EP48: What if rest is the most meaningful work we can do?
Let’s explore the radical and often uncomfortable role of rest in building a regenerative work life. Rest isn’t just recovery from burnout or a reward for productivity—it has intrinsic value, and choosing it can be an act of resistance against the corporatized, extractive ways we’ve been taught to approach work.
I share a personal story that surfaced the compulsion I still carry to maximise every moment, and reflect on why many of us associate rest with failure, laziness, or waste. Drawing on conversations, community, and the work of thinkers like Tricia Hersey, I consider what it means to:
Recognise rest as foundational to regenerative careers and businesses
See how capitalist and colonial conditioning fuels our addiction to work
Understand rest as a practice of receiving, not just pursuing
Value being as much as we value doing
Explore the resistance, fear, and anxiety that rest often triggers
If you find yourself struggling to slow down, battling inner voices that say you’re wasting time, or wondering how rest fits into purposeful work, this episode is an invitation to pause—and to see rest itself as part of the co-creative path toward regeneration.
Listen here
Full Transcript
Alisa:
Welcome back to Regenerative Worklife. I’m Alisa Murphy, and today I’m going to be exploring themes like rest—rest within the context of building a regenerative worklife, rest in the context of recovering from corporate burnout, rest in the context of acknowledging the addiction and compulsion many of us have to work, to work possibly far more than we need to, and to allow work to fill up so much space in our lives.
This exploration was inspired by a reel I shared on Instagram. If you want to follow me, you can find me at @alisa_murphy, or if you just search Regenerative Worklife I’m sure you’ll find me.
In this reel, I shared that it was my husband’s birthday. We’d just dropped the kids at school—it was only the second day back—so we were still in that deep relief after the summer holidays. For the first time in weeks the house was quiet and reasonably tidy. I was in the kitchen pottering about, finishing clearing up after breakfast, probably making bread.
My husband was at the other end, in the dining room—it’s open to the kitchen—really absorbed in playing with the headphones I’d bought him for his birthday. They’re noise-cancelling and he was just in this bubble: immersed, peaceful, still. He’s someone who is often very busy, who feels the weight of all the things to do, who is efficient at getting jobs done. It was lovely to see him just sitting there enjoying a moment of peace and quiet.
It reminded me why I used the word “playing”—like when I catch my children completely absorbed towards the end of the day when they’re tired, working something out with cars, narrating whole stories, totally immersed. I always remind myself not to interrupt them in those moments.
And yet, in the kitchen, even as I enjoyed his peacefulness, I felt a compulsion to interrupt him. To say: time’s ticking on, school pickup will come around soon, let’s make the most of the day, make the most of your birthday. I felt a strong urge to plan and to maximise the hours. I wasn’t going to work that day so I could spend it with him, and still I couldn’t just let myself be in that moment—even though I could see how precious it was: both of us moving slowly, doing simple things.
What I shared in the reel was how strong that compulsion is for so many of us—to always be doing, filling our time, planning ahead, making the most, being efficient and productive—even when we’ve chosen downtime and a slower day. The heaviness of that, how invasive it is, and how difficult it is to step outside it.
And yet that moment—me doing the dishes slowly, getting the bread out of the oven, my husband nearby, both of us gentle—that is living. That is life. But a lot of us are always seeking more, feeling we have to do more, control what comes next, and eke out the most possible.
I hadn’t posted reels in a while. I have an off-and-on relationship with Instagram—it can quickly become addictive for me—so I’m still finding a way to be there lightly and naturally, practicing by just showing up and talking about what’s on my mind. The reel had a really good response. People said it brought tears to their eyes and they needed to hear it. Many shared they struggle with the same compulsion and wanted the reminder to live in the present, not always think ahead, not treat time like currency—not in extractive, consumerist terms.
A wonderful friend made the excellent point that the compulsion I was discussing is rooted in colonialism and capitalist societies—and that choosing, over and over, not to be swept up in it is a form of resistance. She referenced Tricia Hersey’s amazing work, Rest Is Resistance. If you haven’t read it, I recommend it. She also has a rest deck—cards you can pull to remind yourself to rest through the day.
I wanted to explore what rest means in the context of pursuing regenerative work. Even as I say “pursuing”—and that’s often how I describe the work I do with clients—I feel we can pursue without it being relentless, without always being full speed or maximum efficiency. There may be better words. The word that comes is: can we receive a regenerative worklife instead of pursuing it?
Receiving is a big theme for me. If you go back a few episodes, there’s an episode about my first experience with Human Design. My strategy is to wait to respond, which I’ve interpreted as waiting to receive. Receiving has such a different energy compared to building, creating, pursuing, growing. Initially it can feel inactive or passive, but when you allow it, it’s not that at all. It’s an opening up, a slowing down, a disentangling, a detoxing—and it’s really necessary.
It’s necessary if, as we move towards a more regenerative worklife, we don’t want to recreate what we had before. We don’t want just a slightly better version of our old relationship with work. We want something transformative, joyful, life-giving—to us and to others. I think we can only get there if rest is a central component of how we navigate the journey.
This connects to what I spoke about a few episodes ago about making space—that making space is the non-negotiable of regenerative work. Even there I was talking about it more actively: sitting with thoughts and contradictions, doing the inner work, making space for the work. But the point of rest is that we have to approach it with no expectation of return. We have to value it for its own sake. Rest has intrinsic value. It is not an exchange—“I’ll rest for half an hour; now please give me a major breakthrough.”
As someone beautifully commented on my post: we have to value being as much as we value doing. Thank you, Fariel, for that amazing line.
This shift is challenging. It’s been extremely challenging for me. Entrepreneurship is in my blood now; the conditioning runs deep. For 15 years I was always on. My self-image was: I’m the instigator, the problem-solver, the one who makes things happen. I pour my energy into this and it grows. Very individualistic—even though I’m proud of what I built and the culture we created. The startup/founder world is often extraordinarily individualistic, and it asks individuals to pour their life force into something and hope that there will be a payoff at some point.
So we must find a way to embrace rest and accept that it will probably be challenging—if not triggering—for many of us who have come to understand our worth in terms of how productive, efficient, smart, and able to multitask we are. Because that is addictive.
For years I would get the seven o’clock train to London and work all the way there. I’d have back-to-back meetings. At one point—peak madness—I’d take taxis to meetings, even though it often took longer than the Underground, just so I could take calls in the taxis. Then I’d get the train home and work all the way back. My amazing husband would often have dinner ready. I was so lucky; I’d come in and he’d pour a bath for me, and I’d get in the bath while he made dinner. In the bath I’d think about all the big ideas I hadn’t had time for during the day. Then I’d have dinner, hopefully spare a few minutes for my husband, and go to bed—after probably checking my emails—still thinking about work. Super, super addictive.
I’ve noticed this come up even in my new worklife as I’m nurturing Regenerative Worklife. I have to be careful of the compulsion to let it fill every moment of my consciousness—and just rest. Because when I do—this is the point—when I rest, that is when I can receive. Yes, rest has intrinsic value and just being is enough. And also, I believe that’s when we connect with the co-creation I was talking about in Episode 47: that feeling we are creating with something bigger than ourselves, the kind of mystical union Julia Cameron writes about in The Artist’s Way. Rest has to be central to that.
When I think about rest, three words come up for me, and I’m going to name them because maybe they’re similar for you: laziness, waste, and failure. That is the truth of how I think about rest—even though, if you asked me what I want to do today, I might say: lie in bed all day; go on a slow walk; potter around the kitchen. I’ve been on this journey for a while now. I’ve gotten much better at doing those things and valuing them, understanding I have to have space in my life, that there is joy in lying and staring at the ceiling—or better, lying on the grass looking up at branches. I do more of that. But still, the compulsion I spoke about lingers.
That compulsion—essentially colonial capitalist conditioning wrapped up in our corporatised approach to careers, businesses, and worklives—is so strong because behind it are those feelings: rest means I have failed; rest means I am lazy; rest means I am wasting my time and opportunities.
So what comes up for you when you think about rest?
Maybe you have a great relationship with it and prioritise it. I don’t know many people for whom that’s true. Maybe, like me, you’re somewhere in between. I hope this is a helpful reminder to come back to rest, to recognise its intrinsic value, and to understand the relationship between rest and receiving, which is another way of describing co-creation, synchronicity, creativity.
Perhaps you’re still very deeply attached to corporate conditioning. Perhaps the idea of resting is frightening, or it sounds great in your head but when it comes to doing it, you feel resistance. If that’s the case, I invite you to notice what happens when you try to rest—or even when you just think about it. What happens in your body?
I definitely feel some anxiety. There are two opposing forces: one part of me says yes, I want to rest—my body says yes—and another, deeper place (somewhere in my diaphragm, where I tend to experience anxiety) says no, we can’t afford to rest. That might be a thought that comes up for you too: rest is a luxury you can’t afford.
Notice the thoughts that arise around rest. This isn’t something you can force. It starts with recognising the resistance, naming it, exploring the thoughts behind it, letting them have space. Then maybe practice a little at a time: take a few minutes to look out the window; when you’re walking from meeting to meeting, on the school run, or on the way back from the gym, sit on a bench; sit on the grass; just sit. If you sit for 30 seconds, great. Sit and do nothing.
I’m not here as a teacher. I’m on this journey with you. For me, getting specific: I try to spend as much time in nature as I can—but also to do that without listening to podcasts. I often do a lot of my work while walking in nature, but am I also spending time just looking, noticing, listening, smelling?
Another practice is resisting the urge to multitask. If I’m making dinner, can I just make dinner—not make dinner while checking all the school emails? Can I go for a walk and not use it as an opportunity to stop and create a reel? Can I just sit and stare out the window?
A big one for me right now is getting into bed without my phone—without even a book—lying down, closing my eyes as I go to sleep, and feeling whatever comes up. Bedtime is one of the most concentrated times of resistance to rest for me. I’m working on doing that in silence, without stimulation, letting myself feel the discomfort.
I have zero scientific evidence that this will help you in your quest for a regenerative worklife that brings you joy and satisfaction and gives life to others. But I have a deep knowing in my body that it’s true: rest must be part of our worklives, and choosing it is an act of resistance.
As always, I would love to hear what this episode sparks for you—what feelings come up, what your relationship with rest is like. Instagram is a great place for conversation, so come over if that works for you. You’re always welcome to email me at alisa@regenerativeworklife.com.
Thank you for listening to today’s exploration. I hope something I shared has spoken to you in some way. That is my whole goal with the podcast: to explore out loud and trust that something sparks for you. I’ll see you back here next week.
