself, would that actually relax you? You see the perfectly curated content, the perfect vacations and trips, the perfect lunch boxes and dinners and adventures that that mom takes her kids on. It seems like you “should” do it because it looks so good, but ask yourself: does that sound like something you’d enjoy? I did a training late last week and in it, the trainer asked a powerful question: do you want the process, or do you just want the outcome? Because if you just want the outcome and getting there doesn’t sound fun, that is a good way to call BS on yourself because you’re probably just getting caught up in the hype.

Other tips for overcoming resistance to resting…

• Be consistent. I think resting is just like working out for a lot of us achievers—which might seem like a weird AF parallel to draw. But I make it because it’s a lot easier to fall out of a routine or prioritizing rest if you’re inconsistent with it. How can we develop consistency?

• Schedule rest. I recorded a reel on Instagram not too long ago about something I do to make sure certain things become a priority in my calendar: I schedule them. Workouts? They’re scheduled. I even added time in my calendar to “decompress” so I didn’t work right up until I went to bed. Because when we can visually see something as taking up space in our lives, we’re more likely to actually make the space to do it!

I’m sure that i could keep writing about this,
but these are some of the reasons why we struggle to rest & some tips to make space for more!

What do you think? Which part resonated most with you?
Drop a comment below!