The Art of Resting Well As An Entrepreneur 

Maria: [00:00:00] Being able to rest and relax is actually hard for a lot of ambitious, high performing entrepreneurs. And in this episode, I’m diving into my own personal journey with learning how to rest, learning how to relax, allowing myself to relax and all the personal development that is needed to actually get to that stage fully being able to relax my body and my mind. ​ Maria: [00:01:00] I had another topic planned for this episode, but when I was sitting down to really dive into what I wanted to talk about, there was one word that came to my mind and that word was rest. And I think the reason is because I’ve been pushing myself lately quite hard. And I came to a place yesterday where I really understood that I had to rest. To rest. So I let myself have half an hour on my bed. I booked a massage and I told my personal trainer that this morning I need to do like yin yoga. No, no pushing, just stretching, just releasing and just resting. I find a lot of entrepreneurs having a really hard time resting. And I know this because I have been an entrepreneur since 2010, more or less. And I have had a really hard time resting because we are running [00:02:00] our own companies. There’s always things to do. There’s always things that should have been done. There’s always more things that we could dive into. There’s always tasks that are unchecked on that list. There’s always more potential. And for a lot of people, this ends with https: otter. ai Kind of pushing ourselves, pushing ourselves, hustling, working hard and putting in a lot of hours in our business. And I’m not saying that that is wrong. It’s actually super nice to be able to have a job where you can create something that is, that is yours, where you can work with something that is, that you have passion around. And of course, also to be able to actually work hard is a good skill. q1 Maria: However, our bodies Aren’t made to work hard all the time. It’s really physically impossible. And I know a lot of people are pushing themselves really hard. And again, I can speak for myself. I did this to an extent where it just was enough. so I had a burnout when I was 27. And [00:03:00] since then, there was one thing that I really, really, really realized. And that was when I can feel that my productivity. Or my performance is reducing, is decreasing. That is not a sign for me to push harder. That is actually a sign for me to calm down and rest and take a break. Because this is what actually leads to burnout. After my burnout, I read a lot. I saw a lot of videos. I read a lot of books about why good girls end up being burnt out. And one of the things I learned was that because we are so used to be high performers, we’re so used to get a lot of things done. We’re so used to being good. Like in school, I was always getting feedback that I was good. I had good grades. Like I was a girl scout trainer. And a leader, and I got a lot of positive feedback for performing for doing things out there. And then I got this job where I had a lot of [00:04:00] fun stuff to do. However, nobody told me that I was good enough and I wasn’t telling myself that I was good enough. And therefore I worked harder and harder and harder until I realized that my performance was going down. And at that time, I didn’t realize that my performance and my tempo and my speed and my ability to get things done. was going down was actually like a really bad sign that I had to take a break, that I had to calm down, that I had to reduce my tempo for a while. And I’m saying this because I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs every week, and a lot of them are actually pushing themselves really hard. They have really high expectations for what they’re going to achieve. They have high ambitions for their business. they set high goals and they have this belief that they have to work really hard almost all the time. to get there. And again, this is just not healthy for our bodies and for our minds [00:05:00] either. So if you know something about the nervous system, the nervous system has like two states. And the one is the active where it’s fight or flight, where it’s like ready to go. And the other one is where we can actually relax and rejuvenate and kind of build ourselves and get into this relaxed state. And for me, the last year I’ve been working a lot on my personal development and I’ve been working especially a lot on trauma release. And what I found out was q2 Maria: actually that my body has been in fight or flight modus almost my whole life. And this is something that I think several people are born into families where there’s like a little pressure on getting things done. Like maybe. Emotionally, not super mature parents. And there’s a lot of like, just things that aren’t being said, but in our family, me and my sister, and I know because we had this discussion, we weren’t really taught [00:06:00] to lean into our bodies and to listen to our bodies and to adjust. The tempo of when we do things in the weekends, we had to get up at a certain time. We had to get out on this, this hiking trip and a lot of good things about the hiking trips. But for me, sometimes my whole body, my whole system was just craving for a day off for not doing anything. And we need to find this balance within ourselves, the balance of when to perform, when to do things, when to check out all the, all the boxes on our to do lists. And actually when To do nothing. And if we aren’t able to find this balance, we are literally burning ourselves out. Like this is, there isn’t a way for the body to rejuvenate and to, find its energy back and to get back to the, Normal state when we are just pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing, and some of us can keep this pushing for a long time for many, many, many years [00:07:00] before our bodies says no. But I truly believe that at some point our body is going to tell us this isn’t working anymore. So there are like several things that can happen For me, to be honest, what happens sometimes is I get a lot of pain in my body. And this is for me a sign that I need to listen and that I need to adjust. And that was what happened yesterday. And that’s what, why I also decided to talk about rest in this episode. So as an entrepreneur, it’s so easy to put a lot of pressure on ourselves and it’s natural because we are the person, especially in the beginning, a lot of people start their own business. And they’re only the only person in the company have to do all the tasks. And if You’re not doing anything, nothing gets done. So of course, it’s very natural to feel that urge of having to do things. And also the mindset of, I have to get things done. However, what I’ve realized more and more and more, the more I allow myself to rest, and the more I allow myself to take a break, and the more I [00:08:00] allow myself to give myself love and care in a way that works for me, the more I see that then I can be much more effective when I’m actually working. We are sometimes tweaking ourselves to just kind of count hours on many hours we’re sitting in front of the computer. And we think that that’s how many hours we need to work. But to be honest, like when I reduced my hours in front of the computer and I increased the hours of all the other things I was doing with self care and relaxation and sleep and, and the rest, my efficiency so much that I got a lot of things done in less amount of time. I actually feel like I’m getting more done. In fewer hours than I did before when I grew up, I was a part of the scouts in Norway, the girl guides of Norway. And at that time, the motto of the girl guides of Norway was girls can do anything. And of course, that’s a great model, like, because it’s, it’s empowering. It’s teaching girls that they can do everything. They can do the same things [00:09:00] as the boys can do. And it teaches them to be strong and courageous, and all of those things. however, and I did stand up about this. A while back, I kind of interpreted this as you have to do everything yourself and you can never, never, never, never, never, never ask for help. And I find a lot of entrepreneurs, they have this mindset of trying to be super woman or they’re trying to be Superman. And again, having to handle everything that go that’s going on in your business. It is challenging. And it is. I love that challenge. I really love that challenge, but we just have to learn how to listen in to our bodies and how, when to push and when to relax and when to just take a break and breathe or lay down for the, on the bed for a half an hour. And of course, when I talk about rest, it has also to do with letting go of the belief that we have to do everything ourselves. It is actually okay to delegate tasks. [00:10:00] It is actually okay to, to not do things. It is actually okay to find out ways to not have to push and push and push through all the time. And that’s okay. Um, asking for help as well. Asking for help is a big, big, big subject, but for me, even allowing myself to have other people do things for me was a process because I wasn’t trained in it. I wasn’t good at it. And I had this kind of need for control and also the, my thinking that kind of, I wanted to do it myself. It wasn’t necessarily that I just. Felt like I was super woman, but I really like doing different things. And I really like being in control or how things are done. And I really liked being in control over the quality. And again, all of these things are good things, but if you do it too much and if you do it too hard, and if you do it like this way, it’s not good for anything. It’s not good for you. It’s not even good for the people around you because you’re not allowing them [00:11:00] to help you. You’re not allowing them to support you. What I learned for myself and what I learned from a lot of personal development, a lot of more spiritual reading, I read a lot about the mind body connection. And what I realized is that a lot of the things that we experience as children and even maybe generations before us can sit in our body as trauma. And we need to figure out how to release it, because for me, of a big, big backpack. So when we’re small, because we don’t have the cognitive filter, we are not choosing what kind of beliefs and things we’re putting in our backpack because we aren’t developed enough yet. Our minds aren’t well developed enough yet. So we take things that teachers say, and our parents say, and things we grew up with, and dysfunctional things in our family, and we put it on ourselves as limiting beliefs or as trauma. And that backpack is. It’s really getting pretty heavy quite soon. And we are small. And then at [00:12:00] some point when we start having the conscious ability to choose, we can decide that we don’t want to put more limiting beliefs and more trauma in our backpack. We can filter what is happening to us and we can understand more and We’re not necessarily making wrong conclusions based on what is happening around us. So that’s when we come to the next level where we consciously start to choose what kind of beliefs we’re taking on and we’re putting in the backpack. But still that backpack is super, super, super heavy. So for me, I came to this place where I felt like it’s like there are some more things in there. There are. Probably trauma from my family. There are things that I experienced as a kid. There are things that my parents experienced before I was born that still limits me and my ability to have good life right now. And for me, especially when talking about the rest, for me, even. Not allowing myself to rest because of that, because my body is just in the [00:13:00] fight and flight mode. And it’s been in there for so long time that that’s the only state that I recognize. So for me, it took a lot of work and actually pretty deep work to allow myself to rest. And I’m even getting emotional now because it was, q3 Maria: it was a big process. It required focus from me and I want to say hard work, but I won’t say hard work, but it required me to focus on it and figure out ways to let go and being open for a lot of different healing modalities and personal development and coaching and, and healing and, and mentors and therapists and everything to help me. And even getting to that state where I decided that enough is enough. I need to let go of this because my body can’t handle it and I can’t handle it. And I don’t want to live in this fight or flight mode. That was a big decision, and then I gradually started to allow myself to ask for help. I gradually started to [00:14:00] allow myself to rest. I gradually decided to allow myself to take a 10 minute break in the middle of the day, lay down on my bed and listen to Reiki healing on YouTube. If that’s what I felt like, I even allowed myself to take an hour or a full day off. If I really needed it, if I felt like my body is just too tense and my mind is too tense and I really need a break, I allowed myself to have that break. And for anyone that has grown up in a family where it was easy to take breaks, where the parents took breaks, where you learned how to relax, where you learned how to, to have the right balance between being and doing. This may sound super naive and simple for me. And the reason why I’m getting emotional is because this was a huge thing. The realization that I needed, it was a huge thing. And then the implementation of it. It’s also a huge thing. And probably the [00:15:00] reason why I’m getting emotional is I’m still practicing this, just really living that balance. And especially because I am quite self driven, self motivated person and there’s a lot of things I want to do. Like I really, I really want to do things and I want to inspire people and I want to be out there and I want to be a role model and I want to do a lot of things. So I have a lot of motivation for that. And sometimes that part of me is just driving a bit too hard. And then my body or some, something happens and I just realized, okay, now I’m, I’m pushing too hard and I need to withdraw a bit and I need to figure out again, how to relax and how to find that balance. And I want to talk a bit about how to actually rest, because again, for some people that may be super easy. It’s literally just to lay on the bed and, and lay there. But if your mind is telling you that you shouldn’t be there, there are things you should do. There are a lot of things on your to do list that is already due [00:16:00] you are staying here and being lazy. If that’s what your mind is telling you, you aren’t resting. Maybe your body is kind of still on the bed, but your mind and your whole nervous system isn’t resting because you aren’t really allowing yourself to just be there in the moment and to just do nothing. So for me, I found that like relaxing music, spiritual music, Sanskrit mantras, or like natural music, like water or, or wind or ocean or things like that helps me to relax. It helps my nervous system. And I think that’s kind of. Pretty logical because humans were meant to be in nature. Like we were born in nature and we, we belong to nature. So all those natural things and coming back to that helps us to, to let go. And also for me, I’m going to talk about beach walks, barefoot beach walks, almost in every episode of scaling life, because for me, that’s like a really good healing modality. being out barefoot on the [00:17:00] beach, every single day. Being in the sand, being in the water, grounding, hearing the sound of the ocean, and just being present with myself. There’s something about the beach that makes me not have, not thinking about everything I have to do. It’s just for me, when I get there, I’m just there, at least most of the time. Of course, also mindfulness and meditation, breath work, all of those things are great ways of being present. Getting into the body and being able to relax, but that Eric used to tend to ice bats. And for me that worked sometimes, but sometimes it was just adding more stress to me. I was literally going back into this mode that I was trying to get out. So for me, it seems like there’s some, some, times of the year or the month where I can do it and benefit from it. And sometimes where it’s just better for me not to do it. And I just wanted to say this to everyone that is listening, and I’m saying it as much to myself as I’m saying it to you. And that is you need to [00:18:00] figure out what works for you because there’s a lot of gurus running around telling you, you have to do this. And, and ice pads are so beneficial and you have to eat this and you have to do that. And you have to sleep for this in this many hours, and you have to be up at 5am. And if it isn’t working for you, it isn’t working for you. And the only person that has control over that, and that knows the answer, if it’s working for you, is you. And this has taken me quite a lot of time, because I wanted to be a good girl. I wanted to be a good girl, and I was a good girl, and I probably am still a good girl for a long time. So if someone’s saying, telling me that something is smart, I want to do the right thing. But the realization that the writing isn’t the same for every person is so important. And I do think that we, everyone that is listening, we need to practice our own power over our thoughts and over our decisions. There isn’t a right or wrong choice. It’s your choice and your choice should be based on what feels good for you, what is working for you. [00:19:00] And not necessarily the most comfortable choice, because even for me, deciding to learn how to relax wasn’t a comfortable choice because I wasn’t used to it. My body was, was super tense and in a lot of fight or flight mode. And it would be easy for me to just pretend like nothing was wrong and just run that direction and keep myself busy. But I also knew that at some point that would just lead me into. That wall again, or more burnout. So I had to find a balance. And again, I want to live a good life. I want to find a good way to live. And I want to find a way where my nervous system and my body and my brain and all parts of me are in balance and not all the time, because I don’t think that’s possible, but just being able to kind of come back to that natural level, that natural state. One of the reasons why I love physical exercise, and sometimes even pushing myself really hard in physical exercise, is because I know that when I’ve done that, My [00:20:00] nervous system kind of has enough. And afterwards I have to relax. Like I naturally, I can’t do anything more. So it’s kind of, I come to the breaking point. And then after that, I’m like, Ooh, I’m just like totally, totally, totally relaxed because I pushed myself to the limit and for me that works. And it works sometimes. And some days I’m not going there because I know I can’t handle it. Like this morning I told my personal trainer, no pushing, just stretching, just in yoga, just. Just, just relax, just breathe and help my body to relax. But some days I can push myself or I can have other people push myself physically, really, really hard. And then after get to that relaxed state where I can really release everything and just let go and actually, uh, The whole nervous system relaxes. I also want to share with you this practice that I have, and that is just talking to my body. And I’m trying to do it every day. And sometimes I forget, but just checking in with my body. And especially if I have a pain or if I have a tension or something feels a bit [00:21:00] off, or I feel a bit stiff or even mentally like stressed. I asked my body, how are you doing? And what do you need? And what are you trying to tell me? And sometimes I get No answer. And sometimes I get great answers. but I think just for me having this habit of checking in with my body, my body is actually the vehicle that is taking me around on this earth. And if it wasn’t for my body, I wasn’t able to be here at all. I wasn’t able to speak to you today. I wasn’t able to do anything either for my business or for myself. So checking in with my body and practicing gratefulness. Practicing to be grateful for this body that takes me around every single day, all the bodily organs and things that are doing things without me having to think about it, the heart pumping the blood around my lungs, cleansing the oxygen, like filtering all the cells that are creating new cells every single day. There’s a lot to be grateful [00:22:00] for. So I hope your takeaway from this episode is just finding the time and the space and the way for you to relax and allow yourself to relax fully when you do that. Our body needs rest. ​