The Rest Is Up To You

Welcome back, Flockies! Season 2 is officially here and we're starting with today's episode which is ALL about REST! After humming and hawing about whether or not to take a break from the podcast for the summer, Emily shares with you why it was the best decision ever, in hopes to inspire you to make more time for REST for yourself! She chats about her own experience in slowing down this summer, what came from it, and how you can do it too! With tangible tips on how to get better sleep, to the 6 different forms of rest, this episode is the sign you need to just FLOCKING do it! REST assured.... it's the best way to proactively protect your joy! Now, the REST is up to you!

Time Stamp:

0:50 - Intro
1:33 - Welcome Back! / Stats on Season 1
5:30 - The reason behind our summer pause
10:56 - Scheduling rest in PROACTIVELY
15:56 - Rest IS productive
18:12 - Rest as a foreign concept to the ambitious woman and the guilt that comes attached to it
20:35 - We were never meant to live so fast
21:56 - Doing less to have more
23:41 - How to better your sleep (one form of rest)
28:45 - The 6 forms of rest to consider
33:47 - The world doesn't need you busy, it needs you here and present and joyful
36:04 - Disclaimer

Resources Used for this episode:

Just 29% of Canadian workers used all of their vacation time in 2022: survey | Benefits Canada.com

Predictors and disturbances of sleep quality between men and women: results from a cross-sectional study in Jordan | BMC Psychiatry

Rest is Productive: How to take a break without all the guilt - ARC Counseling and Wellness

Why restorative rest makes you more productive and how to achieve it - Work Life by Atlassian

"I Usually Fall Asleep Within Minutes": People Are Revealing Their Unconventional Advice For How They Drastically Improved Their Sleep

Connect with Emily:

On The Gram - @thejoyfulflamingo https://www.instagram.com/thejoyfulflamingo/

For Collaborations - thejoyfulflamingo@gmail.com

The Joyful Flamingo Podcast is produced by jpvoiceovers.
You can find them here : jpvoiceovers

*DISCLAIMER*
Just a reminder, that I am not a medical or psychological professional. Each one of my episodes has been inspired by my own experience and journey through life and is brought to you through my own opinions and my own lens. Any suggestions or advice offered here do not substitute proper conversations with your own healthcare professionals for either your physical or mental wellbeing.

Transcript

Welcome home, Flackies. We've officially migrated back to the pod after a summer away from each other and I cannot wait to connect again. Today's episode dives deeper into the reasoning behind the pause and break in production I decided to take between season one and season two,
and the lessons I learned about why rest is so incredibly important and one of the best things you can do proactively to protect your joy.
When your mind and body tell you they need a break, a rest, a pause, a quick minute to renew themselves, please, please, please pay attention. Listen into the rest of today's episode for the extra gentle nudge you might need to give yourself some rest.
Let's get season two started, baby. Well, hey there, friend. And welcome to the joyful flamingo podcast. I'm your host, Emily Schreiber,
and I am obsessed with empowering women to tune into themselves to zoom in on their own well -being. So in turn, they can lead their most vibrant, aligned,
and joyful lives. I want to create a tsunami of self -discovered, self -loved, and self understood women to show up in this world unapologetically and joyfully and to pass the torch on for generations to come.
If any of that feels aligned with your vibe, stick around. I'm so glad you're here. Now, let's go find our joy. Hey,
hey, hey, joyful flamingo flock. Welcome back. Gosh, I have missed you. It has been a hot minute. How the heck are you? How was your summer?
How's your transition going back into fall and school and work routines and rhythms and all that jazz? I know that it can sometimes be a tough switch back. So I'm hoping it's going well.
It requires a lot of energy and adrenaline and a lot of emotion and all the things. And I hope that it's going smoothly for you. And I also hope that you are ready for another season of the joyful flamingo because I certainly am.
I've got another quick question to ask before we really get started here. And that question is, are you new here? Who is new here? Raise your hand. You're in the car like actually raising your hand and somebody beside you is like,
why are they raising your hand? I am so pleasantly surprised with the listens of the podcast that still happened during our summer break. And I think that has to do with quite a few newbies who are around these parts.
You know, there's new countries that were added to our listening list. There were new downloads. There were new follows. And quite honestly, that was super exciting to me and also super insightful as well,
which we'll get to the why for that in a bit. As I was prepping for season two, I did run some growth stats from our first season together and I really wanted to share it with you with the flock because it is a thousand and ten percent because of all of you.
And so I really wanted you to know what our first year at the podcast looked like. So here goes. The joyful flamingo has now reached all six continents that have humans permanently on them.
That darn Antarctica hasn't popped up on my stats just quite yet. numbers I would be sharing with you.
Like so freaking cool. And in season one, we also released 30 full episodes and have had over 6 ,000 downloads in total. Friends, just thank you from the bottom of my heart.
And if you are new here and you haven't yet listened to many episodes, what I want you to do is scroll all the way back to the beginning of season one to our inaugural episode. It was called The Flock.
And do me a solid and go and listen to it if you haven't yet. It really is the best way for you to get a sense about what this beloved, joyful flock of flamingos is doing here in this community.
For a Coles Notes version, for anyone who's just recently stumbled upon us, the Joyful Flamingo podcast is really here to bring joy back into your day. It's here to help guide and empower you as a woman to tune into yourself,
to zoom in on your own well -being. And we really just launching season two of the podcast today,
which, oh, is just like such a whirlwind. It feels like it went by in a blank. I actually feel like it was yesterday that it was really just this like tiny little seed of an idea in my mind.
Like they say, it's like, things go by so darn fast. Like summer, summer went by so fast. We just, we really got to enjoy. And I want to talk to you about something that can help you do that today.
I really want to chat about the reason behind the pause and production over the summer. Because I think it's going to be the example that can be the catalyst for so many of you to finally incorporate more rest into your life.
Over here at The Joyful Flamingo, we are all about tuning in to yourself, looking inward and figuring out what. and alignment in their life,
so that you can show up as the most vibrant version of yourself. So let's talk about my decision to put the pod down for the summer. It was a really hard decision for me to make,
for a number of reasons. First of all, I really love creating, and I was sad to think about not doing that over the summer. I also really came to love and see the importance in the value that all of you were getting from this podcast.
And then I feared that I'd maybe lose momentum or we'd lose the growth of the show. And that would take a dive after everything I'd worked hard for over the past,
you know, eight months. I also felt like maybe I'd be letting people down. You know, for those people who became accustomed to a Wednesday release every single week,
I didn't want to let those people down and I didn't want to let myself down. So at first, I just kind of toyed with a two week hiatus. The way I kind of did over Christmas holidays,
because we had a lot going on at that time as a family and we just needed a quick pause. But then I was like, okay, is two weeks enough for me? I don't know, maybe. And then I considered a full month.
Ultimately, what I ended up deciding on was a pause from the podcast for the entire summer. Eventually, what happened after a lot of thought and journaling and looking inward is that I realized continuing the podcast for the summer didn't feel realistic for me.
And you know what? I don't like the word realistic. I really don't because I do feel like sometimes it gives us a cop out for, you know, doing the things that are really good for us to stretch our limits to grow as humans.
I feel like we're like, ah, it's not realistic. And so then we don't grow as much as we could. So maybe I shouldn't use that word. I guess aligned is maybe the right word. After a lot of thought,
I realized that it didn't feel in alignment to continue the podcast every week for the whole summer for what I and for what my family wanted and needed over the course of the summer.
My kids were home for the whole summer, right? And they're young. They're five and they're two. And when they're home, it's full on taking care of them still. You know, we're not quite in the stage of being able to rely on hours of independent anything.
And so the more I tried to figure out a way to stay on track with the pod schedule of, you know, the weekly release. And as I look, media,
the conversations that always come out of each and every episode with listeners. I knew I wouldn't have it in me, both from a time standpoint, but also from an energy standpoint.
Also, even a little bit from the desire standpoint, because there was part of me that just really wanted a break. Not because I don't love what I do here,
because I do. But it's actually because I do love what I do. And I felt like I needed to recalibrate myself to continue doing it the way I love doing it.
Does that make sense? Have you ever had a moment where you're like, oh, I love this so much, but I want to do it in the way that aligns with me. And right now, the best way to do that is by just taking a break.
I needed time to decide, you know, what my next ideas and thoughts were that I wanted to share on here. And I didn't want it to become just getting the next episode out. Oh my gosh,
I'm at the next week. I got to get another episode out. I did not want it to be like that. And I also knew that I really just wanted to take time with my family over the summer. I wanted to spend slower days in the backyard,
gardening, walking to the park, going to the beach, picking berries, swimming. Once I took that time, once I started to do those things, and once I really got about halfway through the summer,
even though it was a really hard decision for me to make, I actually realized, oh, wow, how much I needed it. It was necessary for me to actually be able to come back to you, refreshed and ready to offer so much more value in your lives this coming year by doing so.
That's all I needed. I just needed a pause. I listened to my gut because this is exactly what I needed.
All of these ideas and thoughts started flowing through me. And I was like, okay, I made space for those things. I didn't have space for those before. This is what I needed.
On top of that, I did get to spend so much quality time with my girls this summer. I did take, you know, the minimal extra time left over that there ever was to truly rest.
I made daily space for things like walking around the river, making episodes every week for the podcast.
So I really felt like this is the perfect topic for the first episode back. September specifically feels like the perfect time to come back with season two as well.
Who knows? Maybe it's just the teacher in me, but I feel like September has always been, it's like the birth of a new year. You know, way more than January ever has felt like that for me.
And, you know, that's definitely the teacher in me. But it really made me feel like, okay, as I'm recording this episode, the very first couple days of September, I'm like, yes, this feels so in alignment with what I wanted to do.
The rest that I took, it now enables me to come back and really enjoy and pour into the mic the way that I wanted to. I've got new fresh ideas.
I have so much excitement and I'm in pure joy over here at my desk in my home studio recording this for you. I'm locked and loaded, baby. I'm ready to be here with you. And guess what?
I've also decided I'm going to ease back into it. I'm not going full force ahead. I'm not releasing four full episodes in September. For September, we're releasing two episodes instead of four.
And again, this is me doing what I preach. If I'm going to at our September schedule going,
holy bananas. We've got two little ones with big school transitions. We've got the busiest month of the year for Hot Hubs. We've got like five specialist appointments for the girls.
And we've got two other things that I've been working on over the summer coming to a head this month. The first being the Flox Joy reset retreat, which you may or may not have seen on social media.
And the second being something that I can't quite tell you about yet. Teaser, teaser, teaser. That retreat that I'm talking about, that was something I was actually able to work on over the summer months because I made the time and space for those ideas to flow through me again.
That retreat is created intentionally to give other women a scheduled rest day for themselves because I saw such huge value in what it did for me over the summer that I want to give back and do it for all of you.
Well, I can't do all of you because there's a capped amount of spots in the retreat, but for some of you. This season, we've got boatloads of fun plan for you from hormonal balancing to rakey chats,
to perimenopause and menopause, to career changes to following your intuition, to sex, to, you know, all the things. We're going to cover so much. And I cannot wait to bring it all to you.
I just want to say thank you for allowing me the rest and being so incredibly generous as a community during that resting period. All the things I was worried about taking the pause and why I didn't originally think I should take it,
none of those things happened. In fact, the opposite is true. The messages I got from people about the podcast over the summer were all just about the excitement that they had for it to come back or how amazing it was to go back and re -listen to an episode that they got so much value from.
And then they got so much more listening back to it a in time. You know, nobody challenged my idea to take the time off. And lots of people obviously continued to share it with their friends and listen to their favorite episodes again or get caught up on ones they missed because our listenership continued.
And it was proof to me. It was like, okay, yes, rest is still productive. Did you hear me or were you looking out the window or washing the dishes or what were you doing when I just said that sentence.
I will rewind for you. Proof that rest is very productive. It is. We talk ourselves out of it, but rest is productive.
It shows us the value in slowing down, in breathing, in saying no, in steering away from this constant hustling our culture seems to so often reward.
This old school hustle culture is now being replaced with the slow life. If it hasn't yet,
it will. At some point, your body is going to give in or your mind is going to give in. And then when it does, and you're forced to take that break or that rest or that pause,
and it wasn't intentionally taken, you're forced to do it, it actually feels harder. It doesn't feel in alignment. It just kind of feels like a punishment rather than the honoring of yourself and what you need.
So why don't we just do it more consistently? Why don't we lead a bit more of a slower life all the time so that we don't need massive halts or breaks or lifestyle changes as a result of pushing too hard for too long?
Rest as an ambitious woman who identifies as a doer has been a foreign concept to me for so long. And I know that there's so many of you out there that can relate.
You desperately, you want this break. You like, you talk about it to your partner or your best friend or whoever all the time. Like, you desperately want and need the break. But the minute you get it, you start to feel like,
oh, there are so many other things that I could or should be doing instead of this like silly rest thing. What am I doing resting? This isn't working. And we talk ourselves into feeling like there are more productive things that should be done.
We start to actually feel guilty about resting, about letting go of expectations from others or the ones that we've put on ourselves. Today,
it's so important for you to hear me share what I learned from my rest this summer. And that is, guess what, your brain, it's playing tricks on you. Rest is productive.
In fact, many times it can actually lead to more productive success than if you had just tried to power through, especially when it comes to creating your own joy.
Now, I realize most professions can't just take work off whenever they want to have a nice little rest. I get that. I really do. But guess what I found? I found a stat that was super interesting.
And I was like, I'm going to flip that idea on its head as well. And I'm going to talk about the fact that in 2022, only 29 % of Canadians said that they actually took their allotted vacation time.
29%. That's like 71 % of you actually could be getting away from work more for a rest period, but you're not. The guilt that you have because you don't think you should be getting away from work.
That's what's holding you back. Or maybe it's the office energy or the office, what am I trying to say, morale or environment or vibe. There are other ways of resting too.
And that's what I want to talk to us today too. It's not just rest from work. We're going to go over the types of rest that there are and they're all important. I really wanted to share that stat with you because I feel like there's probably room for people to be taking more of their rest time from their jobs,
from their work life. I want to share a quote with you that I read that I cannot get it out of my brain. And it read, we were never meant to live so fast. Think about that for a second.
We weren't. The human species was never designed to do the things that we're actually doing on a daily basis, especially because we're doing it in a way that was never intended either in a very individualistic way.
Human kind has evolved in so many ways for the better, in so many ways. But at the same time, we've evolved so quickly that we actually can't keep up with it because we weren't meant too.
So if you're feeling anxious, stressed, overwhelmed, like you're drowning or running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I feel you. You should be. they need to grow,
to expand, to enjoy. We have forgotten that enjoyment is something we need. It's important. I think what we need to do is embrace this concept of doing less to have more.
There's a book about it. Kate Northrop is the author of it. So go look it up if you want to read more about this concept, but doing less to have more. If we allow ourselves the time to rest and rejuvenate and renew,
we'll actually be more creative, more productive, more excited, more aligned, more able to solve problems to tune into our wants and needs and desires, therefore making us actually better than we were before the rest.
And it's so funny because we do the exact opposite of that. We think that we constantly need to be doing or producing for us to have worth.
Wrong. Wrong. Think of it like a toddler in their nap. This was like the scenario I was running through my head. We know the moment our toddler is showing us that they are in need of a rest.
We know it. All of you out there who have ever parented a toddler before or even been in the presence of a toddler who needs an app, you're like, yep, I know exactly what she's talking about. And we know that it's imperative that they get that rest,
really just to function properly for the rest of the afternoon. We're not talking about like living their best life. We're talking about like function. They need the rest to properly function for the rest of the afternoon.
And we're good at making sure that they get their rest, but somewhere along the line, we decided we didn't need to do it for ourselves anymore. 1 third of Canadians between ages 5 to 79,
it's a big span, failed to obtain the recommended amount of sleep every night. Do you even know how many hours you're supposed to be sleeping? I hope you do, but maybe you don't. And you know,
this is a tricky one. Like maybe just if you are listening and you are a parent of a young child who doesn't sleep just like turn the volume down for a little bit because I know that that's like an exceptional time.
Otherwise, adults are supposed to be getting between seven to nine hours of sleep at night. And there has been a study that was done that showed the prevalence of poor sleep is actually way higher in women than it is in men.
Overall, women reported in the study to have more sleep disturbances than their male counterparts. We're more likely to be unable to sleep within 30 minutes. Now,
my hot hubs is going to say that's not true in our home, because to have bad dreams,
to have pain, all of those things were things that women talked about more in their sleep disturbances than men did. Good news. There are things we can be doing and keeping in mind to help us get better sleep.
And some of these may be obvious to you, but others maybe not so much. So let's list some of them. First of all, avoiding snacks and eating before bed. I was talking to my mom about this midsummer,
I've always been a snacker at night. It's like dinner, yum. Then 8 p .m. I need more food. And I've always done that. Like since I can remember, nothing huge,
but just like a little snacky. It feels so good and cozy and warm to have a little snacky with hot hubs before bed. This is the first time this summer that I stopped eating after dinner. And then I'd maybe have like a tea or something to satiate my tongue or my palate or whatever it is that needed satiated,
I avoided snacks before bed and it made a huge difference for me. So that's the first thing that you can do to get better sleep is avoid snacks before bed. Exercise. Make sure you're exercising,
but make sure you're doing it as early in the day as possible. Don't work out at 10 p .m. at night. Now, there could be some people who are like, that's my time. And if it doesn't affect your sleep,
amazing. But what the studies show is that if you are going to move later in the day, make it slower movement. So make it movement like stretching, yoga, walking those types of things.
Don't do like a hit workout right before you're going to bed. You're going to have so much of a harder time falling asleep. Third, lower the bedroom temperature. So make it crispy cool in your bedroom.
Four, set a sleep schedule and go to consider a weighted blanket,
those can go a really long way for people who have a hard time sleeping. Also, sleeping in complete darkness, avoiding the bright lights and the screens before bed and keeping devices out of the bedroom,
but then also sleeping in complete darkness. If you can't get that in your room, invest in a really good eye mask. I got one off of Amazon that is just, oh, it's chef's kiss. And if you need a recommendation,
you know where to find me. I will send you that link because it just blacks everything right out, even in the middle of the day. So sleep in complete darkness, use a weighted blanket, use an eye mask.
Use yoga and breathwork. I think I said that one. And here's another one that I was like, this, this I need to do. When you wake up in the middle of the night, either to go pee for the 12th time,
I mean not 12, but Sandra Boyce, my pelvic floor physio friend is going to be like, no, not 12. You shouldn't be peeing 12 times a night, which is true. Never look at your clock when you wake up in the middle of the night.
Don't do it. Because what happens is you start to stress, oh, shoot, now I'm only going to get X hours of sleep. Oh, shoot. I've been like that since I was a kid. Like, I used to wake up and go down to my parents, even though I'd been sleeping for three hours.
But I'd look at the clock and be like, I only will be sleeping for four hours tonight. And it started to stress me out. So don't look at the clock when you wake up in the middle of the night. If you a form of rest.
But let's return to the list of the other forms of rest because sometimes we think rest means either sitting on the couch or sleeping. There are so many different types of rests that are all needed in different phases of life or truly on any given day they could change.
So let's talk about those types right now. The first is mental rest. How often do you give yourself a little mental rest, you know, taking a break from thinking. so diligent all the time in making specific decisions for ourselves or for other people.
Mental rest. That's one form. The second is physical rest. So this is what includes getting more quality sleep, right? It's also your form of resting from exercise.
So if you're a hardcore exerciser, you need time to let your body heal. You need to be making sure that you're taking a rest day or two from your exercise routine. Let your body heal,
stretch, focus on slower forms of movement, and then get good quality sleep. That's physical rest. Oh, baby, are you ready for this one? Emotional rest.
And this is going to look different for different people. For me, it means being honest and true to my own feelings, letting myself feel those feelings,
not putting myself in situations that are hard for me to feel those feelings, and setting boundaries. For the most part, people actually respect boundaries that are made.
Not all the time, but sometimes we tell ourselves a story that, you know, they're not going to be respected. If I set that boundary, nobody's going to listen to it anyway. People are going to feel let down or annoyed. But the reality is the more you set those boundaries,
the more people are actually inspired by it. They're like, oh, that lady set a boundary. I like that. I'm a set of boundary now. And the easier it becomes to set more and more of them so that you feel aligned in your rest and in your joy.
Going back to this example of taking this break over the summer, I was so fearful that the listenership was going to be let down by my pause over the summer, But not a one negative comment, at least not to my face or directly to my screen.
Maybe some of you were complaining right now, but you didn't voice it. So it really is just because we have the best flocking community around. But it's also just because it probably was just a story I was telling myself.
You know, if anything, you've all just been so lovely in telling me how just excited you are for you to be able to start listening again emotional rest are you giving yourself that emotional rest for social rest saying no to things avoiding large gatherings trying to be a bit like a hermit for a bit focusing on doing things for yourself that bring you joy rather than going out with a bunch of people and trying to
determine what's going to make everybody happy while you're out with all those people. So social rest. And then spiritual rest is the fifth kind. Again, it's going to look different for so many.
This may look like finding meaning for yourself instead of just blindly doing what you've always done, practicing mindfulness, meditating, diving inward.
If you go to church, going to church. If you're going to church, maybe taking a spiritual rest from church and spending some time at home with whatever prayer or practice you can do on your own.
And then six, lastly, it's sensory rest. This is a big one for all of us. Time away from the chaos, from the mess, from the screens,
from the noise, from the news, from social media, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So here they are again, mental,
physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and sensory. Those are the different types of rest. And at points in time, you may find yourself needing one form of rest more over others.
And sometimes you may feel like you need them all. And it's our job as the keeper of our own minds and our own bodies to decide which rest needs priority right now. And then it's our job to ensure that it actually happens,
to allow ourselves to actually take it. We need to stop resisting it. We need to stop thinking that rest equals lazy.
It does not. We need to listen to our intuition. Remember, our minds and our bodies are keeping score. They know the way we just got to listen to sum it all up the world doesn't need you busy it needs you here it needs you present it needs you excited it needs you joyful and aligned and happy do not feel guilty about taking rest about eliminating things from your schedule at certain points in time because it felt
like too much or it simply doesn't align with what you need or want in that moment. We're entering now into a really busy and challenging season as we transition back into routines and structures after the summer.
You've got to include rest in your family's plan, not only for you but for your little ones too and for your partners. Because if you don't, you'll eventually need to take it anyway And the only difference is that you're going to feel like crap in the process of getting to that point.
So as much as we need efficiency and progress and productivity, we equally need rest and slowness and time. You can't really have one without the other.
And the summer truly showed me that stepping back from things to make more time for slowness, for mental clarity, for downtime was the best thing and is the best thing that any of us can do for ourselves because it allowed me to call upon more of my creativity and ultimately come back more excited and productive than ever.
I have gotten more done in the last one week of summer after a very long rest than I probably would have all summer long anyway if I hadn't taken it. And that is 110 % true.
Let's stop wearing busy and hustle as a badge of honor. Let's start honoring taking care of ourselves. It's sexy as fuck. This is your sign. Go flocking rest.
Do you see what I did there? I love that flocking can replace the other one. Anyway, welcome home flockies. Season two, thank you for tuning into this first episode of our second season.
I'll be back in a few weeks with our next episode, but as always, I'm so incredibly grateful for each and every one of you. Thank you for being part of the joyful Flamingo Flock.
Until next time. Just a reminder, Flamingo Flock, that I am not a medical or psychological professional. Each one of my episodes has been inspired by my own experience and journey through life and has brought to you through my own opinions and lens.
Any suggestions or advice offer here do not substitute proper conversations with your own healthcare professionals for either your physical or mental well -being.