Chapter 49: Napping for the Win 🛏️

It is Black History Month, so it is only appropriate that we feature a Black author and thought leader, Tricia Hersey, writer of Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto and founder of The Nap Ministry.

Dewey’s Details:

• Author: Tricia Hersey

• Non-Fiction

• 🛒 Purchase here

Before anyone runs down a thought path on "you cannot succeed if you're napping" or "people will make an industry out of anything" as it comes to encouraging naps, let's first slow down and think about REST and its importance in your overall achievement.

Let's start with our cultural exhaustion. In America specifically, there is still the fundamental belief in the American Dream (that you can achieve anything if you work hard enough). And what is then encouraged is grind, hustle, push, foregoing food, social time and sleep to win at all costs.

Look, you have to work hard for what you want. It does not fall into your lap (unless, of course, you are the benefit of a large trust fund and you can buy some of what falls into your lap, and if that is you, good for you). And even if you're lucky, it's likely because you have put yourself in a position to be lucky and open to opportunities.

Creating luck and creating opportunities takes energy and time. Layer on top of that effort the hustle culture that tells you (and probably rings, if not screams in your subconscious) that you need to work harder, do more, study more, run harder, be better, hustle more, grind harder and never let off the gas.

Omnipresent capitalism and the creation of the systems that surround them only add to that voice's volume and frequency. The reverberating scream tells us to work, Work, WORK! And to never let up.

Now, let's apply basic common sense to this mindset (and look, I get it; we all have trauma responses that tell us to react to that and work more).

Do you run your car engine at 170 mph continuously whether or not you need to without turning it off, without reducing speed, without stopping ever? No. Your engine would overheat and would cease to be a functioning engine at all.

So why do you think that you can run your personal engine without reducing speed or without shutting it down from time to time to give it rest? You can, but eventually your engine, too, will shut you down. And further, if you push yourself when absolutely needed and offset that with rest so that you can do it again and repeat that process, don't you actually go further?

Simple answer is YES!

The more rested you are in between bursts of work, the farther you will get. Oh, and by the way, your output will actually be better. When you give your mental and physical health some space to settle in between tough amounts of work, your ultimate output is better and you get farther faster!

So why are you not resting?

Because you are stuck in the cycle.

So, even when you are finding yourself saying that you need to do more and work harder at the detriment of yourself, course correct immediately. If that is hard for you, schedule rest or think time or time to DREAM.

Next week, we'll review the section on the importance of DREAM time in conjunction with REST. 

In the interim, ask yourself, "How can I make space for REST, even if only 3 minutes of quiet time in between efforts?" and then give yourself the permission to take that rest.

Reset your mindset to know that if you really what to succeed, you need to give yourself downtime to truly get ahead long-term.

Interested in rest time, check out our WINTERING episode here:

And as always, don't just be BOLD, take REST and BE BOLDER!