How to Rest Without Feeling Guilty

And so what I really want to ask you is I want you to think when was the last time that you truly rested without feeling guilty about it, right? Think through when is the last time that you lay down in bed after you put your kids to bed and you curled up with a book or watched a show that you wanted to watch and you didn't worry about all the things that need to get done.

Because believe me, you are well aware that if you could, you could easily stay up all night long after bedtime doing all the things that need to get done off of your to-do list.

But that is just not a healthy way to live and we have to let go of that expectation as well as that pressure that we are constantly putting on yourselves because so often, and this is a feeling that I feel a lot.

I know you feel this way too, right? You finally get to the end of your day.

You finally go and sit down.

You finally have decided like, I am going to sit here.

I am going to be in this moment.

I am going to take a breath and a break from all that it is that I have done.

And then you sit there, you're on the couch, you're on your bed, wherever your location is at the end of your day, And before you even allow yourself to start resting, you start thinking of all the things that you probably should be doing, right? It's that voice in your head.

Oh, I need to go switch the laundry.

I need to respond to this email or, oh shoot, this is usually me.

Like I need to respond to all these texts that I haven't responded to.

And I still haven't responded to, right? I should go clean the kitchen.

So that way when I wake up in the morning, the kitchen is clean and I'm not walking into a mess and chaos before my day starts or all these things that I need to be working on.

I need to be doing this.

I need to be doing that.

And it's a all consuming, exhaustive process that we have in our minds that and yet we have forgotten how to rest.

Now, of course, technology does not make this any easier on us because we have this constant pull to get things done, right? We are constantly fueled with this sense of productivity of we must go, go, and go.

And our minds are constantly working, right? We're constantly wired and thinking that We must keep doing that very next thing.

But the most important thing that I want you to hear right now and I want you to find this release from in your own thought process is this.

Rest is not something that needs to be earned, okay? You do not need to earn your rest.

You do not need to work so hard each day and feel like I can't sit down until I finally accomplish these specific things, okay? And if you can't do it for yourself, think about the model you want to set for your kids.

I think about this so often.

I think about, okay, what are the actions I'm taking? What are the thought processes I'm modeling to my sons? And is this something that I want them to take with them in their future? Is this something that I want their future relationships to be held to a standard of? And I'm like, no, I don't actually.

So I need to kind of adjust my own processes and behavior patterns here, right? And of course, grace upon grace, as you think about these things and make these decisions of, okay, like, you know what, I probably could fix this.