Episode 660: Rest Is Not the Same as Doing Nothing

0:00Lying on the couch, scrolling on your phone, is inactivity, but it is not rest. And the difference between those two things is significant, because a lot of us are spending enormous amounts of time in the first category, inactivity, while wondering why we still feel depleted. Welcome to your daily hit of Grace and Grit, your quick dose of inspiration to kickstart your day. I'm Courtney Townley, and here is today's hit. Not all downtime is created equal. And I think this is something that most of us know intuitively, but we don't really closely examine it. Genuine rest restores something. You enter it with less than you need, and you emerge with more.

1:00That's true rest. You feel the difference on the other side. You feel the benefit on the other side. The body's calmer. The mind is quieter. Maybe your creativity comes back online, your focus comes back online. And really at a core, you have more capacity to do life than you did before. What most of us are mistakenly calling rest does not produce that outcome. We sit still, yes. We stop doing productive things, yes. But we keep the nervous system engaged, stimulated, reacting. Media keeps the comparison mechanism running to really good at that. News keeps the threat response, simmering, entertainment keeps the brain processing.

2:03And none of that's real restoration. It's just a different kind of consumption. It's inactivity, not rest. So there's a framework around different types of rest that I think is really useful here. And I think it's a useful lens to look at this conversation through, because not all rest is created equal, right? And our bodies need different kinds of rest, our bodies in our brains. There's physical rest, which I think is what most people think of first when they hear the word rest, sleep laying down, taking the body out of exertion. And it is definitely essential. It should absolutely be non-negotiable. But it's not the whole picture of rest. We also have mental rest, which is the quieting of cognitive activity.

3:04We're not doing the list making, the planning, the solving, the strategizing. So a lot of people get physical rest without ever getting mental rest because they can't turn their brains off. And I think the inability to turn their brains off also affects their physical rest. Then we have sensory rest, right, which is really underrated and almost entirely absent from modern day living. That means reducing the constant bombardment of screens and noises and pinging and dinging and stimulation. Even an hour of genuine sensory quiet can feel radical when you're not used to it. I've noticed this a lot more as I get older, especially because I do so much work in front of the computer screen. I cannot sit for as long in front of my computer without a rest as I used to be able to.

4:06And I think that's a gift. I'm not complaining about that at all because I think it's great that my body is less tolerant of the blue light coming from my screen. Then we also have emotional rest, right, which is the permission to stop performing, to stop being the strong one, the competent one, the upbeat and available one. It's just to simply feel what you actually feel without apology and without managing it for everybody else's comfort. I'm not saying go out and be a wild jerk, but sometimes we need to just bow out of a commitment or an obligation and allow ourselves to feel the feels of whatever we're going through. So all of these types of rest require something different. And most of us are chronically deficient in at least a few of them, if not all of them.

5:06No matter how many hours you spend on the couch, because again, in activity is not the same thing as restoration. When I sit and scroll social media, I do not emerge rested. I often emerge more anxious, more restless, more pent up than when I started. So the screen gave me something to do, but it did not give me anything back. It took more from me. What actually restores me is much simpler and harder to choose in the moment, which is maybe a walk without my phone. A conversation that goes somewhere real. Time in nature with no agenda or no rush to get to the next thing. Being a physical book or simply sitting quietly long enough for the noise of my day to settle. None of those things look impressive.

6:07None of them produce anything. But they give me back the capacity to produce, to connect, to focus and think clearly to feel like myself. And that capacity is the whole point of restoration, restoring it. So the next time you reach for your phone to unwind, just pause for a second and ask, is this going to restore me or just fill up space? The answer to that question asked honestly and often, can change the quality of your rest entirely. And you'll probably spend a lot less time on your phone if you answer it honestly. If this landed for you, you'd probably love the book that I just wrote, the consistency code. I say I just wrote it. It's been out now, what, for nine months, ten months? It's been a hot minute, but it still feels pretty fresh.

7:10But inside the book, there are a ton of self leadership principles to apply to how you rest as much as how you work. And if you want to get a little taster before you invest in the book, you can always grab a free chapter over at theconsistencycode.com-forward-slash-free-chapter. If this stirred something inside of you, imagine what a whole book of clarity and courage could ignite. The consistency code, a midlife woman's guide to deep health and happiness, goes even deeper into the mindset and practices that create real, meaningful change at midlife. Grab your copy today over at theconsistencycode.com and keep the momentum alive.