The Tension of Work and Rest with NEW Co-host Bo Morgan | Ep 144

In this episode of MEN ARE FORGED, Bo and Cartwright tackle the balance of work and rest—a tension every driven man feels but few manage well. We talk about the pressure to grind, the guilt that comes with slowing down, and how burnout quietly erodes leadership, faith, and family. This conversation reframes rest not as weakness or laziness, but as discipline, obedience, and wisdom. If you’re a man in your 20s or 30s trying to build something meaningful without losing yourself in the process, this episode will challenge how you think about productivity, purpose, and sustainable leadership.

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Transcript

Bo Morgan (00:00.27)
Picture. yeah, I have to like, I really do find that like this time of year, every year I have to like push myself a little bit harder to do the things that I've done throughout the year already. I don't know why.

Maybe that's just Brain fog. Yeah. Well, there's probably the physiological thing, issue, is going on in the chemist's junior brain because you're still trying to digest all that sugar.

It'd be like a turkey.

But I think and then there's

It's true.

Cartwright Morris (00:41.608)
I always think about the context of personality in human beings and what we're wired for. Because imagine you've been grinding all year and your body's probably trying to tell you something like slow the blank down.

Maybe so. I just feel like I'm always, this is probably true for a lot of guys our age. You just feel like you can't do enough. You know what I mean? Right. I think a lot of times we're probably if you've been raised around here too, it's like the work thing is like really held in high regard. And like if you're not working any given moment, you need to be working harder. You know what I mean? And I'm learning to come off that a little bit, but that's definitely something that's.

Is that a, do think that's a personal identity related thing or is that a cultural norm that we've kind of put on ourselves? I always think about what's motivating that.

Yeah, I don't know. That's a question. maybe, I guess it could be both, right? Maybe a little bit.

There's definitely a little, because you're, I mean, because you're right, it is at a larger scale. know plenty of people that have that feeling, whether they listen to it or not. Because it does produce two fruits, right? I would say some personality types feel that and it shuts them down, isolates them, slows them down. And then I think some people, it just makes them hit the button harder. Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, a little bit of

Bo Morgan (02:15.03)
I know I don't always wrestle with, and you know this because you've known me for years, but it's a daily wrestling match of, like God says to be still. And then God also says, you know, don't be lazy. And I don't know the exact verse, but like basically like don't sit around and don't do anything. It's you know, how do you strike the balance between the two? You know what mean? Because I don't want to be too still.

Yeah. Well, there's the practice. I mean, I think it all depends on the personality. Sometimes you got to think about in annual relationship with God, your relationship with your your boss, your work, whatever.

Yeah

Cartwright Morris (02:58.766)
because it is interesting because there's always seasons. There's the practice of it in the context on a daily basis. There's the practice of it on a weekly basis. But then there's practice on the yearly basis. I guess you're kind of saying like December. Yeah, maybe it is our body trying to say, hey, maybe it's time to rest. Maybe it's time to, you know, do the bare minimum at work. Show up, do what you need to do.

Yeah, maybe so.

Bo Morgan (03:29.326)
hope Michael doesn't listen to us.

Yeah. I sit and sit bare-minded and it sounds awful because that does sound like it's a lazy mentality, but I think you're, yeah. Because if you're trying to become a self-aware person where you don't beat yourself up every time you feel like you're not doing enough. Yeah. That is a, that's a shame cycle that can only leads to poor fruit. Yeah. In your life. Yeah.

I see what you're saying.

Cartwright Morris (04:01.358)
100%. Yeah. Either you overwork or don't work at all. You know, you withdraw or you overdo it. Yeah. And we've seen midlife crisis burnouts of people that live that way in our society, in our family, in our community, let's led to addictions, whatever.

Because it's so therefore you're talking about a real topic that's really a big deal. So how do I become so aware of myself of when I need rest? Because you, because we'll always, they always say like, because this is where at the end of the day, if you're working to serve others, you have to serve from a place of strength.

and therefore you have to take care of yourself to serve in a place of strength. You can't give what you don't have, basically. So how do I take care of myself? So therefore how do I become aware of what my body's telling me, what my mind is telling me? And is it, just, huh, do I need a weekend? Do I need a day? Do I need 30 minutes?

It's just learning those practices. Cause I do think some of us need more than others. I mean, it sounds like Alex Colesh, right? He, the guy works, you know, 12, 15 hour days. I've heard he was meeting with players till midnight, like that. not too much in all room football forever. Whoever's ever listened to him. But you see what I'm saying? The negative effects of obsessing over that thought, that feeling.

Let's get.

Cartwright Morris (05:38.51)
We have seen it time and time again, so therefore we have to be aware of it. And we have to, like that's why the Bible talks, there's a practice of rest. There's a resting heart posture, but then there's the practice of it. Of like, God, you can do more while I'm asleep than I could ever do in a day's work.

Well, and also too, think like for me, think I can fool myself in that I'm getting rest and really I'm watching the news. Yeah. It's like, that's not rest at all. I mean, you're sitting in one spot being still, but man, like that's not rest.

No.

truly unplugging is a skill that has to taught and learned too. feel like this is actually what that looks like. It's getting away from your phone, it's getting away from the TV, which is hard for me. And truly being still for a second. In silence. That's hard. Because after five minutes, you feel yourself drawn back. Because we're all addicted to our phones.

Yeah.

Cartwright Morris (06:45.166)
Yeah. yeah. And that's not restful at all because you're just getting that, that dopamine hit and your brain is just firing and it's, yeah. And it's, it's just dulling everything. And it's like your brain doesn't feel rested at end of it. It's why, yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I've, I want to say as Arthur Brooks, I heard him talk about a study of happiness. talks about, he talked kind of has this four things of what happy people do. But one of the other studies he talked about was

what kind of generally what jobs happy people have. And he's seeing a big, I mean, obviously we're seeing in a world where this because of AI and technology.

there's more manual labor jobs are kind of going to be the thing because people in the midst of software being apps, I mean, you just don't need people as much anymore for the digital space. Well, but we still need people to, you know, fix our pipes, fix our AC, dig ditches, stuff like that. But he's kind of saying there's a lot of people that are, there's a high, there's a...

more majority people that are happy on a daily basis that that generally have jobs that work with their hands. So I would say another form of rest could be is, hey, I need to do something like get the arts because I would say in our modern age, we don't necessarily see our work. We don't see the fruit of our work on a daily basis.

You'll get the orders.

Cartwright Morris (08:15.726)
especially in sales, I you're in sales. Sometimes you can put a month's worth into something and nothing. Or there's just someone's size on the dot line and it's like, okay, well guess the next one. Other than you maybe seeing it change your paycheck, maybe.

There's something super satisfying about seeing a yard full of leaves and bagging them and putting them on the street. Something as simple as that.

chopping wood and seeing that pile stack up in organized fashion.

Cartwright Morris (08:53.206)
just got into YouTube and bought a bunch of tools and got into woodworking and built a shed at his lake house. know like, stuff like that. And you're like, man, I'm exhausted, but that was kind of satisfying. I will say one thing never do, I helped him rebuild his dock. That was...

Right.

Bo Morgan (09:18.574)
What's the order do?

So the water was down and one he had to get like approval and power company and you can only do it during like a certain two weeks out of the year and it was hilarious, but I Wouldn't recommend we had to like code it in this like car that was giving me a headache every time I got the fumes were just messing with my brain anyway

Yeah, that's awesome.

Cartwright Morris (09:40.75)
Nice to get off the table about that. don't pay somebody to fix your dog. I'll say that. For those who don't like

I can't do, man. I'm like, Carly, my wife is really good at like, it's kind of embarrassing to admit this, but she's pretty handy. Like Carly will, uh, like she, like she took apart our dryer recently and like fixed it and then put it back together. And yeah, it was unbelievable. And, um, I don't really have the skills or the patience. Yeah.

Yeah.

Cartwright Morris (10:14.862)
My wife got a dresser when we were putting together the nursery from IKEA. She did like 90 % of it. It's like, no thanks. I do not want to look at that dang structure. No thanks. One that doesn't fit. My meat head just...

Thank you. Found all the missing pieces.

Cartwright Morris (10:38.796)
Yeah, so obviously when I work my hands, is pretty general stuff like chopping wood, right? Yeah. Working in the yard, something pretty straightforward. The meticulous stuff I'm like, yeah. Right.

the grass.

Cartwright Morris (10:55.938)
That's really funny, you said that, yeah.

She's like we've been married 10 years and she's learned like not even to Like she'll be like, hey, can you help me hang this but it's never like hey, you hang this? You can help but you can't do If you want me to do it, can do do it. it. it. it. it.

Cartwright Morris (11:32.598)
So what do you think, Beau?

That was good. mean, I feel like that was great. Yeah. We were doing it, honestly. Yeah.

I mean, I'm for

we're getting down to that same cycle. It is interesting God did wire all of us differently in how much labor or our work capacity in a sense. I just find that fascinating in a lot of ways.

Yeah. One thing I found, I think you pushed me toward this a few years ago and it makes perfect sense is like, like that's a great example of, like we're, feel like guys our age are like trying to strike the balance, like Christian, Christian guys are trying to strike the balance between like, where do you work super hard?

Bo Morgan (12:22.656)
And then where do you let God work? Yeah. You know, it's like, how do I know when to, like we just said, how do I know when to be still and when to act and do things and work hard? Like God put character in you to want to work hard and work is worship. But then there's times where I think like, I know I can, but I can obsess over trying to strike that balance and

is worship.

Cartwright Morris (12:48.172)
Yeah.

The more and more I've tried to strike the balance over the years, you screw up every day. You already set an expectation for yourself that you're not going to be able to beat, which then makes you kind of angry at yourself or feel the shame like you're talking about. then also, I've learned that when you start to feel that way, I should do this more.

That's when you really do need to let go and be like, okay, you know, maybe the point is not to strike this balance perfectly, but maybe God is drawing me to him to spend time with him and let's actually discuss it together because he's relational, you know? And so I think sometimes that kind of tension that you feel and like, you know, trying to do both is really him saying, hey, let's talk about this. You know what mean? Let's be in relationship to where, so you just try

figured out all the time.

Well, think us Westerners in general, we have a separation of secular and sacred in a sense. I think that's a lot of what you're like. You're trying to almost like I mean, the word in the Bible is used, co-labor.

Cartwright Morris (14:03.192)
Like there's the word labor, but we co-labor, meaning you bring God into your work and try to understand it where I think sometimes like, all right, let me grind real hard. And you're trying to go, wait, I should probably stop and go over here and rest with God. And he's like, why don't we just figure this out? And I kind of find that mix in it.

Yeah, it was the answer.

Bo Morgan (14:26.69)
Yeah, how to include him in.

work. Yeah, like creating a co-labor. Yeah. Like, God, you're with me in the midst of doing this. You give me the skill set. You're guiding me and talking to the right people because you're in sales, you know, engaging the right way. And if left my own devices, I will probably burn myself too far. So.

Lord, I give you complete permission to speak to me in that moment when I need to pull back, sit in my car, either listen to a podcast, pray, relax, play with my son, whatever.

Bo Morgan (15:08.942)
Yeah, because you remind me he wants to be involved in all that stuff. I think probably going back to the work type stuff and stuff like being in environments you're used to is like sometimes your boss, like you don't want to bug your boss with too much. know, there's sometimes there's a lot of value like, I can do it and be independent and have the autonomy to do it.

And so I kind of probably naturally go into my relationship, God, with that same sentiment of like, well, I don't want to him too much. But it's not true. It's not true.

No. yeah, I'm not saying you're doing this, but there is language to what you're like. There's a use almost got as an escape from work. You know, it's like, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And almost like. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, that there's like, I don't want to bug him. That's like a.

They're separate. yeah, they're separate.

Cartwright Morris (16:11.79)
where he's an omnipresent being, if we pick up the Bible, all we do is read about his invitation. Yeah. The door is wide open.

I know and it's it's a it's an exercise every day to you know, of remind yourself that daily like You're not going to wake up one day and finally you've got that maybe maybe you develop maybe a little bit more but like it's a there's a lot of truth and waking up every single day and you know spending time with him and trying to get your day in order and you know so that you can almost have those daily reminders of

No, he's not too busy for me. You know, like all this stuff that exists in my brain naturally, like sifting through it almost in a way.

Yeah, yeah that's interesting. I don't know if we're getting into this, but is it

Is the context of structuring your day around your relationship with God, is that kind of the discussion we're getting to here? Or is it... Because that's what's so weird when I think about structure too, because I think you can be overly religious and overly disciplined in that context, and there's not a one-size-fits-all. There's principles that we all need in instructuring our life and...

Cartwright Morris (17:41.484)
daily, weekly, that all people who say they're followers of Jesus that really need, right? But you could overdo it.

You can't I've certainly overdone it for sure. Yeah, well because then when you ever do it you start You wake up one day and you don't like say your thing is to wake up and read the Bible first or whatever And then you inevitably miss it one day. Yeah, then you think well the whole glass of days

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean that's I think at the end of the day like the best advice people give in the midst of somebody our age and younger trying to figure it all out is like just not be as a warner yourself. Yeah. It's like, you know, like no matter what you're going through, like just just just stop trying to beat yourself up. You're not going to be all things to all people. If you had it all figured out, your life would be really boring.

Yeah.

Cartwright Morris (18:42.414)
You know, God's really great at bringing order out of chaos. And right now you may feel really chaotic. So let's put a couple of little tenets in your life of like, hey, I need reminders. You know, little cues. I'm sure you're learning this month or this week from Todd, right? Of just like, okay, yeah.

Great. Yeah.

I may not, mean, like the greatest model of success throughout history has been just falling forward, right? Yeah. So, I don't know, it's interesting. And people, I saw for this morning, it's like, is there high character without difficulty or pain? Can people have an easy life and be of high character? Have true character.

me.

Bo Morgan (19:38.658)
guess it depends on how you define easy life. Yeah. Right.

If there's no struggle, if there's no challenges, if there's no frustration, disappointment. God f***ing Yeah. Yeah.

feels like another.

Cartwright Morris (19:58.614)
It's like the old ad, just don't ask for patience because then God will give you something like that. Don't test your patience.

That's gonna be tough. Like, my son he last 10 months on Friday and I'm already like...

You don't really think honestly, you don't really think about parenting. You probably have because your son's older, like, like I've never like people have asked me before, like, you know, is parenting going to be hard? I was like, dude, I don't even got it. You know, like we're just trying to like make sure he's fed and has a clean diaper, you know? But when you do think about like parenting, that's going be really hard. So like let Eli struggle through.

my gosh, yeah.

You know what mean? Yeah. Because we know the value in it, hey, this is going to hurt. There was this one actually, like a month ago, he had to get blood drawn out of his arm. And it was terrible. So we go in the lab and.

Cartwright Morris (20:49.624)
Yeah.

Cartwright Morris (20:57.479)
Ugh.

Bo Morgan (21:02.734)
the lady's like, Hey, you know, Dan hold them right here. So I had to hold them like this. And then she was like, okay, just hold his head right here and then stretch his arm out. And she gets that big needle and puts it in his arm. And he was so upset. And I guess that's a decent example of like he had to get his blood drawn. they didn't figure out, you know, while he was sick.

But man, he was like screaming, you know, and like looking at me like, what are you doing? was the first time it was like, gosh, that really, really hurts. Anyway, but like as he gets older, I could see like you're going to have to really be intentional about like, I'm going to let him struggle through this and step straight because I'm a fixer and a doer. So like instead of fixing it for him or like. Yeah, exactly.

hurt me!

Cartwright Morris (21:49.346)
Yeah, golly that tension, you know, because I imagine as our parents probably dealt with it's like, how do I be a catalyst to my child's growth, but also the safe place for them to land? like, yeah, that's another thing, you know, going back to the whole like, rest and work thing. It's a thing that you're just going to figure it out. Right? That's what I'm like, man.

attention everywhere.

And her truth is held in tension constantly. Yeah, right. Yeah, like the whole like having character but without Struggle or pain, right? It's like I guess we're all trying to get all of them right now, but you're right man. That is something I have thought about and it's like I don't know how well because I had similar experience with my son getting a shot

That's the worst.

You're just like, okay, I know he needs it, but I don't really want to see him suffer. Yeah. Yeah. And that's when you really can really jack you up in a good way. What you think about God?

Cartwright Morris (23:04.69)
through some of our hardest times. You're like, okay, you were there. Imagine it wasn't easy for you to see it. Someone who loves us infinitely more than we love our own sons.

Cartwright Morris (23:20.398)
Yeah, man, it's gonna mess you up. Really? Yeah.

all this year.

Yeah, the question people love to ask is like, why does God allow bad things to happen to good people, guess, as a kind of such phrase. So that's why. Yeah. He's not probably not. He's probably not as interested in our comfort as he is in our character, building our character. Yeah. Like and I mean, I guess his dad's will have the same approach.

Right. Because this, I've always thought about this and tell me what you think about this bow. What's the difference between us and the animals? I think the animals live in a life cycle of eat, sleep, hunt, know, right? It's that mate, just kind of that like the reproduction cycle of just living to the next, to the next. We're like humans, we have a redemption arc.

Is that what makes us human? mean among other things But is that the central is redemption is we're on a story arc of redemption and God is using our life and Whatever happened, you know, whatever the pain and hurt and loss whatever that's Drawing in closer to him and building like you said character over comfort

Cartwright Morris (24:42.158)
And that's where you really have to trust God in the development of your child to go, okay, you know better than I do. I get to be a part of his story, but you are the center part of his story.

Cartwright Morris (24:55.608)
That's gonna be really hard.

Yeah. I was reading a book where another part of the parenting piece is, I guess we're talking about parenting now. Um, but another part of the parenting piece, one that's like crucial for parents to like acknowledge and almost say out loud is that Eli was born a center. You know what I mean? Yeah. Eli will have, um,

Yeah.

Cartwright Morris (25:17.678)
Hmm.

Bo Morgan (25:23.18)
like flesh with desires like we all do like he's not perfect. Yeah. You know what mean? Cause my wife will be like, he's perfect. know, you don't say anything at the time, in the back of my mind thinking like, that's kind of the slippery slope. know I mean, cause to us he seems like he is, but he's not. And so like knowing that and yeah, I guess it just

He'll be a lot better off if you don't have two parents. think he's perfect. You know what mean?

Yeah, that is a female thing to say. my wife says something. It's a strange word to use. But I think it is maybe the motherly lens of my baby.

Yeah.

Bo Morgan (26:04.92)
Yeah, they're wired so differently.

That's why there may be a whole other episode of something with it.

Yeah.

Which could be an interesting topic because I've been thinking about this like what makes What makes you a man? And I think sometimes it's hard to define especially in our day and age, but I think

Cartwright Morris (26:36.226)
you have to think it, sometimes it helps for me to think in the context of what a boy can do, what a man can do, or what a woman can do, what a man can do. In that like, a man has a job and he works. It was like, well, a boy can work, a woman works, a man provides. Maybe that's a manly attribute.

Really said the desire to, guess. Like, well, I guess that's not sure either.

Yeah, maybe it's the thought I need to flesh out a little bit before we start talking about it. Yeah, it is interesting I said they're thinking about like yeah, what what does a? A man do or worse what a boy can do remain do personal woman. Yeah, right. Improvision beyond just the financial or to you know, know provide safety

Cartwright Morris (27:32.046)
Anyway.

Yeah, that's interesting. That's a really good question.

Uh-huh.

Cartwright Morris (27:40.204)
turn on the stuff.

4.58

and we kind of had two episodes in there. Yeah, that was fun. We kind of started here, kind of got a little deeper. End of the year, what to do with your end of the year woes.

That was cool man.

Cartwright Morris (28:07.05)
into the year. Fog.