All the Excuses I Tell Myself to Avoid Resting

Ironically, I am writing this at a time when I really should be resting, because I'm pretty exhausted.

Yet, something within me wanted to get the thoughts out of my mind and down onto paper.

Like everything in this universe, energy comes in waves. There are days of expansion, creativity and inspiration where everything flows and I feel lit up from the inside. And then there are days of contraction where even the most basic tasks feel heavy and my inner well seems bone dry and devoid of inspiration.

For a long time I did not recognise the difference between these states, so I treated them as though they were the same. Instead of honouring the natural rhythm of my energy, I tried to flatten and force it. I cut myself short on the days I could have created and overextended myself on the days I needed to go more lightly.

The result was not balance at all, but confusion and a whole heap of frustration.

There is also a voice inside me that judges my sensitivity - telling me I should be stronger, more capable, and more energised. It reminds me that many people do not have the luxury of tracking their creative cycles. They simply have to get on with it - which is a believe that we’ll absolutely come to shortly.

And yet, this post is not about criticising who I am. Instead, it’s about examining the heavy judgement I carry around my capacity to receive, to pause, and to rest without having to ‘earn it’. Because, like a mirage in the desert, earning rest feels like the finish line of a race I can never win.

Learning to love myself enough to rest

Being able to love ourselves enough to rest is not indulgent, it is absolutely foundational. When we deny ourselves rest, nourishment and slowness, there is only one direction we head in, and I know that direction far too well.

Burnout shaped my late twenties and I used to write about it constantly because it cut so deeply. What I am only just beginning to see is that I still experience smaller versions of it throughout the year. They just do not look dramatic enough to qualify in my mind, so I tend to ignore them.

I’m someone who pushes through, it’s what I’ve been programmed to do - on a societal, ancestral and soul level - and the voice that fights against slowing down and resting is like a monster inside of me that dwarfs the tiny seedling of truth that tells me it’s safe, and ok, to rest.

In writing this, I am hoping to give this little seedling some sunlight of support and some water of wisdom, in the hope it will be able to thrive in this environment. If you too also find it hard to slow down, judge yourself harshly the moment you do, and are navigating how to break free of the programming within you, I hope something in here resonates for you.

Excuse no. 1 - everyone is working harder than me, I must work more

Because I live and work from home, I do not witness the daily rituals of other people’s working lives.

I do not see the grind of the day-to-day real world, and so in the absence of real evidence, my imagination quietly fills in the gaps. I picture everyone getting up early, being endlessly productive, working long hours, bringing home the bacon, coming home exhausted and doing it all again the next day.

They become tireless in my mind, like disciplined superhumans.

Even though I have created a strong structure for myself and I am deeply disciplined in my own way, I still feel embarrassed, as though I am not fully part of this productive world, and that I am being constantly judged for it (and surprise, surprise, that judgement comes from myself).

It can feel as though I am watching it through a window, observing an industrious population I somehow failed to join properly. The comparison is mostly imagined (as all comparison is), but the shame it generates feels very real.

When I trace this belief back, my mind often flashes me images of my second year of university where I studied history and had only five hours of lectures a week - the rest was self-directed study. In reality, I had enormous freedom, but if I am honest, I did not always use that time well. I drifted - watching Dinner Date and daytime TV, going out drinking (constantly) and filling in my time doing not very much.

I have beautiful memories from that year, and yet sitting alongside them is this uncomfortable feeling that I wasted something precious that I can no longer get back.

Whether or not that is objectively true is almost irrelevant. What matters is that a belief formed quietly underneath it: that I was not working hard enough while everyone else was. And once a belief takes root, the mind becomes very skilled at collecting evidence to support it.

It will distort, exaggerate and selectively focus in order to keep the belief running.

The shame that sits underneath the belief

When I sit with this belief more deeply, what I find underneath is shame.

Not a small embarrassment, but a kind of existential shame that feels life-threatening. If everyone is working harder than me, they will get ahead. If they get ahead, I will be left behind. And if I am left behind, I will not survive.

It sounds so ridiculously dramatic when written down, but that is often how the ego works. Beneath many productivity fears sits a primitive survival instinct. The fear is not simply about career success, it is about annihilation, disappearance and irrelevance. This is the ego within me not wanting to die - and let me tell you, my ego is supremely strong.

So, when the nervous system registers that level of threat, it makes sense that rest feels dangerous, because it’s the very opposite action to survival.

Laziness, in my internal world, has always felt like a horrendous moral failing - possibly the worst thing you could possibly be. It carries a cultural and ancestral weight and feels like something that could undermine my worth entirely, if I allowed it to.

So when I feel tired and need to slow down, the voice that shouts “Lazy! Lazy! Lazy!” on an endless loop is not casual or to be taken lightly, it feels like a direct attack on my identity.

No wonder I resist rest, because if rest triggers shame, and shame feels like death, then of course I will keep moving in order to avoid it.

Excuse no. 2 - other people have it so much worse - who am I to rest?

The second excuse is slightly different, but just as powerful.

Instead of comparing myself to those who appear more productive, I compare myself to those who are struggling to survive. The voice in my mind tells me that “they don’t get to rest, so why should you?”. When I think about resting, my mind does not show me people who balance work and rest in healthy ways. Nor does it conjure up any examples of the ordinary middle ground of humanity.

No, instead it goes straight to the extremes.

It takes me to images of people working relentlessly just to keep themselves and their families alive. People without safety nets or privilege who don’t have the option to slow down when their energy dips. Against that backdrop, my desire to rest can feel incredibly indulgent and disconnected from the reality of the world.

I am highly aware of the safety and love I have in my life. I sleep in a warm bed, I do work that I genuinely care about, and I have support on both a physical and emotional level. So when I hold that alongside the realities many people face, the gratitude that rises up is completely tangled up with this default comparison.

This is not gratitude from the heart, this is gratitude from the mind, and the difference is huge.

The internal pressure to make the most of it

Alongside this I also have a voice constantly telling me “you have to make the most of it!”. Make the most of what, you ask? Of everything!

I have to use my privilege well. I have to squeeze every drop from the opportunities I have been given. And so, naturally, somewhere along the way, making the most of it became synonymous with never wasting time, never slowing down, never resting more than absolutely necessary.

Again, my mind presents a black-and-white picture.

On one side is privilege and spaciousness and on the other is survival and hardship, and my mind constantly threatens me that I could have easily been born into the latter.

It swings me between these poles as though they are the only available realities, but what it skips over is the vast greyed out in-between of reality, which is the billions of people who are, in their own ways, just like me in navigating work, rest, gratitude and struggle simultaneously.

When I allow myself to step out of the extremes, I realise that I do not need to justify my existence through comparison, whether upward or downward. I can feel grateful for what I have, without needing to punish myself for having it.

The truth is also that my work requires depth, self-reflection and emotional honesty, and so leaning back is a huge part of the bigger picture of the work I’m doing in the world. Rest is absolutely part of the foundation that allows it, and so I cannot facilitate that for others if I refuse it for myself.

Excuse no 3. - I’m running out of time so I must work harder

The final layer underneath my resistance to rest is my relationship with time.

At its core sits a fear of running out of this precious resource. I rarely feel as though there is enough time as it is, and I carry a low-level, chronic anxiety that I might be wasting it, and someday it will run out.

Part of this is related to the hunger in me that wants to experience, learn, grow and give as much as possible in this lifetime. Within my Soul Contract, this is all to do with the intense 12-3 energy.

The 12 reaches outward, wanting to absorb life fully and the 3 is here to learn worth. Together, they create a dynamic tension where the drive to grow can easily become relentless striving, especially when worth still feels conditional on the productivity and output of my ‘doing’.

I do not experience this hunger as greed. It feels alive and passionate. I want to create, to help, to integrate what I learn and offer it back in a more loving way. But sustainable expansion requires contraction - every wave peaks and troughs but if I only allow the peak, I will eventually collapse into a deeper trough.

At the same time, the 3 energy within me does not particularly enjoy sitting with emotions.

In order to learn worth, though, emotions such as shame have to be faced, felt and embraced. Slowing down creates space for that because when the mind quietens and the body slows, there is room for emotions to rise, and it is here that vulnerability becomes unavoidable.

Staying busy to avoid feeling deeply

Staying busy is a very effective strategy for not feeling, and I witness this within me on such a deep level.

When I am planning, thinking, working and striving, I remain largely in my head instead of feeling in my body. Yet it is through the body that we can actually feel emotion. And what a surprise, embodiment and grounding into the physical is a huge theme within the karmic 8-8 energy in my Soul Contract.

If we stay out of the body through avoidance, we can never properly allow those emotions to move through us. Rest therefore becomes threatening not only because of productivity fears around slowing down and losing time, but because of what it might uncover emotionally that we are scared to face.

Added to this theme of running out of time, there is also a future-oriented pressure woven through this.

I imagine that I might have children at some point in my future but I recognise that my time would not look the same if this were to happen. The spaciousness, freedom and flexibility I have now will narrow, and that terrifies me. Whether or not that future unfolds, the possibility alone creates urgency in the present moment that feels at times overwhelming.

It whispers that I must make the most of this window while I have it. That I must do everything now before circumstances change. And so rest feels like loss, and loss creates feelings of scarcity, and scarcity feels like I’m running out of time, energy and opportunities.

And running out feels unbearable to a soul that is so hungry to live fully.

Final thoughts and realisations

What it comes down to, as it always does, is our ability to love ourselves to the degree that we can listen to, and give ourselves, what we need. For me, I need to give myself permission to rest, and the only thing that stops me is the unconscious belief that I am not worthy to receive that rest.

Everyone in the world is learning how to love themselves, I am not unique in this being part of my path here on earth, and yet our ability to fully accept, embrace and love ourselves shows up differently for each of us. Some of us struggle with our relationship with food, for others it shows up with our relationships, for others it’s our relationship with money, and for me it’s with my ability to lean back and receive.

While I am consciously aware that the lack of love I hold for myself shows up as an inability to rest when I need it, resulting in exhaustion and overwhelm, it doesn’t mean that I am always able to listen to the rational part of myself.

The irrational beliefs - born from the programming within me - are constantly feeding me all of the excuses above, and it is my job to keep bringing myself home to the truth that I am allowed to rest, I am allowed to receive, and I am worthy of feeling as wonderful as humanely possible.

And so are you.

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Further Support & Resources

If you’re navigating emotional challenges or feeling weighed down by old patterns, here are a few gentle ways to support yourself:

• Discover your Soul Contract
  Gain insight into the hidden patterns shaping your reality, and understand why certain emotional themes keep repeating in your life.

• Join a Group Healing session
  Experience a shared, guided space for emotional release and support, and connect with others on a similar path.

• Explore Divine Healing
  Work one-to-one to release emotional patterns, trauma, and limiting beliefs, so you can feel more at home in who you are.

• Stay connected
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Carry on exploring