How to give yourself permission to rest
If you’re new here: I’m a freelance writer, with a focus on arts and culture, and a non-fiction essayist. I run the newsletter Notes from…
If you’re new here: I’m a freelance writer, with a focus on arts and culture, and a non-fiction essayist. I run the newsletter Notes from Eva and like being candid about the challenges of being a creative person. Let’s get into it!
The past couple of years have asked so much from all of us. And sometimes I sense myself going down a work-focused black hole. The world is chaotic and awful in so many ways—I feel guilty about not being able to help. I feel like things are out of my control. What’s IN my control? Work. So I tell myself to keep working hard and yes, it’s a good distraction—but burn-out is very real.
There’s no simple solution to giving yourself permission to rest. In my view, and through my years of therapy, I’ve learned you can’t silence the inner critic completely. But you can absolutely talk back. Or step back—and try to be present in what you’re doing right now and what your body needs.
There’s a saying: rest before you’re exhausted. So many times we feel we have to earn rest or deserve rest. But that’s not kind to ourselves.
Would you tell a close friend — stop resting! Get to work! What did you do today to deserve that break? I often ask myself: if I wouldn’t say this to a friend, why am I saying it to myself?
I know it’s harder for some people to rest than others and I have to acknowledge my own privilege. But if you can take at least 10 minutes today (maybe two 5-min breaks), during a busy time to breathe, safely take a walk, meditate, stare at the wall, make some tea, why not?
I once spoke to a friend who I deeply admire and she said “people are usually surprised to hear I get eight hours of sleep every night.” She can’t function well on less. She does a LOT in her day-to-day and is accomplished and awesome. But she also knows she needs rest. I took note of that. Let’s not grind all the time even though we can — even when we want to compare. Sometimes we assume the people we admire never sleep or take their lunch break or put themselves first. Social media only makes this feeling more intense.
I recently saw this interview with artist and poet Precious Okoyomon on The Creative Independent and this part struck me as especially impactful:
Sometimes I think I just have to give myself leniency to not feel like I have to be producing things. I feel like if you are stuck maybe you’re stuck for a reason, because maybe you need to be doing something else in that time and not forcing yourself. I think that as an artist, people are prone to force themselves to create. A lot of time that can be good — forcing yourself to create out of a necessity to survive — but sometimes maybe you just need to chill.
Plus, we can’t be there for ourselves, or other people, or the world at large, if we are exhausted.
I know it’s complicated—it takes effort to really re-consider you relationship to rest. This Refinery29 article by Nayanika Guha spoke to me. It’s all about how we can sometimes feel like we don’t even “deserve” to feel burned-out. Here’s a part that especially resonated with me.
“We don’t really learn how to stop and be in the moment and truly honor what we’ve accomplished. We’ve had this message drilled into us that resting is not good. You have to hustle to be productive,” says Erica Cuni, (LMFT), The Burnout Professor. This causes further guilt about taking a break. When people have so much to achieve, how can they slow down?
I felt this in my core. And with so much happening that out of my control, many of which are systemic challenges, sometimes my brain reasons “well, I am trying to be helpful, but things are still awful and life is expensive and why not work, if I’m not doing much anyway because of fear, and I know so many people who work harder than me” etc etc etc.
Resting can also mean taking a break from the expectations you’ve set up for yourself. I am recognizing more and more that I am still grieving so many things related to the pandemic. I am grieving things that happened at the beginning of it and I am grieving over the fact that some things haven’t changed. I have days when I am so deeply saddened by everything happening in the world right now that it’s hard to focus on anything. And sometimes, unfortunately, I just need to sit with that.
I’m still figuring out the best ways to show up as a person in the world—as a partner and friend and family member but also as a body on this planet whose heart breaks when I read the news.
Hustling as hard as possible isn’t the only thing in life.
Here’s to slowing down.
A version of this piece first appeared in my monthly newsletter, Notes from Eva. Sign up here.