109: How to Rest Without Becoming Lazy

Do you feel like you can only rest AFTER all the work is done?

While this makes sense for certain tasks, kicking your boots off after a long day's work can certainly feel gratifying. What happens if we struggle to find the time to ever allow ourselves to metaphically "kick off our boots?"

When you're stuck on "go", these moments of relief can feel like they're few and far between.

And the idea of just giving yourself a break before everything is done feels like a slippery slope into procrastination, avoidance, and laziness.

Deep down, you probably know you can't keep living like this, but how in the world can one STOP??

It's simple, profound, and possibly a little uncomfortable.

But if you really want to truly and deeply enjoy your life, and you're willing to take full responsibility for that becoming a reality, then let me share with you how it's done and how close that reality actually is for you.

We'll talk about:

• The science behind rest
• How you might be doing it "wrong" & how to do it "right"
• And a profound perspective shift that will make you realise you can access this TODAY

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My name is Raffaela Marie. I'm a holistic BFRB coach who has healed from 15 years of chronic skin picking myself and dedicated my life to helping driven women do the same. Through my podcast, free resources, and programs, I teach strategies to overcome urges, build emotional safety, and expand into authenticity. My approach goes beyond quick fixes, focusing on root causes and long-term recovery.

Transcript

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Your sole purpose for being on this earth is not how much you can get done in that time, not how much, how many things you can cross off your to-do list. It's how well you can live. And how well you live directly correlates to how much you allow yourself to just be without doing. We're not human doings, we're human beings. And when we allow ourselves to be, we're also allowing ourselves to rest. But if you're here listening to this episode, maybe you find it hard to allow yourself to rest. You think if I let myself rest before I get all the things done that I need to get done, then I just won't get those things done, and I'll get lazy, I'll get addicted, or I'll get sucked into just leisure, just enjoyment, and I'll avoid all my responsibilities and the things that need to get done. I understand where you're coming from because I felt the same way. It is a very real thought that if I don't keep myself on top of things, then things just won't get done. And I'll have even more stress and pressure, and I'll let people down and I'll let myself down. But in truth, real rest isn't about avoidance of the things that you have to get done. Real rest actually allows you to be more productive, more effective, and actually allows you to enjoy your life so much more in amongst all the things that are undone, all the chaos and all the to-dos. You start to really live and thrive and enjoy being who you are and the living the life that you live. Now I know this makes logical sense to you and it sounds really nice and all, but how the hell do I actually make that a reality? Let me share with you in this episode what rest truly means and how you can start to allow yourself the space to just be so that you can live more, despite having an unfinished to-do list. This is episode 109 of Beyond Skin Picking and Hair Pulling. This is the place to be if you want to understand the root cause of why you pick, pull, or bite at your body, and understand a holistic and science-based approach on how to heal from it that actually works and gets you long-term sustainable results. My name is Raphaela Marie. I'm your host. I've healed from 15 years of chronic skin picking, and I've dedicated the past five years to helping people like you to heal like I did. I am now a coach and I share everything that I know that works with you on this podcast. And I would love to hear your story and give you insights into what your story says about why you pick pull a bite at your skin and the tangible steps you can take right now to start healing. This is something really special that I offer to all of my listeners. I am here for you, and this is really a unique opportunity to get the understanding and the support that you truly deserve and that you've possibly been looking for for a really long time. So if you want to book that in, go ahead to the show notes, click on the first link that you see, and I so look forward to meeting you and hearing your story. And if you appreciate the work here that I do on this podcast, please leave a five-star review and don't forget to leave your thoughts about what this episode brought up for you in the comments or in a written review. In my research for this episode, I came across the five most common regrets of the dying, which actually has such a profound connection to what it is that we're going to talk about today. Let me share them with you. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. I wish that I had let myself be happier. Isn't it interesting how no one who is on their deathbed says, I wish I'd ticked more things off my to-do list. I wish I'd gotten more stuff done. I wish I'd been more productive, more efficient, more effective in my day-to-day life. It's really all about wishing they had allowed themselves to live, to connect, to not work so hard, to allow themselves the space to truly be and exist and enjoy their existence on this earth. No amount of efficiency and getting things done and crossing crossing things off that list is going to give us the that kind of experience that we're looking for. And let's not wait until it's too late. So, what does rest actually mean? And on a scientific level, what it means is allowing yourself or allowing your nervous system to enter a parasympathetic state, which is rest and repair, which is the opposite of the state that we are commonly stuck in, which is the sympathetic state, which is the state of fight and flight. The sympathetic state helps control your body's response during times of stress. The parasympathetic state helps to control your body's response in times of rest. Now, if you think about it, we don't live lives where we are constantly on the edge of near-death experiences. There actually isn't as much of a need for us to be in a constant state of fight or flight, and yet we are. Because here are the symptoms of a sympathetic state. We experience a racing heart, elevated heart rate, shallow breathing, muscle tension, typically in the jaw and the shoulders, sleep problems, digestive issues. I mean, I know that I have experienced all of these things. And if you take a moment to check in with your body randomly throughout the day, you might notice, wow, I'm not really breathing. My breathing is really shallow. And I'm not breathing deeply into my stomach. Signs you're in the parasympathetic state. We have a lower heart rate, slower, deeper breathing, and we experience a general feeling of safety, calmness, and loving feelings. Imagine if we spent the majority of our time in this state, and in actual fact, that is how we should be living, unless you are in a war zone and your environment literally is putting you into a state of fight or flight. But for most of us, yes, of course, there are horrible things happening in the world. And if you are constantly, every single day reading about these horrible things, that is going to not help for you to calm down and relax. But in our day-to-day life, we are actually quite safe. We have a roof over our head, we have food and water, and yet we are stuck in this sympathetic stress response. Partly because we have constant access to stimulation through social media, our phones, laptops, just technology in general. We have a constant influx of horrible news. And our brain is wired to seek out negative things. And so even if there are good things happening around us, we're going to seek out and be triggered by and drawn towards the negative. And our brain has never had the chance to develop the capacity to handle so much information. Our brain has developed the capacity to hold the information and receive the information from about, I think it's a hundred people, a town, a very small town of people. Our brain does not know how to handle so much change and so much information in such a small amount of time. I mean it's daily that we are experiencing this. And we could get into a whole topic about how being intentional with the news that you consume, with how you consume social media, with your technology use is really an important aspect of healing in itself. But that is a rabbit hole for another time. Not only is that contributing to triggering us into a sympathetic state, which we do have control over. We can control our phone use, we can control what we consume and when we consume it. But we also have our wiring from the past, from our childhood, that maybe makes it harder to slow down, makes it harder to take time for time for ourselves. And then there's also the possibility that you work in a high-demand job, high energy, high-intensity industry. Now, all of these things are not excuses to say, well, I can't do anything about it. That's just is how it is. If we choose to, we always have a choice. Always. And we can also choose to be a victim and say, well, I can't do anything about any of these things. And so I'm just gonna have to deal. We always have a choice. It's just choice means change, and change means discomfort. And sometimes it's just easier to complain about familiar discomfort than it is to experience unfamiliar discomfort in order to change the reality that we're not happy with. This is what we call the victim mindset. These are the people who complain about the same things all the time, but if they're presented with a solution or with a way to move forward, or if their perspective or mindset is challenged, they resist any kind of change. Because in reality, they're comfortable in the familiar discomfort that they experience. So this episode is really for those who want to create change, who don't want to keep looking for excuses. Those of us who become aware of the familiar discomfort that we're living in and we're ready to do something about it. And this can feel really big and intimidating, which is why it's so easy to slip back into what's familiar and just say, well, it just is what it is. It just is how it is. I just gotta learn how to live with it and deal with it. But let me tell you, you don't actually have to change anything about yourself. You don't have to be, quote unquote, more healed to experience, to allow your body to move into a parasympathetic state, a rest and repair state. It sounds, it can sound like this thing that exists somewhere outside of us, and we have to do this, and we have to do something really elaborate and difficult and work really hard to be able to acquire it. But that is the problem right there. Because believing that we have to work harder and do more to then be able to relax is part of the reason why we struggle so hard to allow ourselves to rest. It's this never-ending cycle because there is always something to do. There is always something to get done. There is always something within ourselves that we see, well, I could still improve in that area. I can see that I still have some feel some healing to do in myself around that. It never ends. And so we can never jump off the hamster wheel if we live life in accordance with the belief that I can relax, I can rest when I get there. And let me give you a personal example of why this is so true. The greatest extended period of rest that I've ever had in my entire life was when I was between the ages of 19 and 23. Now, in amongst that was also a lot of stress, but I had consistent periods of rest that I could find in amongst the chaos that was my life at that time. Now, when I was 19, I moved away from my hometown to the northern beaches in Australia. I'm a qualified chef and I started working at a fine dining restaurant on the beach. Now, I was working 60 to 70 hours a week. My body was wrecked. I was so sore. I had the body of a six-year-old at 20. That's also when I started really struggling with insomnia and sleep issues. Partly because of the stress at work, but also because I was downing probably four coffees a day when I was at work. Some of those were double shots. So unhealthy, but I was not aware of my body or anything like that at the time. Not only that, but I was still struggling with the remnants of depression and all the stuff from my past, my childhood, that I had never unpacked, truly unpacked and worked through. Now you would think that's a pretty intense way to live. And it was. I definitely would never want to go back to that space. But it's also the first time in my life that I started to experience a feeling of safety and calmness and warmth and these loving, soothing feelings. Because on my days off from working 16 to 18 hours in a restaurant, sometimes with no break, my absolute favorite thing to do would be to wake up in the morning and then wander towards one of my favorite cafes, listen to some gentle music and just journal. Just exist and be with myself. It was the most enjoyment I have ever I had ever had in my entire life. I loved it. And these were moments where I could just switch off and enjoy existing. And it's wild to think that after all this growth that I've experienced and how much closer I've come to myself, that in this time when I had so much suppressed emotion, so much trauma that I hadn't worked through, I was working such an intense job, struggling with so many things, and yet I could find this peace in myself despite that. Now, when I moved overseas, I lost that. My whole world turned on its head. I lost all the things that felt familiar to me, my language, my culture, the cafes that I used to go to, all these things that helped me to access that peace in myself, I no longer had them. And I also didn't know myself well enough to know how do I actually create this in this new life that I'm trying to navigate. It took me many years to find that again for myself. But the reason why I wanted to share that story with you is because we sometimes get caught up in thinking, but I'm not healed enough because I feel this way myself, because I struggle with these parts of myself, therefore I can't relax. I can't just be as long as I feel this way. Internally, in my early 20s, I was a fucking wreck. I didn't necessarily have the total awareness of it at the time, but despite that, I could find peace in myself. And that's because it is always available to you. Peace isn't found outside of you, it's found within you. It exists, it already exists within you. It's waiting for you to tap into it. And we don't tap into it through watching Netflix or even reading a book. Because when we're reading a good book, yes, it's great, but also takes us into a different world. We're not really with ourselves in that moment, we're somewhere else. True rest allows us to be with ourselves just lightly, gently, without any expectation. So these are really important key points of how to of how to allow yourself to enter a true rest state. There needs to be low sensory input. You are absorbing enough information throughout the day. Do not give yourself more information to absorb, absorb. That's also things like watching something on Netflix or reading a book that is a good book. Don't give yourself more things to take in and process. Then there's also predictability, something that's already familiar. Don't do something new, do something that you've done before, many times before. For me, in my early 20s, I would go to the same cafe on my day off. And I gotta say, at that time in my life, I didn't give a shit about making friends. I didn't want friends. I didn't want to have to give up my days off to meet people. And at that time in my life, I was quite self-focused and selfish, which I needed to be at that time for myself. Now, as the years went on, I did actually make I made some really amazing friends, and my days did become more full with people, but I still love to reserve space for me to just be with myself and journal, listen to some gentle music and just exist. That's the best feeling ever. So predictability is important. Something you've done before, a place you've already been many times. And that also this is really important. This is something that clicked for me recently is that there must be no goal or outcome to what it is that you're doing. You're not doing it to then get something done or to achieve something. You're doing it to just do the thing and exist and be with the thing that you're doing. When I would take time to just wander to a cafe and journal, I had no other intention other just sit there and enjoy myself and just journal. Just sit there and stare out the window of the cafe. Just sit there and watch people. And sometimes I would have a lot to journal about and sometimes I wouldn't have much. But then I just sit there and just be. And this is the last point is internal attention. So it's where you get to be with yourself. And it's not necessarily that you're trying to dissect and understand and pull apart what's happening inside of you. It's just that you're aware that you are being there. You're aware of yourself in that moment and you're just existing. Now, examples of low sensory input, low intensity things that we can do is sitting in a quiet room with soft lighting. Sitting in a sitting in a cafe, having a drink and doing some journaling. Or just sitting there and watching people. Sitting there and listening to some music. Now, for some people, this may be too overstimulating. For some people, it could be quite relaxing. Really just depends on you. For me now, sitting in a busy cafe is not something that I love to do. I like to sit in a more chilled out, quiet cafe. Depends on my vibe, depends on how I feel on the day. But also just lying down with your eyes closed, taking a slow walk without headphones, without listening to a podcast, drinking tea in silence, and all these things to someone who is perpetually switched on and on go sound excruciatingly boring. But this is how we create rest. This is how we allow ourselves to just exist. And the past month or so, I have been intentionally, for 30 minutes every morning before I start my work. I have been sitting and just drinking some tea and staring out the window. Well, now that it's getting warmer, I'm sitting on the balcony and just staring. Just sitting there. I tried doing this in the evenings after I'd done all my work, but that was playing into the same mindset of, oh, I can only take time for myself when I get all this stuff done. And by the evening, my brain was moving so fast that it was hard for me to just sit. But in the mornings, it was easier to find that space in myself. But the thing that I've noticed with taking that 30 minutes for myself every morning and just existing is firstly, in those moments, I actually allow myself to access that soothing, warmth, loving feeling of just being in awe of wow. This is my life now. And my life is exponentially better than it was when I was 20. I think it's just really beautiful to see that despite how far we come, we can still access that part of us. It's just in my day-to-day life and how I feel about myself, I in general overwhelmingly feel better about myself and who I am than I did when I was 20. Now, doing things like watching Netflix or reading a good book that you're really into, or listening to podcasts or watching YouTube videos, depending on what you're consuming, this can be medium stimulation. So it can be mildly relaxing. But if you haven't given yourself to experience true rest, then when you engage in something that is a medium stimulation activity, you may find that you end up subconsciously picking, pulling, biting at your body. Because your nervous system is still, it hasn't experienced that rest that it so deeply needs. And so it's going to start looking for that. It's going to start basically doing it for you and trying to find ways to get you back down to a calmer level. Unfortunately, though, when we do this subconsciously, we do it through behaviors that are often self-destructive and don't actually help us to truly relax. They just help us to numb ourselves down. So we kind of give ourselves a pseudo-feeling of relaxation, which is really just numbing out. Now, if you're thinking, yeah, but I have so much going on in my life, I'm so busy. Maybe you just have more time for yourself. I work basically seven days a week. I work weekends at a restaurant. And then Monday to Friday, I am podcasting, creating content, I'm preparing group coaching sessions, I'm coaching one-on-one clients. I'm working all of the back-end stuff of my business that I do. Currently, I do entirely on my own. Plus, I look to make time to spend time with friends so I can nurture those relationships. I also make sure that I work out every single day, even if it's just gentle movement and not an intense workout. Not to mention just life admin. Cleaning and shopping and taking care of myself. I'm very grateful to have a very, very supportive husband so that we can live life together and do these things together, but it is still a lot. And especially in the early days of building this business, I have definitely fallen into the trap of once I get this done, then I can relax. But there is always something. And then there will be weeks and months go by where you never give yourself a true break. You never let yourself actually rest. And so you burn out and you crash. And suddenly everything is too much. You can't get yourself, you don't feel motivated to do anything. Then you're able to recuperate a little bit, get your energy back up, and then it's straight back into pushing yourself. We cannot live like that. That is not the life that you were born to live. You were born to feel awe and wonder and joy and to thrive and to notice the little moments, to feel intensely at the beauty of a sunset or a sunrise, to allow these moments of your life to bring you overwhelming joy and not to tell ourselves that when I get this done, then I can have that. It's right now here, available for you. You need to give yourselves the space to calm the fuck down. Low stimulation, nothing with goal orientation. Just do something in the honor of your existence, just to be. Do it even if you feel like you don't want to do it. Do it even if you feel it's weird or it's wrong. You need it, just like you need water and food. Don't get to the end of your life. Don't get to your deathbed and say, I wish I had really taken on what Rafael has said in her podcast all those years ago, and I wish I'd given myself space to just be instead of perpetually putting it off until a later date. I forgot to finish what I was saying before. I've been giving myself half an hour for the past month or so every morning to just sit and do nothing, to drink a tea or go on a really slow walk where I just notice little things. I'll stop and look at flowers, or stop and look at bugs that I see, or just stop and enjoy the few. And here's what I've noticed. Firstly, I've noticed that I have been a lot more grounded in myself throughout the rest of the day, a lot more sensitive to when I'm becoming a bit overstimulated or overwhelmed, so that I stop and respond to that sooner and can help myself to calm down. I'm more organized in my head, less impulsive. My emotions are easier to regulate. It's easier for me to stay stable throughout the day. Just purely from taking this half an hour to just be. Not only that, but that half an hour allows me to access those feelings of those loving, soothing, warm, calming feelings, those feelings of awe and joy and appreciation and gratitude. And because I have already experienced that, then I start to notice more of that throughout the rest of my day. It's like when you decide you want to buy a new car and you know the color that you want to buy and you know the make and model. And suddenly you start to see that car everywhere because you become aware of it. You become aware of its existence. Same thing with taking this time for yourself to just be. You become aware of the existence of these feelings of this rest. And so you start to notice it more in other small moments throughout your day. And I bet odds are you've kind of known in the back of your mind, or you've been thinking about it already, that, hmm, how do I have more time for myself? How do I relax and just be and just exist? This is how. And it's not the perfect package solution that we sometimes look for, but it's reality. It's the truth of how we access this and how we live this way. So I challenge you, I encourage you, I implore you, create that small space of time for yourself. Even if it's just 15 minutes, remember who you are. Remember the things that you have already done in your life that just brought you those small moments of joy. You have them. I know you have them. And allow yourself to just explore that experience again. I absolutely believe that you are capable of healing. You are capable of so much more than you know. And if it's still sitting on the back of your mind, don't forget to book in that call to share your story with me and have the experience of being seen, heard, and understood so deeply, like you've never been before on this topic. And also to gain valuable insight into what healing looks like for you. Thank you so, so much for hanging out. And I'll see you next Tuesday for the next episode of Beyond Skin Picking and Hair Pulling.