Rest to Resist Burnout: Why Rest Isn’t a Reward, It’s Part of Growth

When I say “rest,” what immediately comes to your mind?

If you’re like me and my brain, you probably jump to cliches or quotes.

Rest is not earned. It’s not a reward.

If you don’t prioritize rest, your body will do it for you.

Until recently, I didn’t truly distinguish rest from sleep. Or from the slow metamorphic process of becoming one with the couch during cold and flu season, when you have no choice to the contrary.

What Do We Really Mean When We Talk About Rest?

My recent relationship with weightlifting has taught me that the breaks taken in between sets, the rests, are vital to continued growth. They’re necessary if I want to progressively lift heavier, increase my bone density (this is important ladies), strengthen connective tissue, and build muscle. Rest is part of the process, not the antithesis of it.

When framed against the backdrop of physical energy expenditure, rest makes sense. Unlike Newton’s First Law of Motion, we know all too well that our bodies can’t stay in motion. Rest is inevitable. It’s a necessity.

Rest Is Part of the Process, Not the Opposite of Productivity

Interestingly though, as simple a concept that rest is — pausing, taking a break — the adoption of it as part of what feeds momentum and productivity isn’t as easy to come by in other contexts.

The term burnout made its way into modern vernacular in 1969 via a research paper by Harold H Bradly about the fatigue of working in a young-adult correctional facility. Though the concept of working beyond one’s means has Biblical roots. Check out the occupational burnout page on Wikipedia. Burnout’s family tree goes way back.

The visual produced by the word burnout in my mind, is one of embers crackling as they cool. All energy exothermically expended. To me, it seems like that analogy would be more on par with the physical reference above. Of the muscles and lungs of an athlete being expended to their fullest.

Yet, it wasn’t exercise that introduced burnout to us in the way we see it used today. It was work which placed demands on humans mentally, morally, physically, emotionally and beyond. Today its use may more closely relate to the fallout of over stimulation, and our jobs.

Burnout Isn’t About Laziness — It’s About Capacity

It looks and feels like:

• Persistent mental exhaustion — feeling “fried,” unable to think clearly, or that small decisions require disproportionate effort

• Emotional blunting or detachment — caring less about work, relationships, or outcomes that once mattered deeply

• A constant sense of pressure — feeling unable to slow down without guilt or fear that something will fall apart

  
  

So what are the mental, mortal and emotional equivalents to taking a break between sets, and why is it important?

For starters, the notion that “you can’t pour from an empty cup” comes to mind. When we’re on the jagged edge of our own capacity, how can we expect to be able to grow, let alone show up for others in the ways we’d like? Rest is as necessary to our most basic of functions as is air.

Rest to Resist Burnout in a World That Never Powers Down

From a medical and psychological standpoint, its is less about inactivity and more about regulation. True rest allows the nervous system to shift out of chronic stress response and into recovery.

Evidence-based forms of include:

• mental rest — intentional breaks from problem-solving and decision-making

• sensory rest — reducing exposure to screens, noise, and constant input

• emotional rest — spaces where feelings don’t need to be filtered or managed

• physical rest — that supports recovery rather than performance (which we talked a little about already)

  
  

I could go into the laundry list of research and details that justify rest and the need to recover. I could show the proverbial “lungs on cigarettes” and jar you into re-thinking your overstimulated, overworked ways, but really the only way to create buy-in is internal. You know what rest can do for you if you want to resist and combat burnout.

If I could be so bold as to skip that convincing part, and jump right to suggestions I’ll do that now.

What Rest Looks Like in Real Life (Not on a Quote Graphic)

Mental Rest

If mental breaks constitute NOT problem-solving or decision making, and you’re someone (like me) whose brain doesn’t have an off-switch, rest can be hard to come by. For me, I’ve taken to the junk-food reading of fiction to solve this problem. Screens don’t immerse me like they once did, and reading provides a way for me to fully focus. Not audio books, a physical, page-flipping book.

Painting is also another method I employ. Though I will say, watercolor which I’ve taken up recently, isn’t quite working out the way acrylics do. There’s too much waiting, and in-between dry times that I feel compelled to pick up my phone and start working or scrolling.

This is your personal invitation to take up an all-consuming hobby that doesn’t create life-or-death problems for you to solve. That allows you to enter a flow state. Let me know when you come across something that hits those marks for you!

Sensory Rest 

Now, sensory rest can feel even more challenging. I don’t know about yours, but my house has a constant hum. I didn’t realize how loud the world is until our first winter here in Oklahoma. When the insulating effects of the snow blanket, paired with scheduled blackouts gave me a presentation of the primal silence I think we all crave. Never mind my aversion to “the big light,” my body craves sensory breaks on a daily basis.

White noise machines exist to bring some elements of noise cancelling, but I’ll always be a proponent of the natural version. Waves on the beach. Wind through the trees. If you’ve ever napped on a Florida beach in the summer, towel draped over your face, as you lie shaded under a pop-up, you’ll have found true sensory rest.

What’s the equivalent to that where you are?

Physical Rest 

We talked about physical rest earlier. Those 30 to 60 second rests between dead-lifts. Whether you’re training for the next Iron Man, or have been poised at your standing desk all day, you deserve a physical break. Gentle movement and stillness can be great ways to recalibrate our bodies and regulate our nervous systems. But equally important, give our muscles, lungs, and tendons a literal break from tensing and holding our bodies into place.

My husband recently shared that the first time he saw “what a human is” in a diagram of the nervous system, that we’re effectively “meat puppets.” Well, the meat that our brain and subsequent wiring system controls needs a moment on the charging pad too. Hyper-extending, overexertion, over-stimulation…anything over and hyper and beyond can expand our abilities, but only if we give our tissues time to catch up to their new horizons.

For me that looks like Epsom salt baths, breathing breaks, laying on the floor and watching the ceiling fan (this also doubles as a great mental break, and comes highly recommended by infants), and other prone or relaxed positions.

Pairing Rest Practices to Multiply Their Impact

There are a range of fatiguing, burn-out producing activities and stimuli in our lives. But there are just as many ways to rest and resist that burnout. In fact, I invite you to a challenge this week:

How can you rest? How can you pair two different types of rest, to double the benefits for yourself?

Personally, I’m going to sit outside with a crackling fire and listen to the migrating birds head south to their tropical oases.

You Don’t Have to Figure This Out Alone

If finding rest and resisting burnout feels like a process you want to collaborate on, let’s set up time to talk. Book a free Discovery Call so we can set a foundation that feels supportive and sustainable for you.