Learning to rest

What if rest isn’t weakness—but a skill?

Over the years, I’ve had to completely redefine what rest means to me.

For most of my life, rest was almost demonized. At the very least, it was treated with suspicion—especially in my career and the environments I lived in. Busy was normal. Noise was constant. And rest felt like something you earned only after pushing yourself to the edge.

Working for many years in the United States, the culture was clear:

There is no rest.

You work long hours.

You show resilience.

You’re expected to be bulletproof.

If you left work on time and said, “I need to rest,” it almost sounded like an admission of weakness. Like you’d reached your limit—and that somehow reflected poorly on you.

Looking back, I don’t think that pressure was only societal. I conditioned myself to believe it too.

Rest isn’t sleep—and it isn’t inactivity

One of the biggest shifts I had to make was understanding that rest doesn’t automatically mean sleep.

And it definitely doesn’t mean laziness.

Rest isn’t inactivity.

That distinction took me a long time to accept.

During my early recovery, rest took on a completely different meaning. It became about giving myself space—to breathe, to recover, to let my body reset before moving forward again.

Sometimes rest meant stopping. Sometimes it meant creating intentional emptiness. A void.

Not filling every moment with noise, effort, or obligation.

And that ties directly into learning to live in the moment.

Creating space to just exist

For me, rest often looks like intentionally doing nothing—even if only for five or ten minutes.

Walking into a park. Sitting on a bench. Watching the sunrise. Letting my mind go quiet.

Those moments became priorities—not luxuries.

Mental rest. Physical rest. Emotional rest.

When we give ourselves permission to take these breaks—whatever we want to call them—we start prioritizing ourselves over the chaos of daily life.

And the value of that only increases as we get older.

Kids leave home.

Careers change or end.

Relationships shift.

If you haven’t built these habits along the way, it’s easy to feel lost when the noise finally fades.

I learned that the hard way.

Rest as preparation, not escape

Proper sleep still matters, of course. Getting a good night’s sleep gives your body time to repair—physically and mentally.

But rest also shows up in motion.

There are days I don’t feel like going for a walk. But I’ve never gone for a walk and felt worse afterward. Ever.

Someone once said that—and it stuck with me.

Movement can be restorative.

Routine can be calming.

Repetition can be healing.

Our bodies and minds crave consistency. It’s up to us to build routines that actually feed them instead of draining them.

Finding rest in ordinary moments

I still look for moments of rest every day.

Sometimes I’m rushing to an appointment, caught in that familiar runaway-train feeling. And then I notice something small—a child blowing bubbles, laughter spilling into the street, a moment that pulls me back.

That’s rest.

Not stopping life. Not escaping responsibility. Just breaking the momentum long enough to breathe.

There are times when you have to push through a full day without stopping. That’s reality.

But sustainability requires care.

You need enough fuel in the tank to enjoy life—not just survive it.

Redefining rest changed everything

Rest, to me now, means creating space.

A push-away. A pause. A void where I can simply exist.

Time isn’t the priority in those moments. The act of creating space is.

Your body and your mind will tell you how long you need—if you learn to listen.

This is something I practice daily. And over time, it becomes more intentional. More natural.

The noise doesn’t disappear—but I don’t let it in the same way anymore.

That shift has brought more calm, more clarity, and more positivity into my life.

And if you’re still working toward that, just know—you’re not alone.

Practical takeaway

Rest isn’t something you earn after exhaustion.

It’s something you practice before exhaustion.

Create small pockets of space each day.

Let yourself pause without guilt.

Trust that rest is preparing you—not holding you back.

That’s where resilience actually comes from.