Allowing yourself to rest and slow down in a culture that perpetuates the notion that you always need to be moving, doing, and performing to be successful can be challenging.
“Hustle culture” can make you feel like you do not have permission to rest. Doing so may feel like a threat to your sense of belonging and survival.
However, an essential component of holistic wellness is allowing yourself to indulge in and enjoy rest without guilt.
What Are Your Ideas About Rest?
The stories you may tell yourself have likely been subconsciously ingrained in you since childhood.
You typically do not question them until you understand that you can challenge the stories you tell yourself and ask if they align with the life you desire to create.
What are the stories you have been telling yourself, perhaps without even realizing it, concerning what it means to give yourself permission to slow down and rest? What if they were not the absolute truth?
Is there is a new narrative that your authentic self wants to create around what it means to rest?
Get Comfortable With Feeling Discomfort
If you have not traditionally allowed yourself to rest, have judged yourself when you do rest, or grew up with parental figures and caregivers who did not practice slowing down themselves, beginning to permit yourself to surrender into rest without judgment may feel foreign at first.
Even desired change can feel scary and uncomfortable because it is uncertain. The key is remembering the discomfort related to the notion of rest is not an indicator that you are doing something wrong. Rather, it is an indicator to keep going and allow yourself to rest until it becomes a natural part of your lifestyle.
Carving Out Time to Rest
Cultivating the practice of resting in your life is a process that evolves over time. To practice it, you must carve out time to do so.
Perhaps this means reevaluating your priorities, redefining what your values are, canceling commitments that you are not fully aligned with, learning to set boundaries regarding what you devote your time to, or a combination of the above.
Learning and evolving into new ways of being that come with healing and recovering from mental illness is often challenging. Cultivating the practice of rest can be one such challenge. At Avalon Malibu, we recognize how difficult recovery and healing can feel even when it’s the very thing you desire. We are here to support you as you discover and create the changes you wish to make in your life. At our luxury treatment facility, you will be among trained professionals and supportive peers. To learn more, call us today at (844) 857-5992.
