I Embrace Guilt-Free Rest - Affirmation Series

Today's affirmation is: I embrace guilt-free rest.

Do you know how to rest? I don’t mean when you stop working on one project in favor of another or forego client work to wash the dishes. I mean true, relaxed body, guilt-free rest.

It’s okay if you don’t. Not many of us entrepreneurs do.

There’s this pressure to jump right back in no matter what's going on in your personal life. It's a silent fear that if we take time off from school or work or our business we’ll never be able to recover.

We're tired but guilty.

1 in 3 Americans feels bad about taking time for themselves, even though 67 percent desperately want more of it (2019 Kelton Global).

Somewhere along the way we started thinking that leisure time is not time well spent. Let's reframe that. Embrace guilt-free rest.

Please note that this episode is a bit longer.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Today's affirmation is I embrace guilt freerest. I embrace guilt free rest.
Let's repeat that together three times,and if you can say it out loud
in the space that you're in,please do. If not, you are
welcome to repeat silently in your head. Okay, I embrace guilt free rest.

(00:29):
I embrace guilt free rest. Iembrace guilt free rest. I've got
a question for you. Do youknow how to rest? I know it
seems like a very simple question,because yes, you probably go to bed
at night, get up in thedaytime, or if you work out hours,

(00:53):
you at some point go to bed. But that's not my question.
Do you know how to rest?I don't mean when you stop working on
one project and then you go rushoff to something else, or you say,
you know what, I'm not goingto do client work today. Nope,
I'm going to go wash the dishesand clean the rest of the house.
Now. I mean like rest,rest that true relaxed, Your body's

(01:17):
feeling good, and most importantly,you are guilt free when you do it.
Now, it's okay if you don't. I mean most of us,
especially small business owners, do not. Here's an example. I have a
wonderful blog assistant. She runs ourown business. I know I'm one of
many clients, and one day shecalled me to share a couple things.

(01:37):
The first one was that she'd justgiven birth to a beautiful baby girl.
And second, she was going tobe back to work on Monday. Now,
mind you, this was Wednesday,and she said she would be back
on Monday. That's only five daysto recover. We'd only been working together
a few months, so I hadno idea she was pregnant, and I

(01:59):
guess her idea of a maternity leavewas these five days. Like wow.
So I told her, you know, I don't know what your other clients
said to you, but please takeall the time you need, Please rest
up, enjoy your little one,and then just get back to me whenever
you're ready. There's this pressure,especially for women, to just jump right

(02:21):
back in. There's this silent fearthat if we take time off from work
or school or our business, thatwill just never be able to recover.
I was in school when I hadboth of my daughters, and the first
time I was so afraid of fallingbehind on my school work. I took
a few days off and that's it. When I say a few days.
I mean like I had her ona Monday and I was trying to go

(02:44):
back to class on Wednesday. Okay, that was a big mistake. Yeah,
my body told me I should havestayed home. And the second time,
I was in grad school and Ito give myself a little bit more
grace. But I still don't thinkI did enough. Again that of Okay,
I don't want to fall too farbehind, because what if I can't
get back on track. In twentynineteen, Kelton Global did a study.

(03:08):
They found that two in five peoplefeel they rarely have time for themselves each
day, and then when we dofinally take a break, we feel guilty.
The studies showed that one in threeAmericans feel bad about themselves for taking
the time off, even though sixtyseven percent desperately want more of it.
Somewhere along the way, we startedthinking that leisure time is not time well

(03:31):
spent. It makes us feel importantto have pack schedules because we want to
have something to show for a time, even if it's not productive. Just
this week, I posted an articleon the ten ways you're wasting time in
your business. If you're not subscribedto the newsletter, you can view the
article on substack. My address thereis Daikiana dot substat dot com and my

(03:53):
name is spelled on everything I do, so no worries if you don't know
how to spell it off the topof your head. Again, that's Daikiana
dot substack dot com. But whydo we spend time wasting it? Well,
partly because it sounds much more impressiveto say, yeah, I spent
the last hour responding to emails,posting to social media. I even outlined

(04:14):
a new solution for one of myclients, so I deserve this rest versus
yeah, I spent the last hourlistening to music and took a nap.
And speaking of naps, we wentfrom mandatory daily naps from birth through preschool
to team no sleep as adults.I have some questions. Our culture seems
to value productivity so much that we'vetied it into our self worth. When

(04:38):
were we first taught that not wantingto do something equals being lazy. Deloitte's
twenty seventeen Marketplace survey on burnout showedthat seventy seven percent of respondents have experienced
employee burnout at their current job.So we're tired, But why are we
so reluctant to take time off fromwork, and then does our even support

(05:00):
rest? If not, what canwe do to change that? They're the
meme going around and it shows anemployee breakroom with the pizza buffet laid out,
and the caption is I tell mymanager I was feeling burned out and
overwhelmed, and this was their response. The employer didn't tell the employee to
take a few days off. Therewas no compromise to change your work schedule

(05:23):
or consider going hybrid for a shortamount of time, if not forever.
Nope, the solution to burn outa pizza part of your work, And
you wonder why most of us aretired all the time. Here in the
US especially, most pushed this norest until you achieve your goals idea.
But the problem is that the goalsare never ending. So say your goal

(05:44):
is to start a company. Great, but there's no time to celebrate because
the next immediate goal is to getthe first customer. Oh my goodness,
you got your first customer. Yay? No, not yay, but no,
you gotta get more. So howcan we build rest into our schedule
without feeling like we've lost momentum onachieving these goals that we have. We
can start by recognizing that not workingand being lazy are two different things.

(06:11):
If you think idleness is the sameas laziness, it will give you feelings
of guilt whenever you start being active, and that push for productivity shows up
so early we probably don't even noticeit. I remember being exhausted as a
child. I mean I was doingschoolwork, I was doing extracurricular activities.
At one point, I think Itried to join just about every club my

(06:31):
school had, and I was doinghomework, and instead of some of my
older relatives understanding, I got dismissed, like, what do you have to
be tired for. It's not likeyou have a job. Don't be so
lazy. If I sat in oneplace for too long, I'd be asked
if I didn't have something better todo, and I'd overhear conversations about,

(06:53):
oh, well, some and sodidn't like to wash the dishes because they
were lazy, not that they mayhave preferred different chores. You may be
one of those adults now yourself.Think about it. Have you ever gone
into your kids room early on Saturdaymorning because well, they've been in there
too long shouldn't they be up bynow? Have you gone on an errand
in the middle of the day andseeing someone just sitting Maybe you go get

(07:16):
a coffee or tea and see somebodysitting in the booth for what looks like
a very long time, got theirstuff laid out, laptop might not even
be open, and you'd give thema little side eye like, hmm,
I wonder if they even have ajob, Like what are they doing just
sitting there? Never mind that you'reout and about in the middle of the
day too. You may realize,like I did, that over time,

(07:39):
I started to believe that rest hadto be earned. I'm going to repeat
that. I started to believe thatrest had to be earned. If I
was caught quote unquote just sitting downby somebody and they asked what I was
doing, I felt like I hadto justify my need to sit. Oh
oh no, I'm not just sittinghere, just finished five things on my

(08:01):
to do list. I'm just takinga short break, but I'm gonna get
back to it. Or oh,that three hour client meeting drain me.
I deserve a little time off,But what about days when I woke up
tired? When I still had amassive to do list, but no energy.
My first instinct was to push throughanyway, drink some tea or energy,
drinking some caffeine and get to it. It didn't matter that I was

(08:22):
exhausted or I didn't have the capacityto give my best work. I just
didn't know how to slow down.Can you relate to this? I mean,
and there's some days when you're justnot feeling it, giving the choice
between answering another client email or pushingthrough into another project and watching a movie,
and you want to watch the movie, and that's okay. It has

(08:45):
taken me years to implement your freerest, and I am not always consistent.
It is okay that it might bea work in progress for you too.
These are things that we've been hearingpretty much since birth. Is gonna
take more than a couple weeks tounlearn, and believe me, it's okay.
But just know that guilt free restis better for your business too.

(09:09):
You can be of much better serviceto yourself and your clients if you're working
from a place of rest rather thanoverwhelm. Going hard at times is good,
but going hard all the time justleads to burnout the next time your
body tells you you need enough,or you just need to take a break
and sit, meditate, stare atthe wall, whatever, listen. The

(09:30):
work will be there when you wakeup. And I've often found that some
of my best ideas come what feelslike randomly. I'll be in the middle
of doing something else and bam,idea for a project will pop into my
brain. And thankfully, you know, all of our phones have no capability,
so I can jot it down andget back to what I was doing.
But those times where I'm pushing andI'm pushing, and I'm pushing and

(09:54):
I'm exhausted, mind block no ideas. If rest is eluding you, and
embracing these two phrases will help.The first one is last week's affirmation everything
I did today was enough. Thisphrase is freeing, especially for high achievers,
because when you're someone who feels likeyou always have to be on,

(10:16):
there's also this sense that you're neverdoing enough. Sometimes it's from internal pressure
and other times that comes from peoplewho really want you to be doing more
for them. Embracing the idea thatyou have done enough makes space for rest.
You can go back to the previouspodcast episode to hear more on that
one and the second phrase. Oneof my greatest acts of faith is standing

(10:41):
still. If we believe in divinetiming and answer prayers, we don't have
to run ourselves ragged. Rest demonstratesfaith that God will handle it. If
God will bless you with new businessand the money that comes from it,
why wouldn't he bless you with thetime off to enjoy it. This week's
activity is to schedule two hours todo something that is fun for you.

(11:05):
It cannot be work related, andunless you just really have a passion for
housework, it should not include cleaningor organizing either. If you can't block
two full hours at once, that'sfine. Split it up into whatever works
best for your schedule. Then comeback let me know what you did and
how it felt. I'm hoping thiswill be the first of many schedule works

(11:26):
for you. I leave you withtoday's affirmation, I embrace guilt free rest.
Let's repeat that together one more time. I embrace guilt free rest.
Have an amazing rest of your day, and hopefully a RESTful one.