Who doesn't need to rest?

All of us do. Whether you’re frazzled and stretched too thin or moving through your days with apparent calm, whether you’re an executive or caring for everyone at home.

If sleep is your only form of rest, you might technically get your eight hours, but that doesn’t mean your mind has quieted. Neither does it rest your heart nor your spirit.

Every year, we assume the slower pace of the winter holidays will refuel us. We’ll have a few days off, time with family, and a nap if we're lucky. Then, before you know it, January comes, and we feel flatter or more exhausted than we did in November. We had the chance, but somehow we didn't use it to recover.

Real rest is when the wheels turning within you stop and create space for you to come back to yourself.

Rest as spiritual maintenance

You wouldn't wait until your tires blow out before filling them with air. Your energy works the same. Rest should be maintenance and disaster prevention to keep you going strong. Don’t treat it like a reward for burning out.

Think of it, instead, as resting for success. You build back your reserves so you can keep showing up for the people and things that mean the most to you.

It reconnects you to your flow, intuition, and creativity, the parts of you that inform your leadership. Eureka! moments, like when an answer dawns on you in the shower or mid-conversation, don't happen if you're too tired to think straight or too wired to stop working. They come when your brain has breathing room.

For that, you need spiritual rest. The background noise in your brain fades. You stop trying to control every outcome, trust that you've done enough, and let yourself be where you are.

Without it, self-care rituals are mere Band-Aids that mask an enduring, deep exhaustion. No amount of PTO or baths or chamomile tea will revive you. You're only resting the surface.

Know yourself if you want rest to pay off

The practices that restore one person won't restore another. Part of this work is knowing yourself well enough to recognize what will actually help you.

Your body needs physical rest: sleep, movement, nourishment. Your heart needs emotional rest: quality time with people who leave you feeling better than before, and dropping any performance of being okay. Your mind needs psychological rest: detaching from outside noise, clearing clutter. And your spirit needs rest: presence and stillness without an agenda.

For you, these might be cooking, watching movies, meditation, walking, solitude, or connection. They shift with seasons, life stages, and your current load.

Understanding intellectually that you're tired is different from truly feeling it. We override our signals because we've learned to trust our reasoning more than our bodies. That's your cognitive thinking, but what is your heart telling you?

I used to constantly ignore my signals for the sake of productivity. Now when I doze off mid-typing at my desk…yes, it even happens to me once in a while…I don’t fight it. I check my calendar. If I have an hour free, I lie down. That nap buys me back more than the hour it costs.

Why we avoid the very thing we need

Some of us create our own exhaustion, holding everything because we're convinced no one else can do things as well, or cycling through procrastination and frantic sprints, or building an identity around being overworked.

Most of us have, at some point, been taught to believe being busy means being valuable. We learned to perform when we need to pause, and our workplaces continue to reinforce this trade-off. If you consider my most used Gallup statistic, that only 18% of managers demonstrate skill at leading people, you’ve got to wonder if managers should be the ones setting the pace or if they’re even equipped to model what rest looks like.

Inside these environments, we try to decompress but end up adding more input. Scrolling, binging, more distractions. It feels harmless enough in the moment, but it keeps the nervous system revved.

Picture the evening commute. People leave the office and immediately reach for their phones, thumbing through content that doesn’t even load when you’re on the move, staring at buffering screens, waiting for something to fill space. The workday is done, yet the mind never takes a break.

We’ve all done this, but we can stop ourselves going forward. Begin by seeing that you’re getting stuck and making an effort to interrupt the cycle.

How to reset

Be quiet enough to receive. Sit somewhere for twenty minutes with no stimulation. No phone. No noise. Let yourself slow down. Try to hear your own voice in your head.

Honor the pause. Something I practice: when I finish meditating and feel the impulse to jump up and start doing, I stay seated. I don't run off into the next thing. That's often when the guidance I needed comes through.

Create conditions that support restoration. Clear your desk so you can see your priorities. Walk daily, even for twenty minutes. Fresh air loosens your tension.

Give your body what it's asking for. Follow the pull toward rest when it comes. If you’re exhausted, sleep now, not later. Wake up early to finish something that would take you twice or thrice as long, bleary-eyed.

Rest done early, consistently, and with awareness is the ultimate form of self-love and respect.

Your rest affects everyone around you

Exhaustion dulls judgment, shortens patience, and makes you reactive, but a more insidious consequence is that it inhibits how you carry yourself. You stop seeing the people around you. You move through the world without generosity. You're there, but not really.

Rest restores the inner spaciousness that lets you connect, and, in return, connection can be a fulfilling part of your emotional rest. Walk with a friend. Make eye contact with a stranger. Being seen by another person nourishes the soul.

Nurture your grace. The world needs it.

Over the holidays

You'll have pockets of free time in the coming weeks. Don't give them all away. Use at least one to restore yourself.

Try sitting with the question: What am I trying to hold that doesn't need holding?

Rest for work, not from it! Protect your capacity to lead and love. Once you rest well, you’ll have a whole new experience of the life you’re building.

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Sending love and light,

Ginny