I'm Natalie Lou and you're listening to a summer replay episode of the Baggage

Reclaim sessions. Hello hello hello How are you doing? Yes, I'm still on a break, but I am back as promised to share a few of my favorite episodes of the show and I picked this one first episode 219 we are

allowed to rest because over the last several weeks I have heard so many people both

on and offline debating with themselves about whether to take a break. There is the

sense of oh my gosh if I take a break for my business if I go on holiday from

work if I use my holiday days, then I am showing that I'm not taking my work

seriously, I might struggle to get back into it when I come away from being on a break, what is going on with us?

We act as if we have to use every little miniscule moment of our time in an intentional and purposeful, you know, productive way.

And we're not using time we are using ourselves.

All of the things that we are hooking ourselves up to,

use our body and mind, they use our bandwidth

for our time, energy, effort and emotions, and we are not machines.

And so if you are one of the people who seems to be in an internal debate with themselves about rest, you are far

from being alone because we have been socialized into this.

We've been socialized into feeling guilty about taking a break, about doing absolutely nothing at all if that's

what we feel like doing. And so I'm sharing this episode really as a reminder that you are allowed to rest. We are all allowed to rest. Enjoy.

Sunday March 28th a few days ago marked four years since my father passed away from cancer.

But it also really marks four years of me really re-examining my relationship with rest and my perception of what I am allowed to do with my free time.

I have thought a lot about laziness and selfishness and what happens when we push ourselves too hard and we go way over our bandwidth.

It's actually what I went through in the year or two after my father passed away that

really made me want to talk so much more about us taking care of our bandwidth. But you know what?

There's a lot of us that are very resistant to taking care of us, to recognize that we have a bandwidth and that it needs to be respected and

...