Allowing yourself to rest
Reminder: It's time for your Weekly 1:1™
Today's agenda: Allowing yourself to rest
The question on the table: What would change if you treated rest as essential instead of optional?
Before we start: Give yourself a few minutes...everything will still be there when you’re done.
Slowing down speeds things up. I’ve said this for years, and I know it’s true. Rest is where this belief gets its most practical test.
Yesterday I took a nap, because I was really tired and found myself struggling to focus. Sometimes you have to listen to your body and take a beat. "Pushing through" is sometimes necessary, but when it's not - why choose that? Rest is not optional. At the end of the day, if I don't rest, I'm going to pay for that somewhere else.
We understand this intuitively about sleep. Nobody argues that you can skip it indefinitely and still function at your best. Nobody suggests that exercise is optional if you want your body to work well over time. We've accepted, collectively, that certain things aren't luxuries - they're the foundation everything else is built on.
Rest is the same. The creativity that surfaces when you stop forcing it, the clarity that comes after you've given your brain permission to go quiet, the problem that felt stuck all morning that simply isn't anymore after an hour away from it - these aren't accidents. They're what a rested mind produces, reliably, when you give it the conditions it needs.
Silence is its own kind of rest, and it's one most of us aren't getting nearly enough of. Mental quiet. The kind that happens when you're not consuming anything - not a podcast, not a scroll, not a meeting, not even music. Just your own mind, allowed to wander without a destination. We've gotten so accustomed to filling every quiet moment with input that stillness can feel almost uncomfortable at first. But that's exactly where some of the best thinking happens - not when you're pushing for it, but when you've finally stopped pushing long enough for it to arrive on its own.
The culture we work in tells a different story. It treats busyness as a virtue and stillness as a liability, as though the person who never stops must be the person who is most serious about their work. But what that relentless pace actually produces, over time, is diminishing returns - decisions made on a tired brain, creativity that dried up somewhere around Wednesday, a kind of low-grade exhaustion that becomes so familiar you stop noticing it's there.
Taking care of yourself isn't separate from doing good work. It's the condition that makes good work possible. Rest, stillness, time away from the screen and the list and the inbox - these aren't indulgences. They're how you show up tomorrow with something real to give.
The question I'll leave you with this week:
Where does rest live in your schedule right now - and is it actually there, or is it just something you're planning to get around to?
Lisa English, ACC, CMM is a Leadership and Executive Coach with deep expertise in Meetings, Events, and Travel. The Weekly 1:1™ publishes every Tuesday at 8am PT. Subscribe at lisaenglishsg.substack.com or subscribe below.