Speaker #0That compulsion is so strong because behind it are the feelings that rest means I have failed, that rest means I am lazy and that rest means that I am wasting my time, I'm wasting my opportunities. Welcome back to Regenerative Work Life, I'm Alyssa Murphy and today I'm going to be exploring themes like rest, rest within the context of building a regenerative work life, rest in the context of recovering from corporate burnout, rest in the context of acknowledging the addiction and compulsion that many of us have to work and to work possibly far more than we need to and to allow work to fill up so much space in our lives. So this exploration was inspired by a reel that I shared on Instagram. If you want to follow me, you can find me at Alyssa, A-L-I-S-A underscore Murphy, M-U-R-P-H-Y, or if you just search regenerative work. Life I'm sure you'll find me. So in this reel I was just sharing about how it was actually my husband's birthday and we'd not long dropped the kids at school it was actually only the second day back at school so we were still in that sort of of deep relief after the summer holidays and you know for the first time in weeks and weeks the house was just quiet and kind of reasonably tidy and I was in the kitchen kind of pottering about just finishing clearing up after breakfast probably making bread things like that and my husband was sat in kind of at the other end in the dining room it's it's open to the dining room and he was really absorbed in playing with these headphones that I'd bought him for his birthday and he had the headphones on, their noise cancelling and he was just in this bubble, he was just really immersed in what he was doing, he was really peaceful, really still. My husband who is someone who is often very busy, he kind of feels the weight of all the things that there are to do, he's really efficient at getting jobs done and it was just lovely to see him just sitting there enjoying his moment of peace and quiet and it actually reminded me of the reason I used the word playing of kind of the times when I kind of catch my children playing in that same way when they're completely absorbed, but often kind of towards the end of the day when they're a bit tired and they're I don't know working something out while they're playing with cars and narrating whole stories and they're just completely immersed and I always remind myself not to interrupt them when they're in those moments and yet coming back to the kitchen I I've really found myself at the same time as enjoying his experience of just being present in that moment of this this kind of compulsion in me to go and interrupt him and be like right you know it's time's ticking on now so i'm not going to be long before a school pickup comes around like let's make the most of the day let's make the most of your birthday um and i really kind of felt this strong urge to you know we need to make a plan and we need to maximize these hours that we have like i wasn't going to be working that day so I could spend it with my husband and, you know, it just, I... I couldn't just let myself be in that moment, even at the same time that I could see that it was this sort of precious moment where we were both just, you know, still or moving slowly, just doing simple things. And what I shared in the reel was just, you know, how strong that compulsion is for so many of us always to be doing, always to be filling our time, planning ahead. making the most, you know, being efficient, being productive, even when we have chosen kind of downtime and a slower day. And just, I guess, the heaviness of that and how invasive it is and how difficult it is to step outside of that. And trying to acknowledge for myself that that moment I was experiencing in the kitchen just you know doing the dishes getting the bread out the oven but doing it all you know really slowly and in quiet and my husband just being nearby doing his thing like that that is the living that is life and yet a lot of us are just always always seeking for more feeling that we have to do more and that we have to kind of control what comes next and eke out the most that we possibly can from it so anyway i posted this reel and it's It's been a while actually since I've posted any reels. I have a very off and on relationship with Instagram. It kind of quickly becomes quite addictive for me so I'm still just trying to find my way to be there in a way that's very kind of light and natural for me and practicing these reels where I just kind of show up and talk about whatever's on my mind and it had a really good response. A lot of people really connected with what I was saying. You know I had someone who said this brought tears to my eyes and I needed to hear this. today and so many people who shared that they struggle with that same compulsion themselves and you know just wanted that reminder for themselves just to live and just be in the present and not always be thinking ahead not always be trying to spend our time as if it's a currency not thinking of it in those kind of extractive, consumerist kind of terms. And then a wonderful friend of mine, you know, made the excellent point that that compulsion that I was discussing is rooted in colonialism and capitalistic societies and that, you know, that that taking, making the choice, and it's not a single choice, making the choice over and over again not to be swept up in that compulsion is a form of resistance and she was referencing the amazing work by Trisha Hurtie on this and whose book is Rest as Resistance if you haven't read it I really recommend it and she also has a deck, a rest deck of cards to pull and remind yourself to rest through the day. So I wanted to explore what rest means in the context of pursuing regenerative work and even as I say that word pursuing and that is often how I describe the work that I do with people with clients we can pursue without it being a relentless pursuit without it being an always on full speed maximum efficiency pursuit and I think that is so important and probably there are better words that I can use the better word that comes to me is can we receive a regenerative work life instead of pursuing it and the thing about receiving and if you are one of my gorgeous dedicated listeners i love you thank you um you'll know that receiving is a big theme for me if you go back a few episodes there's an episode there about um my sort of first experience with human design and in my human design my strategy is to wait to respond and I have interpreted that as actually to wait to receive and there's such a different energy around receiving versus building, creating, pursuing, growing. It initially I think can feel sort of inactive and passive but when you really allow it, it's not that at all. It's an opening up it's a slowing down it's a disentangling, a detoxing, and it's really, really necessary. It's really necessary if, as we move towards a more regenerative work life, we don't want to just recreate what we had before. We don't want, you know, maybe a slightly better version of the relationship with work that we had before. We want something that is... transformative, we want something that is joyful, that gives life to us and to others. And I think we can only get there if rest is a really central component of how we navigate that journey. This is, you know, very much connected to what I spoke about a few episodes ago in terms of making space. So there's an episode that making space is the non-negotiable of regenerative work. But even in that episode when I'm talking about making space, I was talking in a more active sense of it sitting with... thoughts sitting with contradictions, you know, working on ourselves, doing the inner work, yeah, making space for the work. But the point of rest is that we have to approach it with no expectation of return. We have to value it for its own self. We have to value it. What am I trying to say? We have to... appreciate it for its own value it has an intrinsic value that is what I'm trying to say rest has intrinsic value it's not an exchange like okay I'll rest for half an hour and then can you give me back like I'm expecting something in return I'm expecting like a major breakthrough please in return we have to learn to just be actually as someone um beautifully posted on my on my Instagram post, we have to start valuing. being as much as we value doing. Thank you, Fariel, for that amazing quote. We have to value being as much as we value doing. And I think this is such a shift and it's really, really challenging for a lot of us. I know it's extremely challenging for me. You know, entrepreneurship is now kind of really... in my blood, in my nature, that kind of conditioning. Like for 15 years I was on all the time and my sort of self-image was like I'm the instigator, I'm the problem solver, I'm the one who makes things happen. Like I pour my energy into this and it grows and very individualistic actually. Even though I'm super proud of what I built and the work we did and the culture um And as I've grown and developed, I've sort of understood that that kind of startup and founder world is often extraordinarily individualistic. And actually what it asks of individuals is to pour their life force into something and sort of hope that there will be a payoff at some point. So we must find a way to embrace rest, I believe. and accept that that is probably going to be very challenging, if not triggering, for a lot of us who have really come to understand our worth in terms of how productive, how efficient, how smart, how able to multitask, you know, we can be. because that's really really addictive. I mentioned at the beginning like rest in the context of our addiction to work, it's so addictive. You know that was my experience for years and years and years. I would get on the seven o'clock train to go up to London, I would work all the way there, I would have back-to-back meetings. I at one point, like peak madness if you will, would go in taxis to get to meetings even though that often took longer than taking the underground in London. so that I could take calls in the taxis. And then I would get on the train to come home and I would work all the way home on the train. And then my amazing husband would often have dinner ready for me and I was so lucky, I would come in and he'd pour a bath for me and I'd get in the bath while he made dinner. And then I'd think about all of the big ideas that I hadn't had time to work on during the day while I was in the bath. Then I'd have dinner. hopefully spare a few minutes for my husband and then go to bed after probably having checked my emails thinking about work super super addictive and I've noticed this come up even in my sort of my new work life um as I'm nurturing regenerative work life I have to be really careful of that compulsion to let it fill every sort of moment of my consciousness and just rest because when I do this is the point When I do, I believe that is when I can receive. Yes, rest has intrinsic value and just being is enough. And also, I do believe that is when we can really connect with the kind of co-creation that I was talking about in episode 47, in the last episode, that feeling that we are creating with something bigger than ourselves, that kind of mystical union. that Julia Cameron writes about in The Artist's Way, rest has to be a central component of that. And look, when I think about rest, three things come up for me and I'm going to go into these because maybe they are very similar things that come up for you. These are three words that I associate. with rest if I'm being really honest with myself. The three words are laziness, waste and failure. Like that is the truth of how I think about rest even though even though if you asked me and said like if you can do anything you want today Alyssa I'd be like great I want to just lie in bed all day or I just want to go on a really slow walk I just want to pot around the kitchen and you know I have I've been on this journey for a while now, I've got much, much better at doing those things and valuing those things, understanding that I have to have space in my life, that I have to look after myself, that there is a joy in just lying and staring at the ceiling or even better, you know, lying on the grass looking up at the branches of a tree. You know, I do do more and more of that but still underlying is that compulsion that I spoke about. in that reel when I was in the kitchen the other morning, that compulsion and that compulsion, which is essentially like colonial capitalist conditioning, which is all wrapped up in our corporatized way of approaching our careers, our businesses and our work lives. Like that compulsion is there because it's so strong, because what I believe, sorry, it's not there because it's so strong, that compulsion is so strong because Behind it are the feelings that rest means I have failed, that rest means I am lazy, and that rest means that I am wasting my time, I'm wasting my opportunities. So what comes up for you when you think about rest? Maybe you have a really great relationship with rest and it's something that comes naturally. in your life and that you are able to make space for and prioritise. I don't know many people for whom that is true. Maybe, like me, you're kind of somewhere in between and I hope that this is just a helpful reminder to come back to rest, to recognise its intrinsic value and to understand the relationship between rest and receiving, which is another way of describing... co-creation, synchronicity, creativity. And perhaps you are, like many of my clients, still very, very deeply attached to the corporate conditioning that you've been given. Perhaps for you the idea of resting is actually really frightening or, you know, in your head it sounds like a great idea but when it actually comes to doing it you feel so much resisting. So much resistance and you have similar feelings to me about like what comes up, maybe failure, laziness, waste, maybe other things for you that really come up strongly. And if that's the case, then I would invite you to just notice. When you do try and rest or even when you think about rest, like what happens, what happens in your body? I... I definitely feel some anxiety around that. For me there's kind of, it's kind of a, there's two opposing forces. One is like, yes I want to rest, but my body's like, yes. And then there's also this sort of deeper somewhere, probably in my gut, no, like in my diaphragm maybe, where I tend to experience anxiety that is like, no, we can't afford to rest. we can't afford to rest. That might be another thought that comes up for you, that rest is a luxury that you can't afford. Notice what the thoughts are that come up for you around rest, because this isn't something you can force. You can't listen to this podcast and go, right, yes, Alyssa, I've got it. I am going to rest. It comes from, it comes, I think, first from recognising the resistance. from starting to name that resistance, explore the thoughts behind it and just letting those have some space and then seeing if we can maybe practice just a little little bit at a time, like just take a few minutes and look out the window, just stop when you're walking somewhere, I don't know if you're going for a meeting to meeting or you're um you know on the school run or uh on the way back from the gym and just sit down somewhere sit on a bench like sit on the grass just sit If you sit for 30 seconds, great. Just sit and do nothing. Like, I know how hard this is. I am not trying to be a teacher here. I am on this journey with you. I am very much... I am very much exploring my relationship with rest. And for me, just to like get super specific about it, like some of those things for me are... Well... you know I try to spend as much time in nature as I can but making sure that I am doing that without you know listening to podcasts without um I do a lot of my work while I'm walking in nature but am I also spending time where I'm just looking and noticing and listening and smelling um one of the things for me is like really resisting the urge to multitask so if I'm making dinner can I just make dinner. Like, can I not be making dinner and checking all the emails from school for all the things that I have to do? You know, can I go for a walk and actually not use the opportunity to stop and create a reel? You know, can I just sit and stare out the window? Can I, actually a big one for me at the moment, like get into bed without my phone, without even a book? lie down and close my eyes as I go to sleep and just feel whatever comes up. That for me is actually one of the most concentrated times of resistance to rest, is actually going to sleep. And I'm really working on doing that in silence and without any kind of stimulation and just letting myself feel the discomfort. And I have zero scientific evidence. that this will help you in your quest for a regenerative work life that brings you joy and satisfaction that gives you life that brings life to others but I have like deep knowing in my body that it is true that rest must be part of our work lives and that doing so is an act of resistance. As always, I would love to hear what this podcast may have sparked for you, what feelings come up, what your relationship with rest is like. Instagram is a great place for having conversations, so do come over and follow me there if Instagram works for you, but you're always welcome to reach me on email alissa at regenerativeworklife.com. Thank you for listening to today's exploration. I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope that it has, that something within what I have discussed has spoken to you in some way. That is my whole goal with the podcast, just to explore out loud and hope that some of what I share sparks something for you. And I'll see you back here next week.
