A major hurdle that many of us moms to rest is the underlying belief that we need to ‘earn our rest’. In this episode, Professional Counsellor and mom of three unpacks how this belief impacts our abilities to rest well, our relationships and our coping habits. 

This episode is in follow-up to Episode 194. I stopped calling myself a lazy mom 

In this episode, we discuss topics such as:

• relaxation vs pseudo-rest, burnout


• opportunity costs, and how we insert ourselves into the equation
  
  
  
  • 188. Motherhood & Instagram Culture (how online communities impact your motherhood experience)
  
  
  • 189. Prioritizing the day: if everything matters nothing matters and how to apply this in motherhood
  
  
  
  


• the cultural views on motherhood, being lazy, and earning rest


• how we apply the logic of ‘earning rest’, seeking external validation, martyrdom
  
  
  
  • 67. Making motherhood harder than it needs to be (Mom Martyr)
  
  
  • 192. Who are you when I’m not looking (internal vs external validation)
  
  
  
  


• the escape hatch, dealing with our feelings
  
  
  
  • 185. Emotional needs in motherhood (what they are and how to meet them)
  
  
  • 142. What will change cost you? (Paying the status quo or investing in change)
  
  
  • Show up for your life
  
  
  
  


• getting the cycle backwards between rest and hard work
  
  
  
  • the Instagram post you all loved about rest
  
  
  
  


• the cycle of hyper-productivity then crashing


• meeting your needs
  
  
  
  • the series is right here 
  
  
  
  

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

0:00

Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend counselor from simple on purpose.ca. Welcome to the simple and purpose podcast.

0:17

So if you’re new here, welcome. I am Shawna, I am a mom of three kids in Canada, I am a counselor. And my aim is to equip you with tools and ideas and insights that help you live more simply and more intentionally, in all the areas of your life.

0:31

So this episode is a follow up to the last episode where I was unpacking that concept of asking yourself in moments where you are finding yourself with a desire to relax, am I being lazy? Or am I overwhelmed, because when we can differentiate between the two, we can handle it accordingly.

0:48

When we’re overwhelmed, we’ve maxed out we’ve reached capacity. And I’ve talked about that window of tolerance. That’s that range where we feel a sense of resource and ability to deal well with the day in all its demands. being overwhelmed takes us out of that window of tolerance. And we have this dilemma of actually being worn out and needing rest. But then that voice comes in that says, if you’re resting, you’re lazy, you should be doing this or that.

1:09

So in that moment, we have a choice, we can be lazy, or we can go and get more things done. One leads to guilt fueled pseudo arrest, the other leads to even more burnout.

1:20

A concept I’ve shared over the years is the concept of opportunity cost. And that is the acknowledgement that when we say yes to one thing, we say no to the other, and vice versa.

1:30

For example, if I say yes to a day of work, and all that comes with it, career advancement, maybe job satisfaction, a wage, etc, then I say no to maybe being a stay at home, parent, and all the stuff that would happen then if I was a stay at home parents, someone’s there to do chores, make meals, childcare, whatever, vice versa, there’s no wrong choice. I’m just saying these simple choices, we are weighing against our own values and goals have a cost on either side.

1:56

But as moms when it comes to the opportunity cost of rest. We live in a culture where we have put ourselves into the transaction.

2:04

We tell ourselves this math, if I say no to me, resting, I say yes to getting more stuff done. And since I live in a culture where busy is glorified, I should choose that. Or vice versa. If I say no to getting stuff done, I’m saying yes to me being a lazy mum. And since I live in a culture where being lazy is at worst a sin, or at least tacky or undignified. This is a generalization I’m making.

2:30

What is that going to lead us to in the decision we need to make there? Right? If the opportunity costs of me resting versus me doing always points towards one culturally acceptable choice? What are we going to be doing? We’re going to be saying no to ourselves, and yes to the expectations of ourselves to do more.

2:49

And those expectations feel necessary, don’t they? The expectations we have on ourselves as mom, it’s something that I talked about in a past episode, I’ll make sure to link it in the show notes. All in all, bad math, it’s costing us either way you spin it, it costs us, the person, the woman, the mom who’s denying herself rest.

3:07

So in order to reconcile the transaction, do we rest? Or do we do, we turn it into this formula, where we justify the choice with the criteria of ruining rest.

3:20

In working with mums, I feel like this isn’t a conscious formula. Like if I fold a basket of laundry, I give myself permission to read my book for 20 minutes. It’s more of a subconscious rule. We’ve adopted like a core belief that rest must be earned through working hard.

3:35

And there’s this framework we have are not too clear, though, on how to apply this logic, how to measure it and who decides the measurement? And how do we know when we’ve reached it? How do we know and we worked hard enough to earn that rest. You don’t really have that criteria is kind of vague.

3:49

But we’re applying the concept nonetheless, which I think can and did, for me at least translate into us becoming martyrs. Sometimes, if you’ve read my post about being a martyr, it’s one of the most read posts ever, I’m going to link that in the show notes. Because we might find ourselves in a situation where we need to prove our hard work to others in order for them to give us permission to rest. We can’t draw a line in the sand and tell ourselves well done self, you can rest and now we are looking to others to do it. It’s not their job, but we are looking to them to do it.

4:26

We are looking for that external validation. Someone needs to tell me I’ve earned this rest. And oh, if I’m an especially good murderer and a very hard worker, then they have to force me to rest. And I’m not going to do a good job of it. I’m going to still find a way to be productive while I rest.

4:43

It does create a whole other problem doesn’t it if it sets up this unhelpful dynamic and is in a relationship where we need that external validation.

4:51

So from this underlying rule that we might be living with that we need to earn rest, we have some outcomes. First, we aren’t too clear on how to apply it. So We look to others to apply it for us. And in order to do that, we need their validation. So now we need to express our experience to them, show them the evidence be the martyr. So then they have the information they need in order to validate us, oh, you should go rest. Now, that creates an unhelpful dynamic in any relationship. And we still haven’t actually rested.

5:20

How do you feel when you are not well rested? Not awesome, right? Like, that woman you missing out on rest and nourishment and restoration, she’s not feeling great. And when we don’t feel good, we start to think of ways we can just feel better.

5:36

We might not even be aware of it. But we might find ourselves reaching for the phone, or calling someone up to gossip or online shopping, just whatever feels better than how we’re feeling now. So from this whole system, we create another layer of problems where we have what I call the escape hatch, the escape hatch, those things we do some kind of secret indulgence that we turn to as a way to deal with how we’re feeling. And we’re not feeling great, because we’ve deprived ourselves of meeti