Permission to Rest
Who will give you permission to rest if you don't?
It was 8pm on a cold and rainy Friday night in London. The swanky Fleet Street office was empty apart from a handful of us who had been assigned to producing the weekly (which really meant weekend) reporting that week. We couldn't start running our reports until all the investment banking numbers for Europe had been entered into the system.
I was beyond exhausted. It had been an intense week at work (as always) and my 18 month old son had been up in the night several times that week too. Between work and home, there was no space for me. I knew that I would have to be available that weekend to field calls and emails from the head honchos about the weekly profit numbers. The thought of squeezing that into my precious weekend time with my husband and son made me want to cry.
I just wanted to hit the pause button and go crawl into my bed for a couple of hours. But no one else seemed to need that (or maybe the 4 coffees that day helped them through?). When I looked around me, everyone else was running through their lives at breakneck pace and seemed to be coping with it. So I did what I had always done. I took a deep breath and forged on.
The black cab delivered me home close to midnight that night. On the trip home, I stared out at the London lights and wondered when I would ever be allowed to rest.
What I didn't know that night was that there was only one person who could grant me the permission to rest. Me.
I was the product of a society that values and rewards relentless productivity. And I had taken that message so much to heart that I no longer needed someone else holding the whip over me. I was doing it to myself. Pushing beyond exhaustion didn't feel like a choice at the time. I would have argued endlessly with you had you suggested otherwise to me.
But there are always choices.
And so yesterday afternoon, when I crawled into bed with a book and a cup of tea and asked my wonderful husband and three kids to take over, the old twinges of guilt tugged at my coat.
How dare I rest when there are things (so many things!) to be done? I thanked that voice. It had kept me safe and successful for so many years in the education and corporate worlds. But it's a voice that no longer serves me.
My version of an abundant life includes granting myself the permission to rest when I need it so that I don't tip over the edge into depletion. The amazing thing is that I come back so full of energy and vitality that my productivity goes through the roof anyway.
Do you need a rest? Who are you waiting for to grant you the permission to do it?
