53: How to Have a Truly Restful Day

The other day I had a friend message me and ask “what does a restful day look like for you?” And that got me thinking, how many busy, high achieving, mamas need to know what it looks like to actually rest? 

Rest doesn’t just come as spa days, silent evenings with a cup of tea, or hours on hours of cuddling up in a chair and reading your favorite comfort novel. Rest can look like an adventure through the woods, it can look like a day out shopping, it can look like Disney movie marathons with the kids. Rest has a lot of faces, but only one heart. Rest is about renewal and giving your busy brain a break.

I’m here to show you it’s easier than you think! Let’s get well rested mama.

Have a Do-Nothing Day

Hello, my beautiful, beautiful friend. Thank you for joining me here again on another episode of Meant To Bloom. Today’s topic is super important, aren’t they all? I mean, I don’t come on here just to talk. I’m always here to share something that I think is gonna benefit somebody out there somewhere in some way.

I have this friend who has been, just working herself into the ground, trying to balance work and life and motherhood and wifely duties and um, and she’s just kind of getting a little bit burnt out on that and, She’s working on this really amazing project that involves a lot of writing and she’s telling me, I think I need to take a day off from writing.

And I’m telling her like, Yeah, you should definitely take a full day off. Go rest. We are called to rest weekly. I mean, Sabbath rest is something I really believe in. I do not practice what I preach on this one. I try to, I have the intention too, but I’m not great at, um, the pre-planning to go into like a full on Sabbath rest of really.

Doing nothing for a full day on a consistent basis of setting aside one specific day every single week. I’m not great at that, but I am really great at having do nothing days. Okay. I am great at making sure that I rest before my body makes me rest. Typically, I mean, sometimes I get thrown off and caught off guard during the certain time of the month, and I’m forced to rest on a different day than I had.

But with that, give yourself grace. It’s fine. We do what we do. We do the best we can with what we have. We keep on going. We keep on growing. But anyways, I never thought I’d have to come on here and have this conversation. I never thought I’d have to have this conversation with anyone because rest seemed so easy to me.

It seemed to me like the only hard part of rest was not stressing wild rest like I can physically just. That’s okay for me. Like I know how to plan a day of doing nothing, but it’s a matter of whether when I sit to relax or I try to do something that fulfills me. Am I being mentally drawn away by chores and tasks and projects that have not been completed?

Or am I being present and focusing on what I’m doing right now? I kind of thought that was the tricky part, but my friend literally sent me this text. When I told her it was time for her to rest, and I’m telling you, it’s probably time for you to rest too. We’re gearing up for the holidays here and I’m, I’m personally really sick of getting in this pattern of wearing myself so thin every holiday season and not enjoying it.

But you know, trying to make sure everything goes perfectly and then nothing goes perfectly because Perfect doesn’t exist. And then like just getting stressed and getting worn out and getting exhausted. And then every January falling into that, like, well, things need to change. I need to simplify. I need to not forget to drink water for three days.

I need to actually sleep. Like I’m really sick of that pattern. So if you’re on board with me, let’s. Let’s start being who we wanna be next year. Right now in, you know, in November, let’s get a two month head start on who we wanna be, what we want our lives to look like. Let’s start now. Why wait for the new year?

That’s an arbitrary date created by people just to track the passing of time as we know it. And it’s not re, it doesn’t really mean anything unless you attach meaning to it. I attach meaning to every day of my life. Right now is the best time to start. Let’s drink water, Let’s get sleep, let’s rest. Like truly, really, really rest and let’s have a do nothing.

Dates once a week. Okay. I love my do nothing day, but my friend, when I told her to rest, she texted me, What does a resting day look like for you? Because I’m not sure what a rest day looks like. And I was like, Oh my gosh. You’re right, like I was deemed lazy growing up. My mom always told me I was lazy because I am a champion at do nothing days.

I can sit and do nothing. It was learning to not stress while doing nothing. That was like a challenge for me, and that all just comes down to giving yourself grace. That all comes down to knowing that, I mean, I used to stress so badly whenever someone would be like ‘the dishes can wait, they’ll be waiting for you when you’re ready.’

And I’m like, well, knowing they’re waiting stresses me out more. So here’s how I do a do nothing day. I usually plan it ahead. I know it’s a day where I’m not gonna have appointments, I’m not gonna have interviews. I’m not gonna, you know, have a to-do list on this day. I’m not gonna be running errands.

Like at minimum I’m gonna take my kid to school drop off and I’m gonna go back and pick up that kid from school. Like we’re not doing anything. Maybe we’ll go through a fast food drive through so that I don’t have to cook them any kind of lunch that they can, you know, refuse to eat. Maybe that’s what we do.

But I really feel into a do nothing day. I do not plan the do nothing day. And you know what? Sometimes I pick up my kids from school and I’m feeling so awesome from my do nothing day. We’ll go play at the park. We will play at the park, not they’ll play. And I’ll sit on my phone, we’ll play at the park.

Okay? I love playing Lava Monster with my kids when I have the energy to do it. Um, But that is just beautiful memories that I love creating with them, um, for myself, not just for them. Like , like it is very selfish of me playing Lava Monster with them because I love those little giggles. Anyways, so for my do nothing day, I literally plan to do nothing and I go with the flow.

I don’t get all legalistic in saying that I’m not allowed to clean or I’m not allowed to leave the house. I’ll be sure that my schedule is empty. It’s just a white, a white day, a blank page in my planner. Um, and I don’t allow myself to create a to-do list on this day. I allow myself just to have room and space to be, and to breathe.

And if I wanna sit and just veg out and watch Gilmore Girls all day while the kids have screen time in the other room, like, I don’t care. That’s okay. We need those days. Some days, right? As long as that doesn’t become a pattern where it lasts like a whole week or two weeks and like you’re just throwing your whole life away and not caring about anything anymore.

Like that’s, um, that’s maybe something to be concerned about, a new problem to address. But if you have a day or two where you need to just chill, and Netflix, and just binge eat some food that makes you feel cool, like do that. Like if your kids are taken care of. That’s it. Like , you don’t have to do amazing things every single day.

Your existence is amazing, being able to operate from a place of love is amazing. So if you need to recalibrate and take it. Do it. You should be recalibrating every week, but not every, no, do nothing day. Doesn’t always have to look the same. It can look totally different every time. If you need to just veg out and watch tv, do that.

I will usually start my do nothing day with a 10 minute tidy up because I feel so good that I’m gonna do nothing today while I’m brewing up my pot of coffee. Because that happens for me every single day. While I’m brewing my coffee on a do nothing day, I’ll usually do a quick sweep of the house where I’ll pick up trash.

I’ll do a quick little vacuum of the living room, just so I’m not stepping on like popcorn bits, uh, from the day before . And I will usually load the dishwasher so that it’s ready to go, or, you know, I’ll clear, I’ll clear my kitchen counters even if it means that I’m piling all the dishes into the sink.

But at least then it feels better when I go in there and get something to eat. The kitchen’s not this disgusting mess waiting for me. It’s just like this consolidated mess in the sink, to me that feels very different to having a sink of dishes to wash versus the entire kitchen is a mess.

So I will do that and it’s usually just a 10, 20 minutes tops of a quick cleanup and then I feel like I can rest because the house is just clean enough. I just don’t wanna be stressed about that. So I know that about myself and I’ll clean that. And a lot of days I will just snuggle up with the kids and watch a movie.

Or I’ll go to my office and I will not work. I will just binge watch TV while my kids are in the other room watching their TV and playing on their tablets. And, you know, we see each other for snacks pretty much. Um, that’s what those days look like sometimes. Sometimes it’s a walk outside, sometimes it’s a family hike or something.

Like some days on my do nothing days like the, just the white day, it feels, I feel like high energy and I don’t wanna sit and I wanna go do things and I will. And sometimes on my do nothing day, I come up with an idea for a brilliant project. And like, whether it’s a home project or a work project, like I have designed a number of.

Like principal resources for my Etsy shop on my Do Nothing days because the spark just hit because I allowed myself time to calm down and to just be for a minute. And then I got, Oh, here we go. This is a great idea. Let me go whip that up because it’s fun for me to work on Canva and do all that designing.

So I will do that. But if I’m doing that on Do Nothing day, I have to make sure I’m balancing it with rest. Break from the screens, all that kind of stuff. And you know, it’s always just a go with the flow kind of thing. All right? And I will often try to spend some time outside, especially if I get distracted from my do nothing day and like to design something on my computer.

I will be sure to take time to go outside and refresh and reground because the tech just sucks your energy out. And so I like to re-energize outside. If I’m feeling it, I’ll do some yoga or Pilates. I’m not big on working out. I don’t normally work out, but I will usually do some stretching or some yoga.

Um, if it feels good on a do nothing day, because I have, I have a whole day of time. I can’t use the excuse, I don’t have time to do that. So if I wanna do it, I do it. Sometimes I’ll take a bath in the middle of the day. That feels so awesome. And, you know, sometimes I’ll just ask kids, Hey, what do you guys wanna do today?

Let’s do whatever you wanna do, because I’m just so excited to not have anything I have to do, you know? And we’ll do something like that. I basically do whatever I feel like and I do my best to enjoy every moment of that day. So that’s what my do nothing day looks like.

That’s what my restful days look like. They look different every day. But the point is, I do everything I can to not stress. I do everything I can to have a good time. And I do everything I can to pour into myself and those around me. All right? It’s not a day for me to show up and serve. It’s not a day for me to cook a big dinner some days, Oh my do nothing days.

I end up feeling so good at dinner time that I will cook up, um, like a bigger dinner. And if you’ve heard me talk before, I’m not big on cooking. So that’s like a big emotional shift that I can feel well enough that I’m excited to cook dinner for them. And I might cook something a bit more complicated, like, you know, some country fried chicken or you know, bacon lasagna from scratch or something like that.

Um, but yeah, like I try to go to bed on time cuz even a restful day can be kind of exhausting. And I’m usually ready to like, go to sleep by like seven on a day like,

But these days are so important, and I mean, there’s a reason why, there’s a reason why rest is talked about so often. And recharging is, you know, a thing. And there’s a reason why Sabbath is such a big deal, like in the Bible, and I’m pretty sure other religions have it too, where just taking a day to rest, recalibrating, renewing yourself.

It’s so good for you and it will light a fire in your soul to do a do nothing day. Like my friend was just, she’s just sending me so many like realizations, like her whole life was falling into place simply because she finally took a day where she didn’t have a to-do list. She finally had a day where she wasn’t booked from morning to night with things to do.

She just gave herself permission to exist. Her soul has been like lit on fire. She’s got so much direction now. She knows what she wants and she’s, you know, ready to get it. And I’m so excited for her and I love being on this journey with her. Um, I love helping her, you know, stay motivated and learn how to create things in the areas that are brand new to her.

 I’m super proud of her and I know you’re probably listening too. You’re my best friend. I love you. Find yourself a friend like that that you guys just lied to each other on fire, by the way. Do a do nothing day and let me know how it goes. Let me know what you did on your do nothing day and what you learned and what, like, how it felt.