If you’re anything like me, “rest” isn’t a word you’re particularly fond of. Not that it doesn’t sound nice to sleep, but you feel like you have too much to do to stop.
You’re worried that if you stop to rest, you won’t come back to it. Or even worse, you’ll lose the progress that you’ve made. You feel like you have so far to go that you don’t have time to rest.
Girl, I feel you. As someone who HATES the idea of doing nothing (I can’t even watch a movie without folding laundry or playing on my phone) I know the struggle.
But I also realized that, whether I like it or not,
rest is essential to my recovery journey.
While you may be looking at me with one eyebrow cocked and your arms crossed, I promise you that it’s true.
In this post I break down why rest is an important part of your recovery journey and how to apply it to your life.
Let’s go!
Are you truly making progress? Or are you just busy?
I always hated hearing this. Whether it came to my business, to homemaking, to motherhood, to recovery. But once I was able to take a step back, I understood what it meant.
A lot of the time, we stay busy instead of making progress. What do I mean by that?
When you’re finding reasons to procrastinate one thing to do another, you’re probably just busy.
When you feel like you’re hitting a wall but you are absolutely exhausted from working so hard.
Recovery is a daily choice you have to make.
But you can make that choice while also allowing yourself some time to rest from actively working at it.
For example, I love to read. I go through 1-3 books a week. However they’ve all been nonfiction. They’re related to recovery, psychology, personal development, or business books. I was so focused on growth that I stopped reading the fun stuff.
Don’t get me wrong – I geek out over all of that stuff without a second thought. But your brain can only handle so much. And I was throwing so much at my brain that it reached a point where any input was just white noise that it ignored.
Once I allowed myself to read a fiction book, I instantly felt rejuvenated. I took just a few day long break from reading non fiction and when I finished the book I was READY to dive back in.
Take a look at your life and see which areas of your recovery that are really tiring you out or you feel like you’re not progressing. It may be time to take a short rest from that.
Burnout is real
I understand that you’re scared that if you stop working at it that you’re going to lose all of the work you have done. Trust me, I have that same fear. But by diving in headfirst and giving it 110% consistently without pausing to breathe, you’re actually doing the opposite of recovering.
By overwhelming your brain, you stall your progress and your brain can feel numb to new information.
Think about it this way: if you go hard at work all the time, you’re going to burn yourself out. You’re going to feel exhausted, frustrated, maybe even angry. You’ll find yourself getting sick easier. You make more mistakes.
You’re absolutely burnt out.
The same concept applies to recovery. When you go hard all the time, eventually your brain gets tired.
Avoid recovery burnout by allowing yourself to rest.
Rest is where progress is made
Do you know what the hardest days are for fitness lovers? Rest days.
Why? Because you’re so used to working so hard consistently, you’re used to those endorphins. You get so disciplined in your process that resting feels absolutely awful. You feel bored out of your mind and your brain even likes to make you feel like you’re losing out on gains.
But we still take rest days. Why?
Because rest is where the muscle gets a chance to repair after it’s been broken down. It’s the rest days where we get stronger and are able to go harder, faster, heavier in the future.
If we don’t give ourselves rest days, we just about guarantee not only injury, but losing progress altogether. Rest isn’t just a nice thing to have. It’s required.
When you take a break from putting all of your effort into recovery, you’re giving your brain a chance to rest. Not only that, but you’re allowing it to process everything that you’ve been feeding it.
After you give yourself that rest, you’ll find yourself grasping concepts that even just last week weren’t making any sense. You’re able to pinpoint something that happened or a reason why something triggers you.
By giving your brain the rest that it needs, you’ll come back at it with more energy and you’ll be able to come at it from a new angle. You’ll see things clearly that you didn’t even notice before.
Give yourself that rest. You won’t regret it.
I need you to hear me loud and clear: I am not telling you to stop your recovery journey altogether. I’m not telling you to burn your journals and stop checking in with your coach and therapist.
Rest isn’t quitting. Rest is allowing your brain to take a step back so it can charge forward. If you struggle with rest because you usually quit, you’re not alone. I’ve found that setting reminders in my calendar as to when the rest starts and ends helps to keep me going. My calendar dings my phone, which is always with me, so I don’t have any excuse.
Do what you need to do, but make sure you give yourself some time to rest.
If you’re just busy but not making progress, it’s time to rest. If you don’t, it’s going to lead to burn out. By resting, you’re actually giving your brain a much needed chance to process so you can take off when you jump back in.
Give yourself that rest time, boo! You don’t just deserve it, you NEED it.
If you’ve felt a little stuck lately, even after giving yourself some rest, I’ve got the perfect way for you to inch back into your recovery journey.
I created this free 5 day Confidence Course with you in mind. Each lesson is less than 15 minutes long and it’s a full on crash course with me as your Confidence Coach. After these 5 days, you’re going to have all the skills you need to get back on the Recovery Horse and get moving. Click here to grab your spot!
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