Four-letter words don’t offend me. But the one four-letter word that I have battled with is: rest. 

When it comes to that four-letter word my natural inclination is to resist it with the ferocity of a toddler being told to take an afternoon nap. 

What is it about this seemingly innocuous word that sets off the stubborn two-year-old in me?

I’m not sure if I’ve figured out all the answers to that question, but I’ve figured out some.

Last week our little pack of two humans and two doggos spent five days far from the crowds; maddening and otherwise. 

We discovered this wonderfully unpopulated 28 hectares of nature some years ago. It’s a rustic retreat where we start each day with a bit of mountaineering down to the clear river that borders the property. The four-legged pack members morph into mountain goats as they bounce from one boulder to another, tails in the air and noses to the ground - absorbing the criss-crossing stories of the veld.

The rocks eventually spill out onto river sand and, while we’re still navigating the last of the rocks, the only evidence that we have dogs are dusty mirages dancing above the path - followed by the sound trail and echo of a plop and a splash telling us they’re swimming in the river.

After a few minutes of them swimming in the natural pools we follow the path that meanders next to the river. They disappear into the surrounding bush proving that they take “bundu bashing” literally. 

Rest or Work?

Leading up to our time away my husband and I were aware of the mound of work we were leaving behind, so we started to plan what work we were going to take with us. Luckily we course-corrected two days before we left; deciding to rest and recuperate so that we could make a renewed, energised charge at the mountain of work when we got back.

We almost fell back into our old habits, but we were really grateful for the complete downtime.

For most of my life I’ve had the energy pattern of a toddler - manic activity followed by collapse. I used to say that I was only aware of my energy tank as “full” or “empty”, nothing in between.

Mid-life, burnout, and a bunch of life skills I was lacking, eventually led me to a point where I was evaluating my life and decided I needed to change the way I was living. I took a sabbatical to figure out how I was going to do things differently moving forward.

Part of that exploration and figuring out how to manage my energy tank led me back to the word rest.

I love words and I love fiction. Reading is more than escapism, it’s meeting new friends, travelling to the past, the future, different worlds. But the most powerful story that affects my life is the narrative running in my head.

The sabbatical kick-started an exploration of the stories I tell myself on a daily basis. 

The Archaeology of Personal Narratives

Some of those myths and legends are so old that it helps to work with a narrative archaeologist - like a psychologist or life coach. Telling our stories, talking, in a therapeutic space is a powerful experience because it shifts the tales living in our subconscious to our conscious mind. 

And when that shift occurs, it brings the storyline to our awareness, where we can work with it, evaluate it, decipher its meaning and choose what the meaning of that scenario is going to be in our future. This allows for a shift in perspective to take place. Shifts allow us to move forward.

When I allow myself to consider different perspectives I open myself up to the possibility of seeing myself, my role in the plot, the meaning differently. In this way we liberate ourselves from remaining trapped in the same old story. 

Think about it, stories are being imprinted on our brains before we even understand language - parents, siblings, extended family, genes, family trauma - these are all buried within and affect us, consciously and unconsciously.

Overlaid onto our biological and emotional plot lines are the cultural histories we are born into. It’s a real mishmash, and we just keep adding to it as we journey through life.

Stories have meaning, and we give meaning to the ones that we’re told and interpret them based on a million filters. It’s not so much what we’re told, but what we perceive that we were told.

The Parable About Preparing A Roast

There’s that lovely parable about a young woman who learns to prepare a roast by watching her mother. When the woman prepares a roast for her new husband she cuts off a choice part of the roast before cooking it. Her husband asks her why, and she tells him that’s the way her mother taught her to do it. On investigating this further, questioning her mother about the origin of this method of preparation, she finds out that her mother’s roasting pan wasn’t big enough to hold the entire roast. That’s why her mother was cutting off a portion of it!

Sometimes we act in ways that don’t make sense when we question it further. However, often we are so accustomed to the behaviour we continue in the same vein until something or someone makes us question it.

These tales are codes running our programming.  Unhelpfully, we can’t just reveal our source code. It takes some investigating. Luckily our behaviour gives us clues. Our beliefs, our values are all held in what we tell ourselves. Our actions are ultimately based on these beliefs which originate from our interpretation of these stories.

So, for me, I had to look at my toddler-like behaviour and ask what am I telling myself about rest that makes me resist it? 

Coming From A Long Line Of Strong Women

Something that was recited to me regularly was that I come from a long line of strong women. I also describe myself and my friends in this way. On closer examination I realised, that at some point in my life, I started equating being a strong woman with not having to rest.

When I say that out loud it seems ridiculous. But somewhere  along the way that’s the meaning that I attached to that description - or part of the meaning I attached to it. 

When I realised that I believed that I also realised that I didn’t believe that! Maybe it’s more accurate to say that when I held that belief up to the light it didn't stand up to scrutiny.

Logically I know that I’m a human being, and we need rest. Otherwise, sleep deprivation would not be a form of torture.

The stories we tell ourselves aren't necessarily based on logic, they’re based on the meaning we give them. Logic doesn’t have to feature in the fantasy world of our unconscious.

If I was boarding a flight and was given the option of a pilot who’d been flying non-stop for 24 hours or a pilot that was refreshed, clear-eyed. I’m not going to tell myself the pilot who's been flying for 24 hours is in the zone. I’m going to bench that guy in favour of the fresh mind, the rested body.

So why wasn’t I treating myself that way?

I wouldn’t think of the pilot as weak or not strong. I’d think the rested person was better prepared and ready for the job. So why wasn’t that applying to me?

Mid-life Crises?

I’m not sure that I’m a fan of the term mid-life crises. I think I prefer midway evaluation point because that’s really the gift of this life stage. A point to evaluate how and why we operate the way we do and course-correct, if we want. An opportunity to learn new skills, to do some life maintenance.

Okay, so the infamous they say that realising you have a problem is half of the solution. The next step is changing the behaviour. 

I think I’m a fairly intelligent, logical person but even once I knew that my behaviour was based on, not only an illogical belief, but one that I don’t even believe any more, it was still hard to change the behaviour. 

And that’s the challenge of the mid-life evaluation. I had been doing it this way for such a long time. That underground neural pathway that said strong women don’t need to rest was well and truly rutted in my mid-life brain.

Every time I realised that little train of thought was chugging along its usual path, I’d have to slam on the brakes and say, “no, no little train you have to use the new tracks, the new thought pathway”. Over and over and over and over again.

The motivation that kept me coming back to slam on the brakes, and work at a new direction, was that I knew that my old behaviour was no longer working for me. I knew where continuing in the same thinking, and acting on that thinking, led. It led me down a path of exhaustion and I had consciously chosen to move away from that because I wanted something better. I owed it to myself to find a new way, a new endpoint, a new result. 

A mantra that I use over and over again is “you didn’t take a sabbatical and dismantle your life just to recreate the same structure again!” It’s not the dramatic shift of direction that would work for everyone but one of the pay-offs for me was having that mantra to hold onto.

Moving From Insight To Changing Behaviour

So changing behaviour. That brings me to another four-letter word that I wrestle with: redo.

When I face an issue or problem it is my MO to immerse myself, dive in deep and thoroughly explore it in order to overcome it. I am not a fan of redoing, relearning, revisiting. These I resist. I have a small temper tantrum, before I pick my emotional two-year-old up and jump into the fray again.

I’m a fan of the inspired insight, the awesome aha moment, the euphoria of Eureka! The redo I could do without.

One of the things I’ve noticed in rereading my journals is that when I redo I gain further insight, greater understanding, more nuanced skill. 

If you’ve ever sanded wood you’ll know that you start with a coarsely gritted sandpaper. When you run your hand over the wood it feels better but as you rework the wood with the ever-increasing finely gritted sandpaper the texture and smoothness improves. That’s how I view redoing now.

The Importance of Redoing

Gaining a new understanding is great, but it’s the redoing that develops the mastery - the mastery of self. It’s continual recalibration that is brought about by the doing,  and the redoing.

I now view myself as an instrument and as I journey along my life my understanding of self improves, the way I work with myself gets better, I raise my standards - I’m refining myself.

A few weeks into our sabbatical my husband and I were driving to go on a hike, and he turned to me and said, “I’m afraid I’ll never want to work again”. My immediate, insensitive response was to laugh.

After I had gathered myself, I explained to him that I thought that was highly unlikely based on his history, work ethic and his personality. He had worked since he was 16, while he studied, started side hustles during his school holidays when he was a teacher and started his own business while having a full time job.

I explained that I thought the greater danger was that when we started working again we’d quickly get into our old habits of overworking.

We continued our discussion during our hike, and we discovered another interesting belief that we both shared. We regarded ourselves as hard workers and part of our resistance to the word rest was that somewhere, in some way, we equated rest to being lazy.

As we explored this belief we realised that part of considering ourselves to be hard workers was about proving ourselves, and that we’d internalised that as part of our identities. We also realised that we no longer needed to prove to ourselves, or others, that we were capable of hard work - we now knew that. 

Additionally, it was our old way of thinking. We were now more interested in, not only, working smarter but feeling better, being well-rounded, inspired, fully functional people.

Learning to Rest

Again, even though we’d had this insight, we both battled with the word rest. What we discovered was that it was easier for us to encourage each other to rest than it was to accept that it was okay for us, as individuals, to rest. 

This resulted in us entering into a pact. We loved each other, understood the benefits of rest and when we needed to take time we would do that - and in doing so, in treating ourselves well, we were giving the other the permission, the license and the encouragement to do the same. So now we saw taking a break ourselves as a way to support the person we loved most to do that same.

We all have these narratives running on loops in our minds, and sometimes we need to revisit them and evaluate if we still attach the same meaning to them that we used to. A shift in perspective may enable us to see ourselves not as the victim of our lives but as the hero.

The stories we tell ourselves, have been told to us, are powerful and determine how we see ourselves, our world and our beliefs in what we can achieve, feel and be. Change the story you tell yourself, and you’ll change your life.

Are The Stories You’re Telling Yourself A Cage?

That tape playing over and over again in your head can be a cage, or it can be a stage. 

Change the soundtrack and make it the recital of your own choosing. It’s just a story after all. Start writing the one you want to live.

Let’s be less concerned with living the dream and start living out our dreams. If we want our dreams for our future to be different from our current paths it requires us to have the courage to take charge and be the authors of our own lives.

I don’t know about you, but when I get to that third stage of my life I’d like it to be different from the first two acts. Not because the first two acts weren’t thrilling but because in the stories that I love, the arc changes, grows, deepens when the main character develops into the hero they were meant to be.

One of the features of middle age is an awareness of how much time has passed and how quickly it’s passed. At first this can be terrifying, but it is also an invitation, an opportunity to evaluate what we’re going to choose to leave behind so that we can focus fully on what’s important to us moving forward. 

It instilled in me a commitment to making the next cycle Cathleen-centric. To learn from the past, and action those lessons in my present, so that my future will be the story of MY life, not some unconscious myth that was imprinted on me before I had a voice, a choice.

Fixating On A Particular Narrative

The line my husband and I had started to fixate on before our trip away was “we have so much work to do”. Resting allowed us to reframe that narrative. 

Having so much work to do was just part of the scenario. That we would work better after relaxing was also true.

Picture that saying putting your shoulder to the grindstone. When we do that our view is limited to what is directly in front of us. We can’t see ahead of us, to the side of us or the progress that we’ve made.

I’m sure you’ve had a problem that you can’t solve, but when you walked away from it and engaged in something else the solution popped into your head. Like when you get great ideas in the shower.

When we rest, let our bodies and mind unwind, play, it provides space to allow creativity and solutions to flow in.

Fixating on one thing is like plucking only one string on a guitar. We have many strings and the harmony of our life is better when we play all the strings - do different things. In doing this, we activate our full capabilities, bring our full selves to each endeavour.

Reframing the narrative allows us to see the whole picture.

Nature’s A Great Reminder That There’s Time To Rest

One of the benefits of resting in nature is that nature is a constant visualisation of ever-evolving cycles. Reminding us that there’s a season to our world, our lives. Time for work, time for rest and a time to redo, undo and just be. Be present, enjoy this moment - the hoot of the owl in the darkness, the cries of the jackals that accompany the setting sun, the dome of the starred night, the early bird song that calls forth the rising sun.

Like the bonfire we built every night to protect us from the winter chill and meditate on the flickering flames, rest is the wood that feeds our fire  to charge again.