Last week, we talked about just how important it is to rest and how we need to start a rest revolution to get rid of burnout culture forever.
So, in today’s episode of Creating The Path, I’m talking about how to rest when you don't know how. Because I hear people talk about this and I experienced this myself. When I quit my 9-5 job, I was used to being in working mode 24 hours a day. I couldn't turn off my brain. My body was always set up to just go, go, go!
And when you're in that place, you actually have to learn how to rest or at least reteach yourself how to rest and work your way into it slowly.
So today, I have 5 tips for how you can do that if you are feeling like you have a hard time resting or just don't even know what to do to rest.
So let's get into it.
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Topics discussed in this episode:
[01:58] Tip #1: Calm your nervous system with these simple techniques
[11:45] Tip #2: Moving your body can actually help you to rest
[13:03] Tip #3: Start small when it comes to rest (if you’re not used to it)
[14:10] Tip #4: Reframing rest
[16:33] Tip #5: Don’t beat yourself up
[18:22] Recap of the episode
Resources:
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https://www.heathergracehanson.com/vipday
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Noteworthy Quotes:
“The simplest thing you can do when you want to calm yourself down, is to take some deep breaths, but make sure that your exhales are longer.”
“The best way to complete the stress cycle is to move your body, to move it out of yourself.”
“Resting is not being lazy. It's intentionally managing our energy and knowing that in order to perform our best at work, or at anything that we do, we have to rest.”
“This is a process and we're all learning and we're all getting better at everything that we're doing all the time. So really, just be easy on yourself.”
Summary of the Podcast:
Creating the Path is a podcast that challenges multi-passionate entrepreneurs to achieve their goals by working less and eliminating overwhelm, so they can create their own unique pathway to a life they love. My mission is to transform hustle culture and assist others to shift away from living life on auto-pilot to living intentionally and following your own path to a life you love instead.
Host Bio:
Heather Grace Hanson is a certified positive psychology-based coach and creator of the Intentional Energy Framework, a system that empowers you to create a life and business you love without burning out. Heather is obsessed with all things personal development, running and walking in the park, interior design, salsa dancing and most importantly, spending time with her pup, Barclay.
Episode Transcript:
Hello and welcome back to the podcast or welcome if this is your first time listening. Today I have 5 tips for how to rest when you don't know how. Last week we talked about just how important it is to rest and how we need to start a rest revolution to get rid of burnout culture forever.
And continuing on that theme, today I wanted to talk about how to rest when you don't know how, because I hear people talk about this and I experienced this myself when I quit my 9 to 5 job.
I was so used to being in working mode 24 hours a day or all of my waking hours that I actually didn't know how to rest, like I couldn't I couldn't turn off my brain, I couldn't stop, like my body was just always revved up to just go go go.
So when you're in that place, you actually have to kind of learn how to rest, or like reteach yourself how to rest and kind of work your way into it slowly.
So today I have 5 tips for how you can do that if you are feeling like you have a hard time resting or just don't even know what to do to rest. So let's get into it. So my first tip is to calm the nervous system, and I have a few tips within this, but that's really the first one. Because what's happening when you are having a hard time resting is, like I said, your nervous system is just in this like go go go mode.
So the first thing you want to do is just like calm it down, so there's a few ways that you can do this. The easiest way is to just do a breathing exercise and to not make it complicated. What I always tell people is the easiest way, like there's 2 ways that the breath works: when you breathe in you're revving up your nervous system and when you breathe out you're calming your nervous system down.
So the simplest thing you can do when you want to calm yourself down is to take some deep breaths but make sure that your exhales are longer. So you can either do it by counting or a lot of times when I do it, I don't even count. I'll take a deep quick breath in and then I'll just exhale for as long as I can.
But if you want, you can breathe in for like 3 seconds and exhale for 6, or breathe in for 4 seconds and breathe out for 8, however you want to do that. but just focus on doing the longer exhales because that is what will calm you down.
Or alternatively, some people really like another breathing exercise called box breathing, and basically what you do there is you would just pick a count, you know, maybe 4 seconds or 3 or 5, whatever you want to do but let's use 4 for the example. You would breathe in for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 4 seconds, breathe out for 4 seconds and then hold, and then breathe in for 4 seconds again, and then start the box again.
And the reason they call it box breathing is because a lot of times they'll say it's helpful as you're doing this exercise, is to picture yourself drawing a box as you're doing this. So you can draw one side of the box as you're breathing in, and then another side as you're holding, and then another side as you're breathing out, and then another side as you're holding your breath again.
So you're like creating a box with your breath basically, and those are the 2 simplest exercises I usually do. There's other things that people say like doing different counts and everything, but when you're not used to doing breathing exercises, I think the easiest thing is to just keep it simple and focus on longer exhales.
And the box breathing, because you're doing the even breathing, the other thing I want to mention is I personally find that exercise to be a very grounding breathing exercise, and stabilizing. But if you're really wanting to focus on calming down, that's when I would focus on the longer exhales.
And there's another technique also that you can do to calm the nervous system down. I may have mentioned this on the podcast before, but it's something called havening and I'll try to explain this. It's easier maybe to see in video and you can definitely look up havening on Youtube and you should be able to find something, but I think I can explain this pretty simply.
Basically you would take the palms of your hands and place them on your forehead and then you basically just take your hands and stroke them down the side of your face so you place your hands on your forehead and then you stroke down over your temple, over your cheeks and down to your chin, and then just keep doing that. Just keep stroking from the top to the bottom along the side of your face and that is a very simple havening technique.
Another way you can do havening is by placing your hands on each opposite bicep and basically stroke your upper arm. So havening basically is like a self-soothing technique. So that's why you're using these strokes with your hands to stroke your face or your upper arm to basically soothe yourself.
And what's interesting about havening is, if you think about it, we actually do this instinctively. So you may have experienced this or seen other people do this in like a moment of frustration or just exasperation, you might you know, put your hands on your face and just kind of like wipe your face and usually it's accompanied by like a deep sigh or like a groaning sound. You know, you just put your hands over your face and just kind of like rub your forehead, and you're just like oh my God, when you're just like really exasperated.
So we actually do this instinctively to calm ourselves down in that moment. So that's what I think is really interesting about that because to me that signals that there's something biological of like how this actually works.
So one last tip on how to calm the nervous system. And this is maybe an unusual one because I learned this tip actually as a way to get yourself to focus, not specifically to calm the nervous system down, but I do find it for myself helpful, and I do feel that it is kind of calming.
So what you do is, the idea is to take an object.. usually I say a pen, but it could be anything, like take a pen or any object that's around you and just focus on it. Use your vision to focus on that object, and notice the different colors, the different shapes of it, like if you think about a pen, you know we usually don't look at them that closely, and whenever I do this exercise, you know at some point, you might be used to what your pens look like if you do this often enough but when you do it, the first time you might notice like, oh look at all these like interesting shapes, look at all the interesting colors, and look at the interesting curve on the little clicker thingy, whatever. You'd be surprised if you pick up a pen you know, depending on the pen, you'd be surprised like how many different little details and shapes and little parts make up the pen and things like that.
So I've found and so this works to focus yourself because… and it's it's kind of like an anti-procrastination tip because, if your mind is all over the place and you can't figure out what to focus on, or you're having a hard time getting yourself to focus, by using your vision to focus on one object and to focus all your thoughts on that object, that's a way to get your whole brain to just be focused basically.
And I have found it to be calming because when you're in that place of being all over the place and not not knowing what to focus on, at least for me, there's a lot of anxiety around that. So I find that when I focus on something like that, it focuses my thoughts and it reduces a lot of that anxiety.
So I personally feel that this technique can be used to both get yourself to focus before you're ready to start working. But if you're stressed from working and you want to take a break and get away from that, I personally feel like this can also be used to transition from work to rest. You know, maybe what you actually want to do, rather than focusing on a pen at your desk, maybe you want to sit on the couch, pick up another object and look at it for, you know a minute or so, or whatever it is, and just really focus on it and that can be a way to transition out of work.
Get your thoughts off of work by looking at that object and focusing on it. I personally feel that that is kind of calming and an easy way to transition my brain off of work. So a little unconventional tip but there's another one for you.
So, moving on to tip number 2, is to move your body. So again, if you're feeling you know, kind of anxious stress from work, the best way to complete the stress cycle is to move your body, is to move it out of yourself.
So you know, that can just be as simple as doing some stretches, or dancing, or yoga. Whatever you want to do to kind of move your body to move the stress out of you, or move your emotions out of you. That is a really great way to calm yourself down and rest, and just a great way to take a break from work and do a little movement for a little bit. That is a great way to rest even though you are actually moving. It's very restful.
It can either be used as you know a transition to resting after that, or just as a way to get yourself away from work for a few minutes and you know shake off that excess energy you have from working.
So that's tip number 2, and tip number 3 is to start small. So when we're not used to resting, it can feel daunting, like if someone tells you to start meditating for 15 minutes a day, oh my God like that can be more stressful than anything else. And that's why a lot of times you'll hear the tip: If you're not used to meditating, start with like a minute or 2 minutes or something like that, because starting small is a way to get yourself to actually do it.
Because if you try to start too big, you're just not going to do it or you're just going to keep putting it off. You'll say like “I'll do it tomorrow”. And then tomorrow never comes, right? Because then tomorrow you say tomorrow, so start small. Like I said like with the breathing, if you even just stop to take a couple breaths that's okay, that's enough if that's all you can do that day, is just start with that. And that's okay, don't feel like you have to do so much. You know what I mean?
So tip number 4 is to reframe rest. So again, when we're not used to resting, it can feel daunting or it feels lazy. In last week's episode I explained how laziness actually doesn't exist. It's just a lack of motivation, but resting is not being lazy. It's being intentional. It's intentionally managing our energy and knowing that in order to perform our best at work or at anything that we do, we have to rest. So we know that it's important. So we know it's not laziness.
So if you want to, I actually find this to be helpful to reframe rest as productive time. Now, some people will say, why does rest have to be productive? Like why can't it just be what it is? Like why do we have to turn rest into work basically, if you're saying it's productive time?
And that's true, we don't have to say that rest is productive. We don't have to turn it into like this whole thing. However, if that gets you to rest, then I think that's okay.
Yeah, we can just say that rest is rest and that there's nothing wrong with that, but I find that when you are used to working all the time, it can be really hard to just stop and do nothing because it just feels like, it just feels like you're wasting time.
So if you reframe it as you know, this is important, this is productive, this is part of my work, that I have found can be a mental shift that can get you to actually do it, to actually stop and take the breaths and do the meditation because then you will relieve a little bit of that anxiety that kind of feels like, oh I'm wasting time.
So whatever reframe you need in your mind to actually get yourself to rest, go ahead and reframe. Tell yourself it's productive time. Whatever you need to do. It's all good.
And my last tip. Tip number 5, and I apologize if you're hearing Barclay, he's literally in my lap right now, my dog Barclay and he's swallowing and making all these noises, so I apologize for that. Um, last tip though is to be easy on yourself.
Again, this is hard for people who are in work mode all the time and when you're just starting to try and rest more, it's hard. Like I said, it's like you can feel like you're wasting time or you might feel like you're being lazy. It's difficult and it also might feel, if you're starting small, you know a lot of things can come up around you know, just feeling like you're not doing enough, things like that.
So the last tip is to just don't beat yourself up if you're having a hard time with it. You know, if you are doing any of these techniques trying to rest.
Even if at first, if doing these things makes you feel more anxious because again, that's very normal. Because it can feel like you're wasting time, so initially it can actually make you sometimes feel more anxious to do it in the beginning.
So if that comes up for you, don't beat yourself up about it. This is a process and we're all learning and we're all getting better at everything that we're doing all the time. So really just be easy on yourself. Don't beat yourself up if you're having a hard time with this. So that is tip number 5.
So quick recap. First thing to do to rest when you don't know how or when you're not used to it, is to calm your nervous system down by doing just simple breathing exercises with longer exhales or doing the havening technique that I described. Again, you can look that up on Youtube, or focus your vision on a small object, especially when your mind is feeling very chaotic. Just focus on one little object.
And tip number 2 was to move your body. Just move that stress right out of your body.
Tip number three, start small. Don't feel like you have to go big and take an hour long rest every day, just do something small, take a couple breaths.
Tip number 4 is to reframe it. If you have to call it productive time, if you have to say that you're working when you're sitting on the couch having a cup of tea, that's okay.
Tip number 5 of course, just be easy on yourself. Don't beat yourself up if this is hard at first because it's very normal for it to be hard at first.
And with that I will say goodbye for today, and I will see you next Tuesday.