Beauty in the Break
Beauty in the Break is a new podcast that explores the powerful moments when life shatters—and the unexpected beauty that follows.
Hosted by public speaker Cesar Cardona & filmmaker and poet Foster Wilson, each episode dives into conversations of healing, transformation and resilience through self-awareness, storytelling and mindfulness. Whether you’re navigating change or seeking inspiration, this series uncovers the common threads that connect us all, to help you achieve personal or professional growth.
Beauty in the Break
Choosing Rest in a Restless World: Life Outside Hustle Culture
What if rest isn’t something you earn, but something you need in order to live fully? In this episode of Beauty in the Break, Foster and Cesar explore the radical and often misunderstood practice of rest in a culture addicted to hustle, productivity, and burnout. Through personal stories, cultural critique, and embodied wisdom, they unpack why rest is not laziness, but a necessary act of self-trust, nervous system regulation, and an act of rebellion against systems that reward exhaustion. This conversation is for anyone feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or quietly longing for permission to slow down.
In this episode:
- Why hustle culture keeps us exhausted and disconnected
- How burnout sneaks in through productivity
- Cesar’s honest and emotional confession
- Why nature never rushes and neither should we
- How rest reshapes creativity and clarity
- Breaking cycles our children inherit
Also mentioned:
- Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey (The Nap Ministry)
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- In the FLO by Alisa Vitti
- Foster’s dad in How to Be A Rebel with Dr. Reid Wilson
If this episode spoke to you, you will love Say More! Vol. 2: Hustle Culture Sucks where we explore more problems of hustle culture. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube.
If you enjoyed this episode, take a moment to follow Beauty in the Break on your favorite podcast app and leave a review—it really helps!
Reach out to the show—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram.
Cesar Cardona:
- Receive his monthly newsletter Insights That Matter
- Get guided meditation from Cesar on his website
- Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify
Foster Wilson:
- Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
- Learn about her postpartum services
- Receive her monthly newsletter Foster’s Village
Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson
Executive Producer: Glenn Milley
We need to reject the hustle culture that's not working in order to find something new.
Clearly, my body, my mind, but also like the universe being like, hey girl, you need to slow down.
It's not what I want for you.
And I don't want to lose you any sooner than I have to, inevitably.
I think that is a rebellious act.
That is challenging the status quo.
That's disrupting the whole system.
Hello and welcome to Beauty in the Break.
I'm Foster.
And I'm Cesar.
This is the podcast where we explore the moments that break us open and how we find beauty on the other side.
So whatever you're carrying today, you don't have to carry it alone.
We are here with you.
Thanks for being here and enjoy the show.
Hello, beloved.
Welcome back to Beauty in the Break.
Hello, hello.
And wherever you are in this world, I am thrilled that you're here with us.
Today, I am in my comfy clothes because we are doing an episode about rest.
Dun, dun, dun.
I thought maybe we should start the episode with some snoring or something.
Like a cold open of just sounds of people napping.
So why in the world are we doing an episode on rest?
I just think that this is something that has been a lifelong journey for me to figure out how to do.
And I still don't know how to do it.
And you are so good at it.
So you're going to impart your wisdom to our listener, our dear, dear listener here about rest.
Because really, I think as a population here in the U.S. in particular, but our world in general, we have forgotten how to rest.
I always think of the scene in Shawshank Redemption where Brooks is writing the letter back to his friends in prison saying,
the world went and got itself in one damn hurry.
When I saw that as a kid, something about me said, well, if that old guy feels that way, then I'll eventually get there.
How do I start seeing that now?
My gosh.
Have you always been good at this?
Saying no to work.
Teach me your ways, Cardona.
In a sense.
A few things I've noticed.
One, when I was younger, I found out how much the older countries in Europe have siestas.
And that hit me.
I was like, okay, so there's something else to be said about rest here.
And then I would see things in nature, how they change over time.
Okay, this is necessary.
So then I started applying it to my own self because I, like the rest of the world, got into a hustle mentality of I need to always be producing.
Constantly.
And it drained me and wore me out and it stressed me out.
And I didn't want to do it anymore.
And when did you decide not to do that anymore?
Somewhere in the first two or three years of working in the workforce.
I was about 18 years old and I worked at this call center.
And it made no sense to me that they were tracking my time I would go on a break.
Not lunch break.
You get like an extra nine minutes.
It was nine minutes exactly to be off of that phone.
It made no sense to me.
So I just started going on my own and taking longer.
They asked me a couple of times.
And this is a bit of me giving a pushback to them because I was 18.
They pulled me aside and said, what's going on here?
Why are you taking 11 minutes to yourself instead of nine minutes?
And I said, I have horrible stomach pains and I'm going to the restroom.
Which I was.
And just not rushing to come back because that's also a version of rest.
I remember my boss said to me, you're going to the restroom.
I said, yeah.
Would you like me to take photos and send it to you?
They never asked me again why I took rest.
There's a psychological point that I was rebelling against, I guess.
A deeper psychological point of how important it is to actually tend to yourself.
Charge your battery at 50%, not at 10%.
We have such an issue with this as a society.
But just for me in particular, I feel like I've been someone who's caught up in the hustle
culture quite a lot.
And most of my life, I didn't value rest at all.
I really participated in the idea that my productivity, my output is the only thing that makes me valuable.
And to rest was my shadow side of being quote unquote lazy.
That that was, I could always work more.
I could always work more, right?
So resting just didn't have any value to me.
And although I'm not exactly there anymore, it's in a long journey of believing that hype.
I would work myself to the bone.
I would white knuckle everything.
It was a, there was a tenseness to my life that I just thought if I could force a situation, I would.
And that just meant just putting in a few more hours at the computer, putting, doing a bit more
outreach.
I had no ability to like step back and reset and recalculate and recalibrate for probably,
definitely my teenage years.
I started in high school all through my twenties.
And then even in my thirties and deep in the early days of motherhood, you know, I would parent.
And then as soon as I was off duty to go do my work, I would work and I would work until really late at night.
And it was a cycle that I just perpetuated.
How happy were you during those times?
I don't think I was happy at all.
Okay.
We have so much output to do.
And then we see it financially or reward wise.
That's the cause and effect.
And then somehow we just little by little ignore the other effect of that cause.
Stress, unhappiness, worry, fear, anger, aggression.
And then the big picture, getting down the line to the end of your life and turning around and saying, I don't remember that.
Yeah.
Or at least I made this much money.
My friend Arlene Angel says, I don't know if this is her quote or not, but she says, I've never seen a hearse with a U-Haul behind it.
You can't take any of this stuff with you.
I know someone whose mom used to work so late.
She would work all day and get home, have a TV dinner, and then go to her computer and work at the computer until she fell asleep with her face on the keyboard every night.
And those were my friend's memories of her was falling asleep at the computer.
She worked and worked and worked, living for retirement, basically, living for retirement.
And then she finally retired.
And not long after that, she had to become a caretaker for a family member of hers.
And that kept her at home working again.
And she really didn't live her life.
Right.
And I remember that being just such a, it's sad.
It's not, you know, it's not her fault.
It's all of what we participate in here.
That was a look that I was aware of.
And I was like, I just don't want that to happen to me.
It was a bit of a wake up call.
Yeah.
All organic things have a time of rest.
And it's not just going into deep sleep.
It's also taking a moment to reset and seeing what, where am I in this journey that I'm moving along?
There's nothing wrong with doing all the work.
Work is beautiful.
It's amazing.
Look how much we get done doing.
Look how much we have in this society for it.
We're just missing the other part of it.
We're just forgetting about the yin that came with the yang.
Both need to happen together.
When I think about rest now, it feels just as productive than the act of going out and making and creating something.
Because I know how beneficial it is.
The seasons change.
The fall happens.
A leaf turns red, it falls off, and that opens up space for a new, larger, broader, better leaf, better tree, taller tree in the coming spring season.
Rest is just as important.
As a physical trainer, it becomes the same thing.
You can't give a client seven days of workout consistently.
You need the rest also.
We do summer breaks for that same reason.
We do winter breaks, but we all have it in us.
And then at some point, this society made us, this society built a structure for us that said you need to consistently hustle and bustle.
When you felt all of those emotions for yourself, when you were feeling overwhelmed by being a mom and having a job and working until you couldn't anymore, what did the word rest mean for you then?
Well, a couple things.
One, at the time it meant you weren't good enough if you needed rest.
There was no worthiness that I could find within my body and in my system.
I didn't have any real knowledge of who I was if I wasn't outputting something.
I will say also that in early motherhood, when the newborn stage, which ironically is the stage in which I work with parents all the time, now as a doula, it is a forced period of rest.
It is a really snuggly, cozy time where this baby needs you all the time.
And, you know, my dream picture for my clients, if they want it, is to be sitting back on the couch with their baby on their chest, doing skin to skin, and nursing when the baby feels hungry or sad or wants something.
You know, they have a need.
And it doesn't look like a whole lot of productivity from that parent.
And I remember taking the time, actually, I was wise enough at 28 when I first became a mom, to actually say this is the only period of rest that I may have ever had in the last, you know, maybe 12 years of my life.
And in that perspective, maybe you were thinking to yourself that I might also get in the future.
Yeah, exactly.
I won't even get, right.
Yeah.
You know, I had whatever, six weeks maybe of maternity leave.
I have a distinct memory of wearing my newborn in a carrier and walking down the street and walking into a coffee shop and just getting a coffee and she's sleeping on me.
And I really had nothing to do.
This was my role at this time.
I enjoyed it very much.
And I have a picture that I kind of relish of like, this is just a nice, sweet, sleepy time.
And I don't know if I'll ever get this again.
And when you have a second kid, you really don't get that again.
It's a different story.
Well said, right, right, right.
The second and third times around.
That's a good point.
What does rest mean for you now then?
That's a great question.
12 years later.
Oh, 12 years later from that point.
Yeah, from that one point.
Just to see where, you know, where it's scaled.
I, look, I've grown a lot, especially in the last four or five years.
And especially in being in relationship with you because you're such a great example of ending the work, not putting any more output and really enjoying time that is not working.
I will say I don't really know yet what rest means to me.
But I do think that rest is an act of faith for me at this point in my life.
That's beautiful.
I trust that the other way doesn't work.
And I have to have faith right here, right now, that this is an important step.
And this is important for me, for my body, for my mind, for my soul.
It's just faith.
It's an act of faith.
I'd like to synthesize that part, what you just said, because it's really important for any person making a change in their life.
Rest, yes, but anything.
If you say to yourself, I don't know what that's going to bring me, you can turn around and say, well, I do know what this has gotten me.
So let me just leap anyway.
The greatest act of faith I had in that regard was when I was in the beginning of my eating disorder recovery.
And I could recognize that the way I had been working never worked.
I think I've said, like, I never got it right.
I trusted that that didn't work.
I didn't know that intuitive eating wasn't going to make me gain a bunch of weight.
Or I didn't know what was going to make me happy, make me sad, make me feel shameful in my body.
I didn't know what it was going to make me feel, but I knew the other way didn't work.
So I had to blindly go forward and just have faith that this new and different thing was something for me.
And if it wasn't the thing, I would find that out and I would find something else.
But I had to give it a whole college try and reject what's not working.
And so today it's like we need to reject the hustle culture that's not working in order to find something new.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We've said this before in some of the previous episodes of the high percentage of stress and overwhelm that people feel in this culture.
I think that we are pushing up against wanting more space.
The growth of meditation that's happening.
The phrase mindfulness itself.
I mean, my entire practice is called growth mindfulness.
It's the fact that it's showing up, that it's manifesting in this culture means that we want more rest.
Rest.
What does rest mean to you?
Rest to me is the realization of self-love.
It's the act of self-love.
It's the knowledge that not only am I going to do this thing for myself, my body, my spirit, my mind, all of that.
It also will help me with what I want to do in my output.
It's only until you take the rest that you come back with a clearer thought.
You see it better.
You see it broader because you walked away from it.
So you're walking back into it.
You have time to process the stuff you're working on internally.
So when you come back to it, you are a refreshed person.
There is a muscle building because you have to recover from the work you've been doing.
All of that comes with it.
And then most importantly, it's the realization that 95% of things in this world are not urgent.
They're not.
But I've convinced myself that it is that urgent.
So you're giving yourself this fictitious stress for no reason.
Let me unhook that for a second, though, because what I hear you saying is that in order to be more productive, we have to have rest.
I will challenge you and say that that is a piece of hustle culture.
That if we are resting for the purpose to be, I know this isn't how you view it, but this is how you phrased it.
If we are resting for the purpose of more productivity or better productivity, then we're still buying into the idea that productivity is our value.
Well, again, it's the yin and the yang.
Yeah.
We do produce.
Right.
Every single metaphor I've used so far, the tree and nature and all, it still produces outwards.
We're just not focusing on the yin part.
Yeah.
And the goal is to find the balance of those, knowing they both serve each other.
To include the part that rest in and of itself is valuable.
Just like productivity and output is valuable.
Absolutely.
I can see the twisted way my brain could work and be like, oh, are you telling me that if I rest, I'll be more productive?
Cool.
Yeah.
If I can get a hold of a way to be more productive, my brain is going to go, oh, I'll just do that.
Here I am resting.
I'm resting and now I'll be more productive.
Why aren't I more productive?
Whereas I think the healthier version that I would like to embrace is rest in and of itself is valuable.
Full stop.
Absolutely.
That's why it's yin and yang, not yin for yang.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
You know, there's a fundamental difference there.
Don't identify with either of those.
If we lived in a society that was, everyone was just sloth and it would show in society, I would be sitting here and say, you know what's really important, guys?
Get moving.
Yeah.
Doing some stuff.
Because there's a balance that we need there.
And right now we're at absence of that balance.
Why is laziness such a bad word?
Industrialized capitalism.
Okay.
That's where it began.
You know, the agricultural era, they did work, but there was a lot of downtime as well.
There was an understanding that crops take time.
So they had to sit with those crops.
They had to relax and wait and be mindful of the time.
They wouldn't use that word, but they had to be mindful of it.
And then someone comes in and says, yo, I made this machine that can do all of your work times 12.
You want to do something else instead?
Again, everything I'm saying here is for the sake of balance.
It's not for the sake of one or the other.
No one's incorrect.
Everyone's incomplete.
To find that completeness is by seeing it all for what it is.
Rest is necessary.
Work is necessary.
And right now in this society, rest is not being done.
So we have an episode on rest, not on work.
We've gone through the industrial era.
Humans became machines, essentially.
Clock in, clock out, and work in the factories and all of these things.
And now we're in the information era still, right?
Technology is advancing so quickly that now we're at a point in which there's less that we have to do.
There's so many machines that do things for us, but our little hamster wheels are still going and going and going and being like, well, then I better at least go to the end of the Instagram role or something.
I better just keep going and churning.
If you spend your downtime, in quotes, on your phones and TikTok and Instagram, you're actually taking in the energy of hundreds and hundreds of people.
So when do you get to recalibrate you to you, solo, just in your own soul, in your own thoughts, in your own mind?
That's what's needed, I think.
Absolutely.
We have that new technology to do a lot of things for us, but it started as far back as when the vacuum was invented.
And it was like, oh, a quicker way to clean your house, so you're freed up to do the things you want to do.
But then that's not what they didn't do the things they want to do.
They just found another thing that needs to be done.
And it's our habit.
We try to consistently find the next thing, right?
But we don't have to do that anymore.
We're aware of ourselves now.
It's not necessary.
The argument against technology advancing and AI is like, oh, people are going to lose their jobs.
That is correct.
That is correct.
And we need to find a way to make things feel more fulfilling.
Because if somebody says, I'm going to lose my job, what do I do?
There's your lack of balance again.
There's your lack of balance.
There should be something else fulfilling that says, okay, I will stick to this.
I will do this fulfilled thing while I'm looking for a new job, a new career, a new whatever it can be.
Because this society at the moment only recommends rest after injury or after sickness or illness.
That's the only time we recommend rest.
Well, I just want to say I have an unpopular opinion.
So come at me here on this.
But I think that when AI takes these jobs, right, they're going to take jobs from humans, right?
And that's true.
And technology has done that for a long time.
And machines and industrial era, this has happened.
Since the beginning.
We're still saying this person, this human being is going to this workplace and working like a machine 40 plus hours a week with very little time to be with their family and to pursue hobbies and pursue the things that they really enjoy in life.
And so they no longer have to do that.
Obviously, we live in a culture where like, but yes, I need money and I need a job.
So that's a systematic thing led by people who don't want to rest.
Yeah, of course, there is a bigger issue at hand here.
However, if AI is going to take some of these jobs that feel soulless and difficult and hard for people, what are we going to do?
We have to keep reinventing ourselves.
We have to be creative with our lives.
Everybody is a creative person.
I fundamentally believe that.
We have to be creative.
Absolutely.
A long time ago, I was at a private elementary school where they gave a talk about the way in which education and young children needs to be like fostered.
Right.
And this guy was brilliant.
And his perspective was right now what's happening is that kids are getting going to college or graduating with a liberal arts degree.
And then they're going home and living in their parents' basement and they don't have a job to go to.
Right.
And he said, every single student has to be innovative and creative.
And if you are a creative, if you are looking for a problem to solve and solving the problem, then you'll never be without need in the world.
Someone will always need you.
And we all have to be creative to keep updating with the times that are changing so quickly.
We've got to pivot and we've got to say, okay, if this job is not for me and all of these big companies have all these layoffs.
And yes, it is really tragic for a lot of people.
At the same time, what are we going to do next?
And I think that requires a period of rest.
Well said.
There is that moment of a wave crashing.
Right after it crashes, it's quite silent.
There's a moment before the next wave shows up.
And this wave of the industrial era is crashing at the moment.
We have this information era that's swelling up little by little.
And in between that time, there's that bit of silence between one wave and the other.
It's the cocooning period.
Right.
The cocooning period.
That is the resting period.
That is in itself the rest and the reset.
You know, every year at Christmas when I was a kid, even in middle school and high school for sure, I was already at a place where I was working so hard and trying to...
I was on the hamster wheel.
I was trying to get straight A's and trying to get all my homework in.
And I didn't enjoy that.
I couldn't have told you a class that was my favorite.
I just was like, what am I good at?
And how can I make sure I make all the teachers happy?
I never stopped working.
And even my mom would say, take a mental health day.
She was encouraging me to not go to school that day and just take a break.
And I wouldn't do it.
And then Christmas would come and winter break would come.
And as soon as school ended, we'd travel to my cousin's house a few states away.
I would get sick.
Every Christmas I would get sick.
And that was clearly my body, my mind, but also like the universe being like, hey girl, you need to slow down.
And I see that with people all the time now that if you don't take the rest, your body will take it for you.
Wholeheartedly agree.
When I got through a relationship that was really, really toxic, the first two or three weeks that I move into a whole new place, I just kept falling asleep at these random times.
Because living where I was living with that person, it was very toxic.
I had to be very watchful.
I had to lock my doors a lot.
So I had to be aware.
And I've been holding on to this, holding on, holding on, holding on.
And then all of a sudden, finally, I was like, why am I falling asleep at 11 a.m.?
Why am I falling asleep at 2.30?
Like, what is going on?
The body held on to it and then activated the same way yours does.
Right.
Because you had to be so vigilant.
It makes me think of there's a thing in dating, I guess, or relationships early on.
It's like when you find the person that you just want to cuddle up and fall asleep with.
And I don't mean going to bed, but I mean like, oh, when I'm around them, I just feel like cozy and calm.
They calm my nervous system.
That's the person who's like safest for you.
That's the person to choose because so many people will report being really sleepy around their new partner or boyfriend.
I just feel so sleepy.
It's because you feel safe.
Your nervous system is no longer vigilant and you feel calm and safe.
I certainly felt that with you.
Is there a point that you felt to yourself, I need to do this amount of work before I can relax?
No.
No.
I felt like it was an endless cycle.
Wow.
There was always one.
I still feel that way sometimes.
There's always one more thing to do.
There's a book by Tricia Hersey called Rest is Resistance.
And she says, we must believe we are worthy of rest, that we don't have to earn it.
It is our birthright and it's one of our most ancient and primal needs.
My whole brain is like, what?
Really?
Because I definitely think, I definitely feel like I have to earn it.
Yeah.
And then what happens when we ignore those sort of natural cycles for us?
We're out of rhythm.
Yeah.
And then from there comes the stress, comes all of the systematic things that we have in the society.
That's not the only thing, of course, but that is a large percentage of it.
Part of the reason I can have so much faith around rest now is because I do always go back to nature.
In nature, we have these cycles just written into the code.
We decided to do this topic after I had just given a talk on the seasons know best,
which talk about letting things go and going into the fall and the winter because you've got to rest.
You've got to reset.
We have these months and seasons that go right into like this whole time of rest in the winter,
what should be rest, and instead we're like flooding it with holidays.
Black Friday, shopping.
Oh my God, travel.
I've got to go see all these people and gifts and shopping and this and that.
And like when do we reflect?
One of the things I really wanted to figure out for my family is how to have traditions that feel and rituals that feel important and sacred to us
without attaching it to the hustle of just what everybody else is plugged into at the times of the winter holidays.
You're right.
We do this every year in that same talk, actually different talk, of being mindful during the holidays.
I have all these photos of the holidays and the very next picture is a picture of people in Black Friday fighting over a television.
This is where I start going into the older models of stuff.
This is why I think about that guy Brooks in Shawshank Redemption.
This is how I see Buddhist monks.
One of the coolest parts about Buddhism is like, hey, it's a balance.
It's a balance.
You need to sit and just be with the self.
And this is why, in addition to all of that, this is why I look at the older European countries and see how they do it.
Someone told me once, he said this to me, I thought it was great.
We were having this conversation.
And he goes, yeah, those older countries, they got it because they went through what we're going through right now.
And they learned over time.
And I can't tell if we can just turn to those countries and say, hey, what did you do?
Or how do you do it?
Or if we need to go through the experience of it and find out.
We are tired.
But I don't want to go through the experience of it.
And I don't mean that personally for me.
I don't want to live in a society that needs to go through the experience of it.
We're going to have to, perhaps.
But if I could change it, I will.
Because along the way, we're going to lose people.
To stress, to heart attack, to obesity.
There's so many studies that show how much rest is important for you.
There's a study by PubMed that says that, on average, less than 30 minutes rest a day improves your cognitive function, your alertness.
It improves your memory.
It does a multitude of things for you.
Something as simple as less than 30 minutes.
Most of my naps that I take in the middle of the day are about nine minutes.
We just had my dad on the show last episode.
And he did not tell you his secret weapon, which is that he has been taking a 30-minute nap every single day his entire life since he was like 22.
That would make so much sense.
Every day.
We talked about him being like a rebel and a disruptor of a system.
But think about it.
Every single day, could you figure out how to get a 30-minute rest?
We were in New York City with my whole family.
We were touring a museum.
And it was mid-afternoon.
And he needed to take a nap.
He laid down on a bench in the middle of the Natural Museum of History, just slept there for 30 minutes.
I don't know how he did it, but he's going to find a way.
And then we all started to figure out, oh, yeah, like that is something he needs.
It makes him less grumpy.
It makes him ready to go.
And it's just something he requires.
So when we travel with him now, it's like we're all kind of trying to figure out, well, then what will dad take his nap?
Because it's vital for him and for his vitality in life.
It makes total sense for someone like him, a high-functioning person, because he's doing so much in a creative, brilliant sense.
It reminds me of all of the great thinkers that I know about, like Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher.
Just a metric ton of people who have consistently stopped, reset, take a nap, start over, and then do it again.
They give themselves that time.
Those people are being the best versions of themselves because they took the time to rest.
So you, you here, you listening, your job at being the best version of yourselves is to understand your patterns and cycles.
It could be a 30-minute nap a day.
It could be a 5-minute nap a day.
I work best by just sometimes putting myself up against this wall here in the chair, putting a timer for nine minutes, and just sitting upright and closing my eyes.
Not sleeping, but I'm just there.
And then all of a sudden, I'm like, where did all this burst of energy come from?
And I see everything clear, and I feel better about myself, and I feel more calm.
And again, to go back to the really important part, I've given myself the love of my own health.
And I want to say it's also, it's not only sleeping.
It's not only napping.
Rest can also have an expansive quality of like, when are we daydreaming?
When are we sitting with our thoughts and no phone and allowing ourselves to stare off into space?
When do we stand in the sun like you do quite often?
Nobody I know ever just stood in the sun, except when we were recording that episode with my dad right before you got here.
He was on your porch.
Oh, really?
And looking out at the trees and in the sun, I think it's so rare to see people actually take that opportunity.
But that's the part of life that I want to learn how to enjoy.
I want that to be the thing that I'm living for.
I want to enjoy my work too.
I want to be lit up about everything that I do.
And I want to be like, oh, yeah, I get to do this now.
I'm not there yet.
But, and I say that truly because even in this moment when I think about, oh, just take a 30 minute rest.
When I've got a list of 12 things I'd really like to get done today.
I am immediately confronted with shame.
With the shadow of laziness.
With what if I don't ever get back to those things?
Someone will judge me or think I'm a bad person.
And, yeah, it's just, it immediately comes up in me.
And oftentimes I'll be overwhelmed or overtired or something.
And you will encourage me to just chill and rest and do something else.
Do something low key or, you know, watch a silly show or something or take a nap.
And it's work to get me there, isn't it?
Yes.
Very much.
It is ironic because for me, I'm like, take the rest.
And there's a bit of a work with it.
And then I have to rest from trying to tell you to take a rest.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, that's how it goes.
I'm like, wait, wait.
I also have to release a little bit to get her to release a little bit, you know?
Yeah.
I think because if you say, well, okay, then don't, you know, then I have to sit with it
and really determine whether that is mine.
And it's your thing ultimately.
Yeah.
I have to really trust that I'll wake up from the nap in an appropriate amount of time
and get back to it.
Because I think a bit of it too is an object in motion stays in motion, an object at rest
stays at rest.
That is something I sort of have to overcome.
Like once I'm not active, then am I going to keep being not active?
Right, right, right, right.
Well, one, it's a large illusion because you've been here 41 years and you've created consistently.
So you know it's going to be there.
I don't know how one nap or 20 naps are going to just completely just turn you into a whole
new person.
I don't think it works that way.
But in addition to that, you reminded me of this when we were doing an episode of this show.
I said something along the lines to you of if this show is causing you stress or not serving
you, then I'm shutting it down.
We won't do this show whatsoever.
We can push all the hopes and dreams that we want out of this in the trash because you
and your health matters the most.
And I say to you, the person across the table, but I'm saying it to you listening as well.
Your health matters the absolute most.
So take that rest.
Give yourself the time to relax, to reset for the sake of relaxing and resetting.
Full stop.
Yeah, I remember that too.
And it was really a very powerful thing to hear because in the beginning of creating
this show, there was so much uphill.
We had to climb so high to be able to just get the show off the ground.
To learn as we go.
Yeah.
There was a huge learning curve to a lot of the pieces of putting this all together.
And it did get away from me a little bit.
It did get me to a place of feeling stressed.
And we had a deadline.
And we had a date the show was going to start and all of these things, which we made up.
We completely made them up.
Yes.
We just decided this is our show, by the way.
Don't get me started with all of the big pillars because I will give you, this will be the rest
of the episode.
Continue.
Of all the things we just make up.
But we literally created our own show.
We answered to no one and we created the release date.
But then I held myself to that standard so tightly.
I don't know what that comes from.
Why I just hang on to it so tightly.
But to hear you say that as my partner and to also say like you as a human are above even
your creativity.
You're more valuable than even your creative output, which I always put as the highest pillar
of what it is that I do is when I'm creating, that is the utmost thing.
And you actually said, no, you, your soul, your mental health.
The thing that is present.
Yeah.
You foster matter more than any creative output.
I had not heard that before in my life.
No one had ever said that to me.
I don't know that I believed it at first either.
Well, for me, creativity is the highest pinnacle that this human body can be.
But I'm more than that.
I'm an aware conscious being.
So if I want to tap into that more so than the vehicle in which I use this human body,
I have to make sure that it's tended to properly.
And that tends to be a balance.
The most impactful framing for me was to go back to the body and look at in my particular
body.
I am a person who menstruates.
And so I have a cycle.
This is directly in line with nature.
It's no mistake that we have moon cycles and we have menstrual cycles and they line up really
well.
But there are four stages to your cycle.
Just like there are four seasons.
And there's an excellent book called In the Flow by Elisa Vitti.
And she lays out the different natures of each four stages in your cycle.
We know about the menstrual part, the bleed part, but we don't really know any difference
between the rest of the 21 days of the cycle.
She lays out the follicular stage, the ovulatory stage, the luteal phase, and what foods to eat
during those times, what kind of activities to do for your body.
When you're bleeding, light yoga, stretching, maybe some gentle walking or nothing at all
is about all that's recommended when you're bleeding.
And your body is going through this big shedding, right?
When you get to your ovulatory stage, it can do the most HIIT training.
You can do heavy lifting.
You can do all this big output.
You're in this very expansive stage in your body.
It's also when you're the most social, by the way.
Social, why?
Well, because you're fertile and you're ready to procreate.
That's nature for you.
That's nature, right?
But if you really, I really recommend that book.
If you break, if you're a person who menstruates or not, because I really believe a partner or
anyone who is in relationship with someone who menstruates to understand these cycles and
how it can affect mood, not just mood, sleep, your exercise, your output, your, the,
the way in which you go about your work.
Are we in a, um, in a hibernation phase?
Your bleed is your winter of the, of the seasons, warm soups and stews and cooked vegetables and
hearty things.
And looking at your work in a kind of reflective stage, like, huh, I wonder what I should do
next.
Not doing, but reflecting on all of the projects you have and all the work you're doing.
Is this the best time?
Maybe I should rest more.
Maybe I should, maybe I should rethink that.
It's a perfect time.
Honestly, I think we're so lucky that we have this framework as people who menstruate because
it really gives us a chance to have all of the stages.
And yeah, I've said enough.
You haven't said enough actually, because I have so many questions about this.
I love knowing that.
I love hearing that.
I hadn't heard that at all.
You haven't shared this with me.
Maybe you did.
I forgot perhaps, but I don't remember that at all.
And I would love to know more of how that works as a partner for you to understand not just how
your cycles work so I can serve you, but how it works with mine.
How the dance goes between the moods of my life.
You know, it's not physically the same, but men have cycles also.
Everybody has cycles.
And then I got overwhelmed here for a moment.
I got a little full of emotion because it was amazing to see how vitalized you were just now
about that, knowing you are the person who's doing the best they can to work away from just being one way.
Like, not only are you trying to work into this unknown part of understanding cycles of things,
you're also now vitalized by it.
Like, you're interested in this new way.
That's great because I don't share this with you often because typically the time that they come up,
I need to be present with you.
But they worry me, your stress levels, how you get when you want to get something
and when you're upset about how much work you're not done.
And sometimes if you're feeling underworked, which you're not, but you feel it and it worries me.
I'm like, man, how much stress is the love of my life going through right now?
You know, and it's not, it's not what I want for you.
And I don't want to lose you any sooner than I have to inevitably.
So it's nice to see you on this side being invested in your own rest because it works.
Sitting down and being with yourself is beautiful.
At first, it doesn't seem like it, but it is beautiful to sit and rest with yourself.
Yeah.
Well, I didn't fully realize that you felt that way.
I do find myself through sheer exposure therapy to you.
That's so good.
Doing, you know.
What would Caesar do?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, yes.
What would Caesar do?
And you have become an active voice in my head that combats the voice that tells me otherwise.
That's a, I have a dictator voice in my head and it has manifested in self-loathing.
It has manifested in eating disorders.
And if I'm not actively in an eating disorder or anything of that sort, it will come out in
other ways.
It will come out as a productivity police and earn your keep sort of way.
And that voice is very loud.
To borrow your voice, like a child borrows a parent's nervous system, which they do all
the time.
That's precious.
That's a precious line.
I borrow your voice when I am like, God, I don't want to do anything else.
I just want to sit on the couch.
I hear you say, well, do it.
Hell yeah, do it.
Please continue.
Of course.
I love impressions.
He loves impressions of himself.
Most people don't like impressions of themselves.
I find them hilarious.
And then on top of that, you're really good at impressions of the essence of an individual.
Like you don't get the voice.
That's irrelevant.
You got the essence of the individual, which is so great.
So you'll say that.
And I, I'm like, oh, okay.
Yeah.
Oh.
And also he'll be proud of me for doing it.
Well, that's cool too.
That's a little bit of motivation.
And I find that I've been enjoying more at the end of the day with my kids to just sit
and enjoy a show together.
I find that I don't even let my kids rest sometimes.
Yeah.
I have to really do a balance between, we got to get out the door.
We got to go, go do this, do that.
And okay.
When are we just going to chill?
I do pick it up when our youngest will just lay on the floor and stare out the window and daydream.
And I try to be so quiet in those times to just observe them doing that and let them do that
because they're so much better at it than I am.
And it would be such an easy thing for me to do to interrupt their daydreaming
and remind them to pick up their clothes off the floor or move their dishes or something.
I don't want to be that person.
I want to learn from them and their great ability to do this.
And I definitely don't want to teach them out of it.
One of the things I do think I'm good at when it comes to the family system of rest
is that I don't overschedule my kids.
I have believed in that from a very young age that their free exploration of the world around them,
especially as toddlers and preschool age, kindergarten, uninterrupted time outside,
playing in the dirt, creating things.
You let them be and watch them.
They come up with all kinds of stuff.
One of our kids, when they were two, would go behind the bushes that were about waist level for them
and their friend would stand on the other side and they would play coffee shop with the bougainvillea leaves flowers that had fallen to the ground.
We would come up and order lattes from them and they would serve us these flowers.
And they just had free exploration of this courtyard to create all of these things.
And if I had scheduled them and kept them in classes all the time and bounce them from this thing to that thing,
there is no time for that.
And they become overscheduled and just another cog in the machine that they're going to be,
if they participate in the hustle culture of today when they're in their 20s.
I don't want that for them.
No.
You're allowing them to maintain being in touch with themselves.
We all get into the busier stuff.
And most people only get it when they retire or when they're too old to move.
And they're like, oh, here I am.
That's me again.
And they'll start psychologically remembering some of the ways of them that they didn't experience since they were a kid.
But rest will tap you into the fundamental fabric of who you are.
Okay.
Please, because I learn best from you, tell me, practically speaking, what rest looks like in your day-to-day.
Yeah, totally.
One, I go through the mindset day to day, through most of my things.
In the back of my mind, in the beginning it was a mantra to myself, and then it becomes habit of,
this is probably not urgent.
This is not urgent is what I would say to myself.
It's not urgent.
Because most things are not urgent.
95, 99% probably things are not urgent.
Fire, that's urgent.
Choking, urgent.
Car accident, urgent.
Break a leg, break an arm, urgent.
Traffic, not urgent.
You're not in traffic, you are traffic.
So you might as well put on a podcast, put the windows down and enjoy it.
So my response to things, I don't have to get to them immediately.
I can take the time and mull over it, what I want to say.
Daniel Kahneman has this book called Thinking Fast and Slow.
It talks about our decision making process.
It's a great observation of putting that space between you and your actions, you and your thoughts, you and your feelings.
Middle of the day, I will feel a lull coming up for me.
And most of us do.
In our species, most of us have that.
And I will lay down.
Oftentimes, it's laying down and not falling asleep.
And then sometimes it is taking a nap.
And then I get up and usually I'll go back to doing some things that I love.
I am very privileged that I live in a part of my life that almost everything I do is something that I want to do.
As a trainer, as a meditation teacher, as a public speaker, everything I do in my day is pretty much what I love.
I'm very fortunate in that way.
Some people don't, a lot of people don't have that.
And you make your own schedule.
And I make my own schedule.
You have that privilege.
Of course, I have all the responsibilities for it and I'm, you know, held accountable for all the money I don't make and so on and so forth.
But I have the better side of the deal.
Most importantly for me.
This is the most important part for me.
When I am done with work for the day, I am done.
I am done.
And it's not aggressive done.
It's, okay, I'll deal with that tomorrow.
I don't want to make a decision so far after sunset and so far before sunrise.
I don't want to.
There are times I keep tabs on stuff if something needs to be updated and I'll do that.
Because again, balance even within balance.
But when I'm done, that's that.
You're not going to hear from me if it's work related.
You're not going to any of that stuff.
And I'm going to sit and I'm going to do what I want to do.
And in my case, it is usually watching a really, like, cool drama.
Watching a movie.
Watching baseball.
Eating the food that I want.
And enjoying that.
Very often I couldn't even tell where my phone is.
I'm like, I don't know where my phone is.
And I give myself that time.
It's what I liked to do when I was a kid.
So maybe that's where I'm pulling it from.
And you listening here, find the thing that you really enjoyed as a kid and start there.
Give yourself a block of time at the end of the day or the middle of the day or whatever your schedule allows.
And do that.
And then know that it's going to evolve from there.
You don't have to keep playing with those action figures.
Because that's what you like to do when you're seven.
This lull that you described that most people have, we figured out a way around that in society.
It's called Starbucks.
Yeah.
I mean, we've just built an afternoon caffeine bump into our daily life.
So instead of Spain, where there's a three or four hour downtime in the afternoon to address that lull and go home and be with your family and have food and sleep and all that, and then go back out and do whatever.
We just fixed it.
Quick fix with caffeine.
We band-aided it.
We put a band-aid over it.
That's what we did.
I'm laughing at myself now because I really am working towards rest because a few months ago I gave up caffeine completely.
Yes, completely.
That's what I was about to say.
Boy, you are a trooper for that.
I don't have those issues.
I have other issues.
Heavier issues.
Alcohol issues.
Drugs issues.
So for me to work through that, I'm like, fuck, that's a lot, right?
Heavier drug issues, I should say.
My issue is not heavier than your issue, to clarify.
And to see you go through this, whoo, boy.
You gave yourself a task.
And you are doing quite great.
I did.
Yeah.
It's now been maybe five months since I've been completely caffeine free.
It took me about four weeks overall.
I did battle a lot of side effects.
I was having probably two cups of coffee a day.
I don't even really know exactly why.
But I did hear somebody say they quit caffeine because they wanted to know who they were without any substance at all.
Hell yeah.
And I appreciate that thought.
And I was damn well curious about that myself.
But I do think that it invites in like no opportunity for pushing through.
This week in particular, I've been tired, more tired than usual.
And it doesn't feel good to me.
And I have to just kind of sit with the uncomfortable thing of being a little less productive and a little sleepier.
And guess what?
I actually did start my bleed.
Oh, there it is.
And early too.
So it's like my body's going, hey, you better slow down.
Yeah.
I love that part about like experiencing being tired.
Again, you don't have to put the bandaid over it.
Experience the wound.
So therefore, you can over time heal.
Whatever it is.
Like you'll be tired and you'll know how to manage and be tired.
This is more of a Buddhist thing in a sense.
But when I'm tired, I don't try to or even hope to not be tired.
I just say, okay, do this day tired.
Express yourself in the tired manner.
Do that.
This is a life hack.
It becomes nice.
Like, oh, I'm tired.
Yeah, I'm tired.
And it feels good, which is so strange for this culture to say that.
But just experience life like that.
It's not, I got to drink coffee to get myself awake.
I got to, no, no.
Do it tired.
Just do what you're doing tired.
You'll find some cool things to take with you too.
Because I would speak slower.
Because I was tired.
And I realized people listen to me a little more.
I'm saying what I want to say clearer because of that reason.
So maybe if I just, in my regular non-tiredness, speak slower.
I wouldn't have figured that out if I didn't just enjoy tiredness, you know.
In the same vein of quoting and using wise people, I want to quote The Sopranos.
There's a scene where Tony's talking to another boss.
He's like, are you still seeing The Therapist?
And Tony's like, oh, you know about that too, huh?
And the guy says, and I quote, I love this.
There's no stigmata.
Clearly means stigma.
But then at the end, he says to him, be a better friend to yourself.
And you've got this TV show about the mafia talking about self-care.
Right.
And I think of that old Italian man, Carmine Lupertazzi, that was the character's name,
looking at Tony saying, be a better friend to yourself.
And how can you be that better friend to yourself?
And I think for the sake of this episode,
and for the sake of the majority of Americans listening right now, rest.
Yeah.
We have to, I have to lead by example.
Because I don't want this for my children.
And we can lead by example.
And we can show everyone around us this rebellious act of taking a rest.
Like my dad.
Yeah.
Yeah, true.
You know?
I get clients and they say, well, how was your weekend?
They say, I didn't do anything.
I'm like, hell yeah.
Yeah.
And listen, I read recently in a doula group that I'm in,
and there's a doula who, there was a whole conversation about bleeding while you're with
clients and their furniture and all this stuff and having a heavy cycle, right?
And this one doula chimed in and she said, I actually put in my contract.
I don't work when I'm bleeding.
Whoa.
I take those days off.
Well, first of all, she led by example for all of us.
We were all like, wow, how could you do that?
I had so many voices saying, how could you do that?
Right.
But then also leading by example to your clients who are learning a new way of being.
Right.
Of rest.
To say, hey, you know what's acceptable?
I'm giving you permission to say, eh, take this couple of days off when you're bleeding
heavy.
Very nice.
Take these whole six weeks off when you're bleeding heavy after birth.
Nice.
Right?
Good insight on spotting that.
I wouldn't have picked up on that.
You're right.
I think that is a rebellious act.
Yeah.
That is challenging the status quo.
That's disrupting the whole system.
Mm-hmm.
I love the idea that rest is rebellious.
Again, Rest is Resistance, Tricia Hersey's book, because to say that it's rebellious,
gives me something to do, it's like, oh, then I want to do that because I do believe
that I'm not like everybody else.
I'm not a lemming.
You make it interesting for yourself.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You make it interesting for yourself.
Okay.
And so if I do this, if I succeed in this, and maybe we'll come back to it at a later date
and see how far I've come.
If I do this, I will have probably broken the biggest cycle for my children.
That's beautiful.
That I can think of.
That's precious.
I do not want them living.
Yeah.
A stressed life that I had at a young age.
Yeah.
I would like to break this cycle.
Dope.
Take care of yourself.
What do we say?
I don't know.
Whatever you, whatever, we're going to keep this part in right here.
Okay.
I think we should keep it in.
Well, I hope you find some rest in your day.
Most importantly, please be kind to yourself.
I'll see you next time.
If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.
That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most.
And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty in the Break wherever you get your podcasts.
We'll see you next time.
Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.
Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.
Original music by Cesar + the Clew.
