Do you Dare to Rest?
The best time to rest is when you believe you don’t have time for it 🫣
At first glance, it almost feels offensive.
Me?
Relax?
Now?
When everything is asking for me?
When the list is long, the pressure is rising, and the fire is already burning?
And yet… this is exactly the moment to Dare to Rest.
We’ve all heard the phrase: "Put your own oxygen mask on first"
Actually we've heard it so often it’s almost lost its weight. But it's still so valid and true nonetheless.
In those moments, where it feels like the world will fall apart if you slow for a second - that's when it's most important. That's what it's a dare to do it. Because ALL your primal instincts are working against you.
But if you slow down for a second…
you can access another truth. One that has nothing to do with air-masks or airplanes.
The truth you will realize is that your system is overwhelmed…
and your instinct is to override yourself.
To finish the list of to-do's
To push
To help
To hold everything together.
To be the one who doesn’t drop the ball !!!
Your whole system is screaming for you to move on - because the slowing down would require you to face a truth that most of us don’t want to look at:
The fact that when you abandon yourself in those moments…
you don’t actually become more helpful, better or more powerful
You become more fragile. More reactive. More depleted.
Less resourced to meet what’s in front of you.
Yet this is the default for so many of us. We’ve been taught that devotion looks like self-sacrifice. Most of us grew up with Martyr-Moms (goddess bless them) who gave us this screwed up idea that self-sacrifice and self-abandonment goes before anything else. We learned that our needs, desires, spaciousness, time with self goes to the VERY VERY bottom of the priority list.. if it makes it to the list at all.
The blueprint we were given showed us that:
Being “good” means being available
Being “strong” means pushing through
Being "nice" means overextending yourself
Being "sweet" means not rocking the boat
And all of that is BS!
We have to face the fact, that what we were taught was to override our own inner signals. Our own body.
The tension in the chest
The tightness in the jaw
The pit in the stomach
The exhaustion we keep explaining away with lack of sleep or coffee.. or that we just need another weekend or holiday to get back on top of it all
We keep waiting for a better moment to rest.
A more convenient moment.
A moment where nothing is needed from us.
Yet you already know!!! that moment… rarely (dare I say NEVER) comes.
And when you don't listen, and stay in your power... life takes over and creates it for you (and though that might sound nice... someone taking care or it... it's a "gift" that often comes in a wrapping we did NOT want.
What life gives us is:
A breaking point
A shutdown
A huge fight
An injury
A body that says: no further. I can't hold you anymore...
Instead of being an empowered solid choice - what we get is a forced return. Out of our power, out of our peace and so so far from the potential we desired. It feels like a long fight back, instead of a gentle empowered turn.
THERE'S ANOTHER WAY 🧚🏼🧚🏼🧚🏼
HOWEVER...There’s a different way to meet the fire.
And NO, it does not include running faster toward it…
…rather it's about becoming the kind of person who can stand in front of it without burning out. It's about becoming the person who can recreate a sense of inner peace, no matter the storm. It's about remembering that ability of yours to be so much MORE than a continuous response to circumstances instead of holding your Power firmly in your own two hand so you can direct and guide your life in the direction of the Potential you wish to unfold.
It's the opposite of what you were taught. It's self-empowerment instead of self-sacrifice.
It feels scary and foreign because it is. But the road to burn-out, to abandoning yourself - that road you know. And if you like that road, you get to keep walking it... but since you are still reading... I have a feeling you want something else.
Imagine two versions of you.
One rushes in immediately.
No pause. No breath. No awareness of capacity.
She gives everything she has - fast, urgent, unfiltered.
And she burns through herself just as quickly.
She helps… for a moment.
And then she’s gone, maybe not physically - but mentally and emotionally. She is a shadow of herself. Living in a Zoombie state as one of my dear clients once describe her life.
The other version of you... she pauses.
Not forever.
Not in avoidance.
But just long enough to come back into herself.
She breathes.
She grounds.
She checks: What do I actually have to give right now? Without sacrificing myself.
She gathers her energy instead of scattering it.
And then she steps in.
Relaxed. Radiant. Resourced.
Showing up with what she has or walking away if she has nothing to give.
Choosing herself FIRST - despite what she originally learned.
THE REST PARADOX
This is the REST paradox:
The moment you feel like you don’t have time to rest/relax/pause…
is often the moment where everything depends on it.
And rest does not mean laying in your couch for 3 hours or 2 days doing nothing (that would be collapsing).
REST is your ability to be with what is real in this moment.
It’s regulation. It's finding your truth. It’s returning to your body...
so you can make a empowered from a place of Peace to transcend into a way of living where you move far beyond the survival patterns that were initially handed to you.
In the most simple forms it could look like:
Closing your eyes for 60 seconds before responding
Taking one full breath instead of ten shallow ones
Leaning into trust rather than forcing control
Saying “not right now” instead of “yes, of course”
Letting someone off the hook for not showing up like you expected them to
Not starting the argument just to get an emotional outburst for what has been building inside
So often it's about letting something be unfinished… so you don’t become undone.
LET IT CHANGE YOU
I gotta tell you... it's going to feel uncomfortable at first. When you've lived your whole life with your sword out and shield up... and you then put it down. It feels wrong. But it's only because it's different.
You’re interrupting a deeply ingrained pattern that has been flowing in your veinsfor years.
But what you’re actually doing… is choosing sustainability over urgency.
Peace over noise. Power over depletion. Presence over performance.
Eventually you'll realize that you don't need to prove how much you can carry before you're allowed to put it down. You'll find that true strength and power comes from knowing what to carry and when.
You get to support yourself before things fall apart.
You get to chose a make a more sustainable choice for yourself.
You get to go BIGGER in life without force or self-abandonment.
REST is not leaning back and collapsing. REST is choosing the better way. The one that serves you. So that you can stay and be with it all without loosing yourself in the process.
So Dare to REST - even when it feels like the furthest reach.
Not because everything will fall apart if you don’t keep going…but because you might.
And you are no longer available to be the part of the equation that gets to be sacrificed.
Not anymore. You're way to important for that shit.
Dare to Rest 🫶🏼
with love
Mette