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Now, let's dive into today's episode and unlock your inner success genius with the power of science. I'm Neal Williams, and this is the Success Genius Podcast.Welcome to episode 249.
Today on the show, I'm going to dive into the topic of rest and why it's so hard for those of us who are high-achieving humans to engage in a regular rest practice.
This is really a place where I think the productivity and time management industry has failed us and I'm on a mission to turn this around.We're going to dive specifically into why high achievers struggle with rest.
We'll talk about the science and wellness benefits of rest and the mindset of rest, why it's so hard to think about it differently.This episode is designed to answer the question,
Why is rest so difficult for high achieving humans and how can they, and I mean me, learn to rest in a way that truly recharges the body and mind without feeling guilty or lazy?I was recently at coffee with a new friend of mine.
We met, we went to yoga and then there's this really cute little organic cafe right next to the yoga studio.We went and had a, I had a protein smoothie. after our yoga class and we just chatted.
We've done this a few times, just getting to know each other.She is really fantastic for me as a friend.She is somebody who has a very successful therapy practice in our little town and she is someone who constantly gives me perspective.
What's also cool about her, not cool, but cool for me in terms of another woman in my life who has disease, she has lupus and is raising kids and doing business and doing all the things, really helpful for me to chat with her.
Every time I meet with her, she says something to me that is really profound.And so something that she asked me this last week when we met was, what do I do to take care of myself?And it's so interesting because there's so many things I could say.
I do a ton of things to take care of myself. But the thing that came bubbling up first, interestingly enough, was a pit said, I sleep and I rest.
And so we had this interesting conversation about how when she was first diagnosed, she went through this whole season of extreme fatigue.What I'm experiencing right now in my journey through this.
And she said the only thing I would do was I would put in the hours of work that I needed to and then I was basically in bed the rest of the time.She said like on the weekends, that's all she would do.She would go to bed.
She would go to one Sunday morning yoga class and then she'd be shot for the entire day.And I was like, oh my gosh, so much of that feels true for me and that is much of my experience or has been over the last year and a half to two years.
And we were talking about how the mindset or the perspective that we both have had to shift about rest.I have always historically been that high achieving person who's like, I don't need to rest.I don't nap.
Only time I ever napped in my history was when I was pregnant with my son. And that was just like, I couldn't not.I was just so tired being pregnant with him until now.
But I've always had this idea that sleeping and resting somehow correlates to being less productive or lazy and feeling guilt and even some shame about it.
We just had this really interesting conversation about why this is so hard when that is literally the thing that our bodies are craving. And we know that our bodies and our minds need this.Why is it so damn hard to let ourselves rest?
And I don't mean the pseudo resting.I don't mean that I'm just going to take a break and then I'm going to scroll a length on Instagram for two hours.That's not the kind of rest that I'm talking about.
I'm really talking about the rest where you're disconnecting from outside influences and you're just letting your brain and your body rest.Why is this so hard?
I think it's hard for those of us who have that personality type where we're high achieving.
And even if you're not a high achiever, I would venture to guess that there has been some content in your life, influence in your life about resting and taking naps being a thing that is not going to get you ahead, let's say.
It's not something that's productive.It's not something that high achievers do.That's not how you get ahead.There is this societal expectation to hustle and grind, which can make resting feel
very counterproductive and maybe even create a sense of falling behind.I don't get as much done as I should.Maybe my goals take me longer to achieve than other people.Maybe taking a break means I'm going to lose my edge, right?
I also think there is some perfectionism and some identity and self-worth. that drives some of this.So for high performers, self-worth is very often tied to output and accomplishments.It's very externally driven and focused.
And I think there is a time and place to have that external drive.
But if you're going to be a high performer for a long period of time, and I mean like decades, or maybe that is just your lifelong journey, the way to do that in a way that doesn't burn you out is to have an internal drive.
and really to be focusing on the journey versus the outcome.But when you're very externally driven and you're comparing your external achievements to those around you, Rance really is seen as a threat to that identity and or a sign of weakness.
I remember when I was going through my master's program in college.This is one of the times I now realized that my disease had flared up and I was in a very bad place.I just didn't know it at the time that I had a disease.
but I was doing so many things.I was working on my master's thesis.I was teaching at the college.I was teaching a lot of classes, the calculus and the stats classes, as well as taking my own classes.
It's just a very busy time and my body was basically shot.I like barely could get out of bed every day. And even though I knew rest was really what I needed, I did not give that to myself.I just kept pushing and pushing.
I was also taking the actuarial exams at the same time.I had three before I even graduated with my master's in math.It was, I look back at it and I think, how ridiculous.It was everything that I put on my plate for myself.
And I was stealing rest from myself.I would get up even earlier.I would stay up until later, whatever I could do to just keep myself going.If someone were to come in, I totally get this.
If someone at that time would have come in to my world and said, hey, what you really need to do is schedule in some naps, I probably would have looked at them like they were crazy.
Like how in the hell will I get all this accomplished if I'm wasting time sleeping?
That might not be the exact way that you think about resting, but I'm guessing there's maybe some truth to it, especially if you're someone who listens to this podcast.
From the scientific perspective, what happened, and we have seen this, there's been an epidemic of burnout, right?And that's because continuous work without rest leads to cognitive overload.
And what happens when your brain is overloaded is it just doesn't function as well.It's hard to be creative.It's hard to solve problems.And really, your output does go down.
There's long-term negative effects on both mental and physical health, and I would also say emotional health. here when we are just hard charging for all the time, constantly going.
I'm not saying that there aren't periods of time where we're maybe a little more hard charging than others, but those should be followed by periods of less hard charging and more rest and recovery.
When we look at the neuroscience of REST, the brain actually requires downtime to process information, to form memories, and to generate new ideas.
REST is what allows the brain to enter something called the default mode network, and that is really critical for creativity and self-reflection.We have these two sides.We have all of this cultural, social pressure, especially in the U.S.
culture, the Western culture to perform more and more output, compete with the person next to you or the people that are in your industry and be better than they are.And then we do that in a way that sacrifices rest and sleep.
And then what happens is we end up performing at a lower level than what we could.We end up putting ourselves in a position of potential burnout, and we have all these negative side effects.
The problem is when you're in it, it's very hard to be thinking about the downstream effect.It's only like when you're in that downstream effect, I wish I would have done that different.
I wish I wouldn't have put myself into that position where I was pushing myself so hard that this was actually the consequence today.
One of my major regrets, and I find I only now know this, is that I push myself so hard in my life for all of these external achievements that I missed out on life.I missed out on the journey.
I missed out on the goodness that was there as I was going through it because I didn't slow down enough to actually let myself even experience that part of it.
No wonder it's hard for those of us who have big goals and big dreams for our lives that we have a very hard time resting because we think rest and performance and achievements go at odds, that they are counterproductive to one another.
And if we think that way, it's very hard to give ourselves the rest.When we're not doing activities, we think we're being unproductive.
And that idea of being unproductive is not palatable for most people with big goals and dreams that are high achieving. That's why it's hard.We're set up for failure.
If you think about it, like when we're little kids, we're in kindergarten, we are given this idea that we should take naps.And the reason is because we're young and we're growing and we need that extra rest.
But what I want us to think about is maybe we as adults actually need to take a hint from the kindergartners.
Maybe we actually need that little bit of rest, additional rest every single day that we can perform our best and achieve the goals and the dreams that we want.Does it need to be at the same speed?I don't know.
There's a part of me that has experience and you probably have too.The more well rested I am, the faster I actually get to where I'm going to go.
And I think if we just thought about this as it's not just kindergarteners that need that, all humans need this.How is rest helpful?Let's just dive into a little bit of the science and wellness benefits of rest.
If you could bottle this up, if you could bottle rest up and feel and you could give it to people in a pill, you would be a multi-billionaire. Because what you'd be able to market is that people would recover physically from physical exercise faster.
Muscle repair would happen faster.Growth hormone, which aids in tissue repair, muscle growth is secreted during deep sleep and deep rest.You'd actually be building your muscles faster and more efficiently if you were resty.
Mental clarity and emotional regulation.I want you to think about this.Think about a time when you have been sleep deprived. Tell me how easy or difficult it is to manage your mind and your emotions when you've been sleep-deprived.
The more well-rested we are, the more mental clarity we have, and the more we're able to emotionally regulate. I want you to just think about this.
If you're someone who's very, I would say, community-oriented and thinking about making an impact in the world, one of the ways that you can make an impact in the world is to be well-rested.Do you know why that would make an impact in the world?
Because you would move through your day and interact with every other human in a way where you're able to emotionally regulate.Think about if we were all beings that were just emotionally regulated, well-rested,
calm interacting with each other versus what it looks like now.For many of us, we bump into someone who's completely emotionally dysregulated, freaks out at the smallest thing, super triggered.Just think about how we would be as a community
difference if we allowed that or demanded the rest that was needed for us to be mentally strong and resilient and emotionally regulated.I think we would feel completely different.
I think our connections in our communities would look completely different. Just look at what's happening with the communities around you, even your friend groups or your family with the election, the 2024 election.
I sometimes think maybe we should all just take a little rest and come back and talk about this when we're a little more emotionally regulated. REST helps regulate the nervous system.It lowers cortisol.
Cortisol is actually great for us, but in not constantly elevated cortisol levels.That's where we get into trouble.It helps us improve our emotional resilience.REST reduces anxiety and depression, which are so common among overworked individuals.
and there's actually enhanced productivity through rest, even though it seems so counterintuitive.How can I be doing nothing and be more productive?You might be thinking.
But research has shown us, science can show us now, if you need some data, you can find this, shows that regular breaks, including proper sleep, improves focus, memory, and performance.
And these show that individuals who rest effectively, note the word effectively, are more productive in the long run.
I'm going to talk a little bit about affected rest in just a minute because resting does not necessarily look like I'm not at my computer in my office if you're just sitting over on the couch scrolling in your phone.
That's not the kind of rest that we're talking about.All of these reasons
are reasons to really consider how you can make yourself a better human, how you can make the relationships around you better, more connected, more emotionally regulated, how you can go into the world as a more emotionally regulated human just by being properly rested.
It's free.It doesn't cost you anything. Accept dedication and determination to be the best that you can be each and every day.
Now, from a wellness perspective, rest is really key for hormonal balance, including we already talked about a stress hormones like cortisol and supporting even reproductive health and women.
Chronic stress and lack of rest can disrupt hormones, leading to issues like weight gain, anxiety and issues with your menstrual cycle.
Now, if you're already in perimenopause, I told my husband this the other day, and my friend and I were laughing at this at lunch because she has already gone through perimenopause.She is in menopause.
And I said, what would be a really different torture technique that I don't know that anyone has really thought about yet is to disrupt someone's hormones. Mess those all up.That is torture.And lack of rest can make that even worse.
It can intensify that.When you're thinking about hormonal imbalance, it's very hard.Everything feels unstable.You don't know when you wake up how you're going to feel. necessarily.It's a crapshoot day to day.
The first time I met with my friend, she was asking me all these deep questions and I was basically like a bucket of tears that day.But it had to do with hormonal imbalance.
And then the next time she could ask me those same questions and I was super stable in the way that I was thinking about it and handling it. It's just that hormonal imbalance is really challenging.
And if you are not allowing your body to rest as it needs to regulate itself to the best of its ability, that's probably going to feel even worse.Now, rest for longevity, also really important.
Regular rest and stress management contributes, we know, to a healthier life by lowering the risk of chronic conditions. something I now know a lot about.
I don't just mean autoimmunes, but that would include autoimmunes, but also things like heart disease and hypertension and cognitive decline, the dementia and Alzheimer's that all of us want to run away from, never want to experience.
I experienced this with my grandfather.He ended up having Alzheimer's.It was horrific.Never wish that on anyone.Rest just gives our bodies and our brains the best possible potential to handle whatever comes our way.
You might need to change your mindset about it. I know for sure I have because I got caught in the I'm being lazy trap.You know what I'm talking about?A belief that rest equals laziness?Deeply ingrained in me.
Very challenging for me to let myself rest and do nothing. I'm a prudentimity and performance coach.
So much of before in the last few years, so much of what I thought about was an achievement, getting things done, setting myself aside this hour, this is what I'm going to get done.And I'm really good at that.But guess what?
That's only half the equation.Getting that stuff done in a certain amount of time becomes way more challenging, if not impossible, without rest as part of the equation.I now think about rest as an investment, not a reward.
You know how maybe you have this idea where I was like, OK, if I just get this done, then I can go take a break.No, that that does not work for me now because my body goes through such extreme periods of fatigue.
I have to take rest in order to do anything. Many high achievers see rest as something to be earned after completing tasks.This is not helpful, I don't think, for most people.
Shifting your mindset to be at rest as an essential investment in long-term productivity can help overcome those feelings of guilt and lack of achievement that goes along with the idea of resting. Rest is not being lazy.
Rest is actually being the opposite.Rest is being a higher achiever than you could be without rest.Because without it, performance, creativity, and emotional well-being suffer.I don't want you to think about intentional rest.
This is not the kind of rest where it's like, if I get a spare five minutes, then I'll rest.No, what I'm talking about is intentionally making it part of your routine, whatever that means to you, whether it's your daily routine, your weekly routine.
I think it requires intention because if we don't intentionally set aside time for rest, it's not going to happen. You know what I mean?It's just like goals.
If you say on January 1st, you said in New Year's resolution, you're like, I'm going to lose 10 pounds, let's say.That sounds great.
But if you don't take time to intentionally do the actions that are going to lead to the losing of 10 pounds, guess what?It's not going to happen.
The same thing is rest and engaging in passive activities like scrolling on social media may feel like rest, but it doesn't actually recharge the mind or the body.True rest requires being fully present in the restful moment.
Let's talk about how that could look.I also think we think rest means taking a nap, right?My in-laws, my father-in-law particularly, has been someone who is
Pretty much always since I've known him, 30 years I've known him, taken a nap in the afternoon.We joke about, oh, don't call him at three o'clock because it's nap time.
We actually just stopped by there on our way back from Lincoln's most recent dirt bike race.We weren't the candidate for that.And we're coming back and drove by their house.We stopped in and my husband was like, I don't know, it's three o'clock.
on Sunday, they're probably sleeping.I used to be a non-napper too.
And I think if you only think of getting additional rest in terms of a nap, it's going to be really tough for you to do, especially if you're someone who doesn't nap easily, which is definitely me.
Even though I am in extreme fatigue many days of the month, I've started to track it.It's 5% or more of the days of the month.By afternoon, I'm extremely fatigued.If I lay down, it's not like I'm actually going to fall asleep.
That might happen to me one or two times. But most of the time it doesn't, which is why I do a practice called Yoga Nidra.We've talked about it before in this podcast.It might be something to check out.
I'm actually hosting a Yoga Nidra workshop at my local yoga studio where I am now teaching a few classes.
And the reason is because I want to help all of these high performers have another tool, their toolkit for effective rest that doesn't necessarily have to be a nap.Here are some tools that you can
You really have to play around and be willing to experiment with, what is the thing that makes me rested, where it recharges me?It could be different for everybody.
The open nature is definitely one of my things, but creating a schedule where rest is planned and non-negotiable might be a place that you need to start.It is part of your work.
What if we just decided, I would love it if now required rest, like your schedule isn't complete unless there's a rest block in it. You know what I mean?That would be amazing.
And I think scheduling rents can help high achievers mentally accept it as a necessary part of productivity.Maybe think about scheduling that out.Does it need to be every day?No.
You need to think about what is the frequency that is the sweet spot for me? where I get enough rest, where I can perform mentally and physically and emotionally the way that I want to in the rest of my life.I don't know what that is for you.
For me, at least for right now, it's pretty much every day.Let's also think about what that rest can look like, because like I said, for many people, I hear this all the time for pre-achievers.I'm not a napper.I get it.I'm not either.
But I still take time for extra rest. And this is REM sleep I'm talking about is not necessarily sleep.I'm going to do another episode on sleep here coming up, but this is really extra rest throughout the day.
Maybe you didn't sleep well the night before, which often happens for me.I know a lot of you women out there who are in perimenopause, that is part of what's happening for you too.
This can be really helpful to give you just a little extra spark and a little extra maybe sleep replacement if that's what's happening in your world. What we want to do is engage in restful activities that promote relaxation and mental clarity.
This can be meditation.It could be yoga.For you, it could be a walk in nature.Or maybe it's just sitting in silence.We want to find a practice that helps shift the nervous system from a fight or flight state to a rest and digest state.
As I was prepping for this, I was also thinking about some of the other things.I had this really interesting experience.Like I said, we went to Kyoto over this last weekend.My son was in a dirt bike race up there.That's a whole story.
I'll probably do a podcast on that.He ended up being in the pros, but racing with the pros, which he did not perform as well as he wanted to, obviously. He was on a pro track and racing against these people who are on the pro circuit.
In any case, what was really cool about this weekend is my family and I, we laugh a lot.Like I was laughing so hard on our drive up and it was like three, four hour drive.I was crying. We just hung out.
We aren't often together, just the three of us in a confined space, like a car very often.Everybody's going different directions.We have lots of things going on, but it was still interesting.
My body was pretty low that day, but I woke up the next day completely recharged.If you looked at my stats on my Garmin watch, I had a hundred body battery, which never happens for me.My HRV went from like a 30 to a 51.
I was like, oh, so interesting.Laughing for me really recharges me.I'm on the hunt for some comedians or something that can just make me laugh.Because for me, I just discovered, oh, that's really actually recharging to my body.
Something else that I thought about was engaging with people that you love to be around.That social interaction can be really restful and recharging.
There are, the point here is that there's many forms of rest that do not require you to lay down and take a nap.Now that does not mean don't lay down and take a nap.If you can do that, do it.I wish I could lay down and take a nap easily.
My husband is amazing at this.He can lay down, fall asleep instantly and sleep for 20 minutes and wake up and he's like, he just had a full night's sleep.He's so jealous of that.Just doesn't work. for me.
The whole idea here is schedule it in a frequency that is going to work best for you.
And that's going to take a little bit of experimentation and schedule in something, whatever that is, whether it's meditation or yoga or nature walks, something that you know, or you're willing to experiment for a while to see if it recharges you.
And the last thing I want to say here as a tool is really practice reframing your thoughts about rest. Instead of I'm being lazy or I'm wasting time, maybe it's something like resting now helps me perform better later.
It's going to be really challenging for you to engage in an effective rest practice if while you're doing that rest activity, you're telling yourself how horrible you are and how wrong you are and lazy you are for doing it.
Okay, that is going to be counterproductive, my friend.For those of you who are battling fatigue, I see you, I hear you, you are some of my heroes.
And for those of you who are trying to do your best every single day, please give yourself the resource, the bodily resource to be able to show up and do that, to think clearly, to think creatively, execute the way that you want, to be as emotionally regulated as you can be.
Here's my question for you.When are you going to schedule rest into your day or your week this next week?And what rest activities are you going to try?Let me know what rest activities work really well for you.Have an amazing week.
I'll see you right back here.
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