In this episode of Unboxing It, we take a swing at the capitalist idea that rest is bad. Evil. The worst. And we’re terrible for giving in to it.
How did we go from scheduled nap times in kindergarten (yeah, we miss those too) to believing we’ll never be successful—whatever that means—without two jobs, a side hustle, and a strict morning routine? Society teaches us all that productivity is king, and pushes us to keep going well beyond healthy limits.
And even when we do manage to rest (which is getting harder to do with the rising cost of living), there’s that little voice inside that tells us how lazy we are for doing so.
Today, Lara and Rowan take on the productivity monster and come up with strategies on how to tame it. Which is good because Rowan could use some help in that area.
Referenced during the show:
Lara’s book: You’re Not Lazy
This Tiktok From Tara Difranciso
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Rowan: I'm having a bit of a realization myself as I say this, but don't see what purpose it serves to be hard on ourselves when we don't have the energy.
[00:00:31] Lara: Welcome to another episode of Unboxing It. Today we are gonna talk about one of my very favorite topics, and it's, a saying that I almost have coined as my own. I made stickers with it. Like I really love it because I think it's so important and it is resting isn't lazy.
[00:00:50] Rowan: Oh, I hate this.
[00:00:52] Lara: I love it.
I love talking about this. I can't wait to dig into it with you. I can't wait to hear what other people take away from this and how they feel about it, but it's really just something that I think is so important to remind people. Resting isn't lazy.
[00:01:11] Rowan: I completely agree with you, but by the way, for the record, when I say I hate this, I don't mean that I disagree.
I mean that I feel entirely called out in it. So we're coming from this from two different angles, and I think that's gonna make it a really interesting conversation.
[00:01:28] Lara: I agree. I agree. And you know, I talk a lot about lazy or the fact that I don't think lazy is a thing. but I think that it manifests in so many ways for people.
Some of the time people don't rest because they think they should be productive. And the other flip side of it is. If they try to rest, they don't actually rest because they feel like they shouldn't be resting. Like there's two sides of it where it almost always is pushing people to feel badly about resting.
[00:01:59] Rowan: Oh, what? what if you're both asking for a friend, a very, very, very close friend of mine who maybe doesn't rest until let's say, oh, I don't know. He gets diagnosed with burnout and then when he burns out, just feels bad about binge watching TV because he should be doing something productive with his time off.
[00:02:22] Lara: Yes, because when you take time off for burnout. It is meant to be like a vacation, right? Like you're like, oh, now that I'm not doing this thing, now I should have time to catch up on all the other things I haven't done. So the whole topic is wrapped up in the fact that all of us have been taught our whole lives that productivity is the most important thing.
[00:02:51] Rowan: Yeah, like the most important thing, because when you even think of the school system, like the standard North American school system, that's about all I can speak to here as a Canadian, it was designed to get these little worker bees out the door. It was designed that this particular system was built during the industrial revolution to get people.
Educated enough to go out into the workforce. So we're taught right away that we need to be productive. It's, we're asked when we're like, in kindergarten, what do you wanna be when you grow up? And it's not about like, I want to be a good person, or I want to, you know, play with dogs No, no, no. It's about what job do you want?
So it's drilled in from the get go.
[00:03:37] Lara: Yeah. And. We tend to take most of our value out of our productivity, right? So how well have I done in my job? How much money have I made? How you know well, do I keep my house clean all of the, I worked hard and I've been productive. Stuff is stuff that people come and praise you for and therefore people think if I don't do that, what worth do I have in the world?
[00:04:02] Rowan: By people you might mean me, although I have. Deprogram myself to an extent over time, but I would be lying if I said, this isn't something that is drilled so far into my psyche that every moment that I rest there's this like, some small part of me that's like, Hey Rowan, you know, the floor in the kitchen could really use mopping right now.
Right? Like, this is what I get to, , it's like I can't just sit still. It, takes training. It's hard. I.
[00:04:33] Lara: It does. It takes a lot of training. And again, so like for that two sides of it, there are the people who feel like when they're not doing something, they're like, I should be doing this, I should be doing this, I should be doing this.
And there as a whole other school of people who are like, I am a lazy ass, I guess I accept that about myself.
[00:04:54] Rowan: Hmm.
[00:04:55] Lara: But like, so there's not necessarily the call to do as much but their self-worth. Even if they say it jokingly is taking a hit for it, right? Like, I am somebody who is just lazy. I don't care about all of that.
I accept that about me is still a judgment because when, so here, here's an example. So people will say, oh, what are you up to this weekend? Oh, I'm just gonna have a lazy weekend. And that means they're gonna stay in. And they're maybe gonna watch some TV and read a book.
[00:05:27] Rowan: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:27] Lara: And they are justifying being lazy by having it be a choice.
But what if you're not being lazy? Like, don't use the word, you're not being lazy. I am having a restful weekend. yeah.
[00:05:44] Rowan: Yes. I, I think that. Is something that, when you said, I'm having a lazy weekend. I hear that word lazy in that context. So much more than I hear something like restful or relaxing or peaceful or restorative. Right? Because that really is what rest is, right? It's restorative.
We actually need it to be at our best anyway, but it's always the part we're willing, well we, me and some of my. People who are like me, we're the ones who are like, oh, that's the part I can ignore. everything else I can do, I can just let that go a little bit. It's okay. I'm just, , I'm built different.
I can just keep going. Like the Energizer bunny.
[00:06:29] Lara: Yeah. I mean, again, there's so many sides to it, but I think so much of it comes down to the fact that we think we need to be going, going, going. We think that to be doing well, we are always doing, and that resting is just something that, you know, only people who aren't successful, only people who aren't really, you know, motivated need.
You know, it's the hustle culture, which I hate, right? Like the people I remember things would be like, oh , you don't even need to sleep. Three hours a night is enough. Why did you need to sleep more than three hours a night? Just train your body not to. I'd be like, cut.
[00:07:11] Rowan: Your body's gonna break down.
There's just no way to sleep three hours a night and be a healthy human being. Like has been proven again and again and again. It's not even a debate, but I remember when science started saying, you know, instead of eight hours rest, you know, six is totally fine. And I have to wonder what the motivation.
Behind even studying something like that is, but I mean, that's okay. I'm not a scientist, so I mean, maybe there's some valid reasons for studying it, but going beyond that, I think a lot of it when it comes to like just sleep from touching on sleep itself, sleep is extremely restorative and it is something that, largely depends on how restful your night's sleep is as well, right?
If if you have a baby or a puppy or a partner, like me who snores and you can't find your earplugs and you know, if you have sleep apnea, if there's all these different reasons why somebody , you know, their. Eight hours of sleep is not as restful as my eight hours of sleep.
So to say that it's okay to get six would be even worse for them than it would be for someone like me. And I think the whole thing honestly comes down to, I hate to say it. Capitalism,
[00:08:30] Lara: of course.
[00:08:30] Rowan: It's it's capitalism, right? It's all about capitalism. Productivity is all about making money for someone and therefore making money for yourself.
It's all about putting food on the table. It's all this system that we have designed. I. And has, eroded over time because you look at our grandparents, so you and I are both of a certain age. We're both Gen X. you look at our grandparents, you even look at our parents, and these were people who, not everyone, but largely as a generation, could go work a nine to five job.
Come home and rest afterwards. And a lot of them could survive. A family could survive on one income. It was, you know, middle class really existed back then. there was a golden age of that, the fifties, the sixties. That was really much a golden age, at least in North America for this kind of ideal, capitalist society.
And then it got so much worse over time. Now it's so bad and people are working two, three, sometimes four jobs just to survive. with no hope of owning a house, with no hope of having a child and being able to support them with no hope of anything. Right. influencers have gone so far as to make morning routine videos.
I mean, have you watched some of these morning routine videos? They are. Really beyond anything I can comprehend. Have you seen some of them?
[00:09:56] Lara: I mean, I don't know. I've seen a lot of getting ready videos, and maybe morning routine. Tell me, what you're talking about. Oh,
[00:10:03] Rowan: there's, I mean, it's things like you have this.
Young, chiseled, apparently successful guy. And he is like, this is my morning routine. And it starts at four in the morning, you know, at 3 45. He gets up, , he does a. A huge workout routine. He, meditates and he brushes his teeth and he makes this like really intricate breakfast that is, all like macronutrient balanced then you'll go for a jog and itjust goes on and it's essentially like this entire, like, half a workday before he even starts his workday and.
The claim is if you do that, you're going to be more successful because you are starting your day out right now. Look, I'm a big fan of morning routines. I have one myself, but it's not filming worthy. Nobody wants to see that, but like it's really, I mean, I get up, I go have a coffee, I chat with my loved ones for a few minutes.
I go upstairs, I exercise, I take my medication, I have a shower, I get dressed. And I go on with my day, right? But it's a much shorter window. And if I don't get enough sleep, I often skip the exercise, to get enough sleep. 'cause if I don't do that, I'm going to fall apart. And that's the part that people are missing when these guys are claiming to work until 11:30 PM go to sleep and get up at a quarter to four.
[00:11:29] Lara: Yeah. And maybe you do need to make a video like that to normalize the fact that it doesn't need to be so intense. To be valuable. Like this is right. This is it. Right? Like all of this is why we think resting is lazy. And I still struggle with it, right? I love to binge watch television like I am excellent at that.
[00:11:53] Rowan: It's a skill. It's a skill.
[00:11:55] Lara: I am told not everybody can sit and watch 10 episodes of something in a row. I. I don't know why I find it quite doable. I'm proud of you. But this is what's happened right over time is I have felt like I'm a lazy person because I like to do that because I will quote unquote lose a whole day doing something completely unproductive, which is watching television.
And the old version of me that really was stuck in that, and again, it still creeps back in. That would then negate any of the success that I had. It didn't matter how many, conferences I'd run, or businesses I'd started, or people I'd helped or how well I'd done in my career.
The fact that my house can be messy and I would rather watch TV in that case. Then clean it up means I'm a lazy person. End of story. Right? Like it would just negate everything. And that's why I think it's such an important conversation because there's the part where I say this and I always say it with like a, I'm gonna say something else afterwards, right?
So one is we can be more productive when we rest. I do not do my best work. After not having slept well, I do not do my best work on hour 12 of a workday like that is not when I do my best work. And so when we remember that rest and stopping and slowing down can help us be better at the things we're trying to do, and maybe it does help us be more productive, I think that's a good thing.
But then I also wanna say you can just rest for no reason too. You don't have to just rest so that it makes you more productive. Both are true.
[00:13:37] Rowan: Both are
true for sure. there is also I think a conversation to be had and maybe, you know, we can touch on this a minute. so I know, 'cause I'm thinking, you know, people are gonna listen to this episode and then they're going to say, okay, but listen you two, I have a roommate and my roommate never does the dishes.
And he's always just sitting there watching TV at the end of the day and he says, well, yeah, I'm just chilling out. I've had a long day, but then that means I have to do the dishes because you know, it's one, it's one thing if it happens once or twice, but what if chronically, I. Somebody just does not do the things they need to do to help say a household run smoothly or help a workplace run smoothly or whatever it is.
Right? Like where is that line do you think, between, somebody who is prioritizing rest and not being healthy . And what would you, I wouldn't wanna call it lazy, that somebody isn't, you know, maybe pulling their weight in the household or pulling their weight at work or whatever it might be.
I'd like to think there's possibly an underlying issue going on there. we don't wanna call it lazy. What, do you think? What are your thoughts on that?
[00:14:52] Lara: Yeah, no, I don't think it's lazy. It's I mean, I think it's always something else. Is it, are they unmotivated? Is it that they're exhausted?
Is it that they're overwhelmed? Is it that they don't know how? Right? Like there's so many things that it can be like, I have issues with executive dysfunction, right? Like sometimes it's just really difficult. To start doing something when I know I don't really wanna do it. Right. So like it is difficult.
I live in a house of five people with a DHD. Like, we all struggle with this. It is. Challenging.
[00:15:30] Rowan: I bet.
[00:15:30] Lara: So what do we do about it? Right? Like that becomes the thing. So again, none of what I'm saying is like, oh, so everybody live in a totally messy house, never do anything, just, you know, lay on the couch all the time, done and done it.
That is not what I'm saying, I think you know that, but it's about balance to a certain extent, and it's about. Expectations. So in terms of if we use the example of like in your house, it's setting expectations. It's asking people to understand what your non-negotiables are, what is really important to you, for example, with a roommate, but also being flexible.
So if your roommate doesn't really care if the dishes are in the sink until tomorrow morning, and then they're gonna do them tomorrow morning and you really care. You might say, well, since I really care, I'm gonna do them.
[00:16:20] Rowan: Yeah, yeah. To me, I think the way that
I would view it as well is it's like say, I'm gonna use an anxiety disorder for, an example.
What is the difference between having sort of a normal level of anxiety and an anxiety disorder? It becomes a disorder. If it gets in the way of you living a happy life, right? As soon as it impedes your life so much that you can't really function, that's when it's a problem. And I think rest could be viewed the same way, and that level would be different for everybody.
if I'm taking, and I say this as somebody who, again, has a hard time taking risks, but I'm trying to look at it from a very healthy standpoint here. So if I am. Taking rest and it is benefiting me to take that rest and I can see that it's helping me. And maybe it's hard at first, but I get used to it and I'm allocating time to rest.
And also it's not harming. I. Other very important things in my life now. And when I say harming, I don't mean that the little gremlin in my head is going, you should be more productive. You should be more productive. Like why are you just sitting here lazy? Like, you know, I'm not talking about that.
That is something I need to work on internally. But if it's like. Oh, you know, my food is rotting on the counter because I'm not putting it away when it gets delivered or, you know, I'm running into problems at work because I am. Not doing the things that I need to do there, or this is really harming my relationship that I'm not doing as much around the house as my partner would like.
I think at that point it's good to take a closer look at rest, but those are real tangible things and the end result is you're still treating yourself well because you're still going, yes, rest is important. Yes, I need it. And also. Something's happening where I'm having a really hard time getting started on these tasks that I need to do.
What is going on? Maybe I should investigate that a little bit. You know, am I depressed? Is there something going on with my mental health? Am I not feeling well in another way? Why is my energy really low? Why is that maybe I should go talk to my doctor? Right? and it's like my relationship is really important to me and I love this person very much, so maybe I should examine these things so that it also improves my relationship and it helps us, connect better.
So all of those things I think are. That's the nuance in the discussion. It's like, rest, very important. I think a lot of us need to take more of it than we're really taking. And also, you know, if we're having a hard time getting started on things, not because we're just really enjoying our rest and we know we need it and we're being good to ourselves, but if we're having a really hard time getting started or completing tasks, maybe look into why so we understand it better.
[00:19:13] Lara: Yeah, because I don't think anybody. Is putting, bags of groceries on the counter and walking away, leaving them there and saying, I need to rest now.
[00:19:24] Rowan: Right, right. Exactly. But they might be forgetting them.
[00:19:27] Lara: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:19:28] Rowan: Yeah,
[00:19:28] Lara: absolutely. That is something I do all the time. I get distracted and then I'm like, whoops.
Right. but that is not me saying I prioritize my rest over finishing the task that I started of. Bringing groceries into the house and putting them away.
[00:19:44] Rowan: Exactly. That was probably a bad example. I'm sorry, I think I was more thinking about the forgetting part than anything.
[00:19:51] Lara: But I think that , that's what happens is we forget that there are other things that are playing into it, and therefore that's not really what we're talking about when we think of rest.
It's the extremes of everything. Right. So either. I am a lazy bum or I'm super productive, you know, or because of my work as a business coach, I have people who struggle so much with sales. And so the two options in their head seems to be never try to make an offer at all, or be that smarmy, used car salesman type of person, right?
those are the two options. Like there's nothing in the middle, right? Like, and so we go to these extremes, so either. Resting means we're not doing enough. Or as soon as somebody's sitting down, it's because they're being lazy. Versus the fact that a lot of times people don't mean to not do the things that they should do.
Right. There's so many reasons they might not be doing it, but it's not generally willful in many ways the other side of that is that the people who can take time to rest worry that other people are gonna see them as lazy, you know what I mean? Like the people who don't wanna rest because they don't wanna be seen as lazy, they don't even give themselves permission.
[00:21:08] Rowan: Well, I think a lot of that also comes from childhood, not just in school, but our parents. Right. A lot of us were told by our parents, you know, why are you just sitting around like, it's summertime, right? We've been in school all year, we're tired. I might be, I might be speaking from person. and I love my parents.
My parents are great people, but you know, we all come with our own lessons that we then teach our children. And I remember, you know, it's summer, I am resting, and maybe I'm resting because I'm tired from, you know, 10 months of school. Maybe I'm resting because I got bullied all through school and it's really nice to finally have some downtime and days where I'm not harassed day after day, maybe I just had a long day playing with my best friend down the street and I just want to watch TV now.
And I remember my dad would come by sometimes and he'd be like, Rowan, what? What are you doing? Just lying there. Go be productive. Right. Go be productive. Go be productive. And I, that is stuck in my head now, right? And so that is the voice that I now fight with. And I'm sure my dad was told, I've never asked him, but I'm sure he was told the same thing by his parents.
Mm-hmm. And he wasn't taught how to rest. So he wasn't being a jerk. It was just that, that is what he was taught. And he's like, what, what are you doing? Like, don't, be lazy. Go do something. But I think it's important to have the conversations about why people struggle with rest in the sense that it's all tied together.
It can be messaging from childhood. It can be. Trauma or depression or some other sort of mental health concern. It can be, executive dysfunction from being neurodivergent. It can be all kinds of things. Sometimes I've talked to a couple people who found out in their thirties or forties or even fifties maybe, that they had chronic pain.
And they didn't even know they were in pain until they were no longer in pain. And so everything they were doing every day was so much harder for them and they couldn't understand why they needed to sit down so much. Right? So there's all these different things. I think we need to give ourselves grace and give others around us grace for that reason.
[00:23:27] Lara: And we tend to measure ourselves against everybody else as if we're all the same. Right. And as somebody who has struggled with a lot of pain and a lot of chronic fatigue, it took me a long time to realize just how different my starting point is from everybody else, right? So other people can get up and go and do things and they don't understand what it's like for it to be difficult, so they're like, if you just want it enough, just want it enough, and you, that's how you do it.
And they don't understand that that is not true. That what they are doing when they don't wanna do something and what somebody who really is struggling with chronic fatigue, like it is not the same.
[00:24:11] Rowan: This morning I said,right before we did this episode, I posted on social media. Hello to everyone who woke up today and got outta bed, even though it felt like the hardest thing you've ever done.
The world can feel impossibly heavy sometimes, but here you are. I've been there and I see you, and I think those little messages are really important because the minute that happens to somebody, I remember this, I remember being really depressed and having no energy because I was so depressed. And lying in bed and going, Rowan, you just have to get outta bed.
Like just, what's wrong with you. Just get outta bed and I would eventually get outta bed and it's now 10 o'clock and I normally get up at, you know, six or seven and I feel like a piece of crap because I couldn't do it. And I think what you said just there, where it's like your starting point is at a different level than a lot of people's starting points.
We don't make enough room for that. Not just with ourselves, but also with other people. Mm-hmm. We just don't, and it is, such a, heartbreak because. It's extra stress that we then carry throughout the day and that extra stress and the shame, the shame of feeling like you're judging yourself as somehow unworthy or just, you know, not enough or the shame of being judged by others for that same reason.
That just compounds over time. And then everything we do every day gets harder and harder and harder. I don't see what purpose it serves, I think I'm having a bit of a realization myself as I say this, but I don't see what purpose it serves to be hard on ourselves when we don't have the energy.
[00:25:58] Lara: Right. I. And the reason we are hard on ourselves is because we're always supposed to be doing more and trying to improve ourselves and trying to work further towards our goals of success, and that is what we're supposed to do. Therefore, if we're not doing it, boo, I.
[00:26:18] Rowan: Do you think the nineties played a role in this?
Because I'm thinking back to my bookshelf in the nineties and that was when self-help books became a big thing. I. And like I know you and I have both written books that we hope will benefit people. So in that, in that sense, I'm not disparaging the act of creating a piece of work that you hope will resonate with somebody else.
Or will help somebody else, but I think there was in the early to mid nineties, a big surge in, you can fix yourself, you can grow, you can be better than you are right now. And all you need to do is follow these steps to get there. Like do you remember all those books?
[00:27:00] Lara: Yeah. but they haven't stopped coming, right?
Like they, yeah,
[00:27:04] Rowan: I suppose that's true. They definitely,
[00:27:05] Lara: I remember them becoming more and more prominent, but like more and more. There are tons of people who are still trying to teach you how to get more done in less time not so that you can rest. so the fact is when technology came into play and you know, some things were gonna get easier, I think the dream was we could work less because machines and technology and efficiencies made things easier.
But what we did. Because of capitalism, I would say is mm-hmm Everything that became easier gave us more time to do more work. And the fact that we can now carry computers in our pockets and have computers at home and do work in the evenings, has meant that jobs that very easily ended at the end of the day.
It's so easy to just keep working when you get home, right? Oh, I don't mind. Mm-hmm. I'm just gonna check my email. Oh, I don't mind. I'm just gonna pull out my laptop and do a thing. So all of these things that were meant, I think ultimately to sort of decrease the amount of we have to work, have increased our expectations.
And so many people are out there telling you how to optimize every second of your day towards more money, more success, more. More, more, more, more.
[00:28:22] Rowan: And I'm gonna say as somebody who has lived both, you know, everything from like very impoverished, on social assistance, living in shelters to, living well as an upper middle class person.
Like everything in between, All that does. The only thing that happens, and this is the sad reality, is you get more money. So you buy more things to make your life what you think will be better, and then you take on more work because you want more things and everything you make. your lifestyle just scales to it.
So there's never really a point unless you're really smart about it, where you go, you know what, okay, that's enough right there. That's good right there. Because , it's not a personal failing. It's, I've just seen this play out time and time and time and time again. Right. And I'm hyper aware of it and I still fall into that trap at times.
But society is trying. Capitalism is trying to get you to a certain point. So you go, okay, I'm now at this level, which means that my dining experiences should be this and my house should look like this, and my car should look like this. My vacation should look like this and my clothes should look like this.
Right? So you scale up, and so there's never a time, unless you're very smart about it, where you go. Okay. That's the most amount of money that I'm gonna need right now. And everything else I'm gonna put into savings or this is the most amount of money that I need right now, and I'm going to stop trying to earn more, stop trying to get promotions, stop trying to get to the next thing.
And the reason this hit me as hard as it did, not just because I know what it's like to live with virtually nothing is. A very good friend of mine ended up with not one, but two children who had cancer. It's a genetic thing in their family, and out of the three kids, two of them carried that genetic predisposition.
Unfortunately, both have had cancer and one sadly passed away. She died during the pandemic. Her name was Sophia and I, I like to say her name and I know her mom likes me to say her name. And Sophia was an absolute light. She was a beautiful, beautiful little girl and she passed away after a really tough battle with brain cancer.
And when that happened, I really took pause because I realized nothing that I do is more important than love. Nothing that I do, no money that I make, no amount of work, is worth not having enough time with my loved ones. When I say I have a hard time resting, I have a hard time doing what you do, which is sitting there watching a show or playing a video game or whatever it is.
I have a really hard time with that. And that's because I am not having a, you know, there's no conversation going on. So it's just my head is just constantly going, Hey Rowan, think of all the things you have to do, think of your to-do list. but spending time with family and friends and loved ones, that is rest absolutely.
For me, it's restorative for me, and I never ever take that for granted, and I never feel bad about it. I just wanted to tell that story because we don't understand that all of the other stuff doesn't really matter. I mean, yes, we wanna be able to live. Yeah. Again, I have lived with nothing, so I know how important it is to have a roof over your head and to have food on the table and have a little extra to enjoy your life.
That is very important to most people. But. Nothing beyond that, and not even that, honestly is more important than spending time with the people you care about. And I have seen too many people work so hard for what they think is the dream, this idea of success, that they completely overlook how important and fleeting those moments are with their family members.
Until they don't have them anymore. And that whether that is the loss of somebody special to you or your relationship falls apart because , you, couldn't maintain it. Or, , your mother gets Alzheimer's and doesn't remember who you are anymore, and you never spent that time with her beforehand because you were so busy working
we need to remember, like really think about what our values are and what we wanna get outta this life. And I think it is much more than the hustle.
[00:33:02] Lara: Mm-hmm. It's, it's so many more things. And I think you said a lot of important things there. One of which is how we rest doesn't need to look the same either.
Right. If you find going for a hike, restful. Have at it, right? Like
[00:33:20] Rowan: that's my version of rest for sure. I love it. Right?
[00:33:22] Lara: if you like to binge watch tv, do it. But if you don't like to binge watch tv, you don't need to force yourself to do it so that you're resting, right? We all need to figure out what is actually restful to us and give ourselves permission to have it.
And I think. So many people, you may have heard these kinds of stories too, but how many people have retired and then like died because they're so conditioned to work, work, work, work, work. They've probably overdone it their whole lives. and they never got to enjoy the things they said they would do later.
[00:33:57] Rowan: Yeah, it's true. And I actually know someone, not a close someone, but someone who died three weeks after retirement, who worked hard his entire life and hardly spent any money to enjoy himself, hardly spent any time to the things he wanted to do. His entire plan was he, he worked in government and he was like, I'm just gonna work and work and work and work and then get my pension.
Then I will retire and then I'll be able to do all of these things. And he died of a heart attack three weeks after retirement. I mean, yeah, rest is important now, not later. Now
[00:34:34] Lara: it's not unusual,
but the other pieces, there are so many people who worked, worked, worked, worked, worked, and they said they'll rest later.
And when they get to later, they don't know how to rest. They don't know what to do with themselves. They don't know how to feel. a sense of enjoyment out of rest. And that's not good either.
[00:34:54] Rowan: None of it is good. I, alright, , let's switch this. Go. This is so depressing. Let's, switch this up a little bit.
I feel like I've just talked about, a lot of really dark stuff in a very short period of time. But tell me your top Favorite ways to rest when you think of rest, I know binge watching TV is gonna be one of them. What else do you do?
[00:35:13] Lara: I like to make art.
Sometimes I do them together. Not always. Mm-hmm. Gotcha. But a lot of the time I do them together. I liked, you know, one of my very favorite things is to take a nap outside at a cottage while it's raining. Like that is one of the most. Calming to my whole system. Things like the sound of the rain in the trees, it's like kind of cool.
I'm outside. There's a bit of a breeze. Look at me being outdoors. I, I often call myself I, I love being outdoor adjacent. Like I'm not super like, interested in going out for hikes, but I love being right there looking at it and enjoying like the smell and the sound of it. So taking naps.
Spending time with my family is absolutely one of them, but like vacationing with them is something I enjoy. I do not find it restful. So in terms of rest, it is the quiet things, but I'm also tired a lot. My body needs. A lot of recuperation time and so for me, rest is very rarely going to be something strenuous because I already don't have a lot of extra, so I might do it, but it's not like rest time.
That's like when I say a holiday and a vacation, well I don't even know which one it is. Right. But like traveling is not restful. It's exciting, it's fun. It's something I'm glad I get to do. It's something I wanna do with my family, but it is not restful. And the reason that I wanna point that out also is that I don't know how many times I've had people say to me after they've been on a big trip and they come home and then they have to go back to work.
And they thought that they would be rejuvenated for work when they got back from a big, amazing trip. And I was like, of course you are not. You just did this huge thing. It took a lot out of you. You didn't rest at all. And so there's like this time period when you get home where you're absolutely not extra motivated for work just because you got to do something fun.
You didn't rest at all.
[00:37:15] Rowan: yeah, exactly. I
[00:37:16] Lara: totally went off track from your question. I said some things that I like to do to rest.
[00:37:21] Rowan: I think you said two or three. Yeah, I think you said three. Three, three. That's okay. Three is fine. Yeah,
[00:37:26] Lara: those are my main ones. I can do those a lot.
[00:37:29] Rowan: Yeah. I love the cottage.
I'm actually going to a cottage this weekend and it's gonna be raining, so I'm gonna try your method.
[00:37:34] Lara: Outdoor naps, you find like a covered area. It's perfect if it's particularly cool because then you just get blankets, right? Like it's cold around you, but then you're like in a little cozy nest.
Of blankets, there's like a cool breeze around you. And then the sound of rain come, especially if there's trees coming through the leaves, is just bliss for me. I love
[00:37:58] Rowan: I love it. I like to do some of the things that you do. I watch TV every night with my loved ones. Like we always spend an hour or so watching something together, and that that's a very restful thing for me.
I can just can't watch a lot of it. Like I, I'm too antsy. I'm a very energetic person, so sort of the opposite of you. I have a lot of nervous energy. My mom also has a lot of nervous energy, so I know where I get it from. I am, a hiker. And I live in downtown Toronto, so I'm not hiking very much these days, but I'm walking everywhere.
so there's a limit. I'm older. I'm not exactly a small person, so if I start walking 10 KA day, I'm really gonna start feeling it. But do I average five or six a day? I absolutely do because I love to get out and walk around the city, discover new things, so that I find that very restful.
I too do art. I love to paint, so I'm an abstract painter. That's one of my favorite things. I like video games because at least the video game I am, I'm doing something active. So I guess it's a lot like if you are a crochet. And you crochet while you watch tv. So for me, I'll play a video game, like I'm playing boulders Skate three right now, and I'm just obsessed with the storyline, right?
So I can just get sucked right into it. And then an hour and a half, two hours go by, I'm like, oh, look at me. I've been sitting for an hour and a half to two hours. Good job. But I should probably get up and do something now. See, that's my downfall. I don't like to play with my dog. Just hang out with my dog and talk to him and, play with him.
And just put some music on. I love to put some music on and just kind of dance around the house and stuff while I do things and, and that might not seem restful, but it is actually quite restful for me. And music has been shown to help regulate your nervous system. Getting up and dance and listening to some of your favorite music calms the nervous system down because it lets this very primitive part of us know that we're safe because what would we do after a day spent out?
Foraging or hunting and running from predators. Back when we lived,, in caves or you know, wherever we lived, we would. Go back to our group of people and we would maybe have a fire and we would roast the day's meals that we found. We would cook together and we would dance together and we would sing and create music.
So I think that's why it's really, really soothing. So like, I'm an active rester, I guess. So maybe, maybe it's not that I can't rest. This is like sort of my big moment. Here's my light bulb moment. Maybe it's not that I can't rest, maybe it's that my rest is just different than yours rest..
[00:40:37] Lara: Mm-hmm.
And it's totally fine if it is. Some people probably feel calmer when they clean. If you're cleaning because you frantically feel like you must, that's probably not restful. If it actually feels good to have things clean and you enjoy the act of cleaning, and you particularly enjoy the result of a clean and tidy space.
Then maybe that's fine.
[00:41:01] Rowan: oh, that's me for sure.
Yeah.
[00:41:03] Lara: I, I kind of wish I felt that way, but I don't. Um, and so all of this to say what I really hope as I seem to do at the end of all of these episodes, I'm like, what do I want you to take away from this? This is what I hope you take away, is that if you rest a lot.
That is okay. It's not lazy if you try to rest but spend most of the time resting, feeling like you shouldn't be resting and you should be doing something else. Try to remind yourself that it doesn't need to be that way. This morning I sent you a TikTok and I wrote down the messaging of it. It's Tara DiFrancesco, and we can put the link to it in our show notes, but.
The TikTok said it's not exactly restful if you hate yourself the entire time for being unproductive. And that is what I think so many people end up doing.
[00:41:57] Rowan: that is why I replied to you and said, I feel called out. Mm-hmm. But I'm gonna look at it differently now. Both because we had this amazing conversation today, and also because I did learn that in fact I do rest more than I realized.
I just do Maybe, maybe it's called active resting. You know, maybe I don't wanna coin that as some kind of toxic thing. By the way, I think if we start to go with active resting, people are going to start to abuse it and start saying like, yes, when I am, you know, training for my marathon. I'm active resting.
Yeah. It's like, okay, no, you're, you're doing something you really enjoy, but your body's taking a beating, but I did really learn something today, and I hope other people did too. You are, you are an incredibly wise human being and I love doing this podcast with you because. I get a lot out of it just in the doing, and I just know that other people are going to by listening.
[00:42:56] Lara: Mm. I love having these conversations with you too, and I hope everybody can decide that if they want to rest, they're allowed to rest and they are not being lazy. lazy. Thanks for joining us today.
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