You Don't Have a Rest Problem

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Your calendar says “rest”, but your body treats it like a threat. If you’ve ever sat down for a break and stood back up minutes later with no real reason, you’re not broken and you’re not doing self-care wrong. We talk honestly about why so many high-achieving women live in overdrive, where stopping feels more dangerous than continuing, even when burnout is already knocking. 

We dig into the sneaky ways productivity hijacks recovery: “resting” with the inbox open, turning downtime into life admin, and keeping noise on because silence feels unbearable. We also name the two-speed pattern that traps so many of us, pushing until collapse then getting up the second the worst passes. When the body has to force a stop through exhaustion, illness, or pain, it never feels like a choice, and that’s where the cycle tightens. 

The heart of the conversation is identity. If you grew up learning that being useful equals being good, and being lazy is the worst insult, then rest can feel like you’re becoming someone you’ve spent your whole life trying not to be. We unpack how standards, fear of letting people down, and the need to be “the strong one” can keep your nervous system stuck on high alert, no matter how many holidays you book. 

If you’re ready to understand what stopping actually means to you, I share why I created The Overdrive Reset and how you can join for free. Subscribe, share this with a woman who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find their way out of burnout and back into real rest.

The Balance & Beyond Podcast Hosted by Jo Stone, founder of The Balance Institute

For women who are already succeeding, but beginning to wonder if they're willing to keep losing themselves in the process.

We know high achievers, because we are one. This podcast draws on Jo's 20 years in global leadership and thousands of hours coaching executives and ambitious women: the patterns she sees, how to untangle them, and what it actually takes to keep your success without paying for it with yourself.

If something landed today, there's more where that came from.

And if you know a woman this would resonate with, send it her way.

🎙️https://www.balanceinstitute.com/podcast
🔗 www.balanceinstitute.com
💼https://au.linkedin.com/in/stonejoanne
📷 @therealjostone

Transcript

Welcome To Balance And Beyond

Jo Stone (Host) 0:04

Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for women who've outgrown the old model of success. The ones who look fine on the outside but know the way they've been living no longer fits. If you're standing in the space between who you were and who you're becoming, this is for you. I honor the space you've created today. Let's dive in. You've booked the holiday, run the bath, told yourself and anyone who listen that this weekend I'm actually stopping. I need a rest. And so you sit on the couch, and four minutes later, you're back up again. You tell yourself because it's because you remembered something or because you're not actually that tired. Oh, oh, the bench is driving

When Rest Feels Wrong

Jo Stone (Host) 0:51

me crazy. But if you're honest, you don't really know why you got up. You just know that staying down, staying still felt wrong somehow. You're not bad at rest. You can't stop, even when your body is screaming for it, because stopping feels more dangerous than just keeping going. Not dangerous like I've thought about it and I've decided is dangerous. Dangerous like your body won't let you. Like something kicks in in the moment you sit still that has nothing to do with your to-do list and everything to do with what stopping means about you. I have many memories of times that I've sat on the couch because I told myself I was exhausted, I needed a break, and I need to sit down, I need to take care of myself. I remember sitting there in the corner of the couch, and all I could feel was literally all the crap on the kitchen bench, yes, it's my thing, screaming at me, going, look at this hairbrush, look at this sauce container, that's gonna stain the bench top. And it used to drive me nuts. It literally felt like these items were like in a movie, standing up there and taunting me. Added to this, one of the other favorite ways that I used to torture myself was I would attempt keyword to sit on the couch of an evening. And the moment I get kind of comfy, it's like, yeah, sit down. This little voice goes, why are you sitting here? Why don't you pay some bills? Why don't you do some life admin while you're resting? Why don't you just check your inbox and get ahead of things for tomorrow? I will never forget the day a woman said to me, Joe, I'm actually looking forward to when my burnout gets so bad that I again sent to hospital because then I'm gonna get five full days to rest. What? The absolute hell! Seriously. So many women know only two speeds.

Burnout As The Only Break

Jo Stone (Host) 3:06

Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Red line, grow fast, grow fast, grow harder. Better, fuss and more. Keep going until you reach complete collapse or complete exhaustion. Lie horizontal. Wait for a nanosecond until the flu or whatever you've got has kind of almost passed, and then get up and do it all again. There's nothing in between. And the key distinction here is you're not actually choosing to stop. You might be trying to, but you were stopped by something outside of you. There's this beautiful old saying that at first, whether this is your body, the universe, life, whispers in your ear very gently, hey, you'll be tired, why don't you rest? And then after a little while, starts chucking some pebbles at you, going, hey, hey, knock, knock. Like you're tired. You need to slow down. And then, no, no, no, no, no, no, no time for that. And then eventually a giant boulder flattens you and goes, You're not listening. That's it. I'm taking you out. And for many women, because we push on so much so fast, so often, it usually has to be something physical to render us physically incapable of continuing to move, whether it's a disc going out in the neck or a sudden autoimmune condition that puts you in bed for multiple days. I mentioned wanting to be useful while on the couch. I can spot this because I can spot it in myself. And I still have to catch it today. This desire to make even rest productive. And that comes from this consistent story that you have in your head, and I know because I used to have it too, of just gotta

Making Rest Productive

Jo Stone (Host) 4:58

get ahead. Got a hundred emails in my inbox. If I'm just lying here and not attending to those, then tomorrow's gonna be even worse. I'm already behind. So if I spend half an hour, maybe while triple screening, while kind of surface level resting, just trying to be productive horizontally. Keyboard worrying in my inbox, and then trying to relax and get ready for bed, and then stewing because Simon from Finance still hasn't sent me the thing I need for my 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. And now I feel even more behind. There's almost this interesting degree of behindness that we live in as like completely swamped, snowed under versus just a little bit behind. And overlaying all of this, there was the absolute worst part that I couldn't stand. And I'm actually gonna use the word terrified of. Even when I was trying to rest, I had to put the television on or something between my ears, or I had to call someone because overlaying this, I want to be productive, I need to make good use of my time. Silence felt deadly, dramatic, but 100% true. So, how on earth did I get here? As someone who has an aura ring, been wearing tracking devices, tracking my sleep for a really long time. I'm all into nervous system and productivity and longevity and aging. And yet here I was for so many years, stuck down this rabbit hole of not knowing how to actually rest and take care of myself. And no, massages don't count, especially if you lie in them just churning through your to-do list, or you feel guilty for taking the time for yourself, or if you've also just spent an hour and a half fanging yourself relentless to try to get out of the house for the thing that you're doing. And the reason I'm sharing this is this is still one of the biggest lessons I keep having to learn again and again. We got here because of the stories we tell ourselves. One of the biggest stories that stopped me resting was I'd heard all this advice about, you know, letting go and kitchen bench doesn't mean anything about you. But if I sat down on the couch, say in the evening, while the kitchen bench was below my

Standards, Laziness, And Old Stories

Jo Stone (Host) 7:57

acceptable standard, then it was like me sitting down saying, you know what, that standard's okay. I accept that standard of kitchen bench or that standard of inbox or that standard of cleanliness or whatever it may be was okay. And it's not because these standards were like a crazy tyrant that never ever let me relax. Another story that I constantly told myself, and it really kept me locked into overdrive, was I didn't want to be considered lazy because growing up, lazy was one of the biggest insults you could throw at anyone. We're a family that valued hard work. We work hard, we play hard, we're productive, we're useful. And I have distinct memories of me sitting on the couch. I even remember this must have been this was the early 80s, like a Terry toweling, matching yellow top and bottom. And I think it was my dad walking past on the weekend, tapping me on the legs, going, come on, what are you doing? I was just sitting on the couch being a kid. Go on, go make yourself useful. Is it any wonder that it became really, really impossible for me to stop? Because my body, my brain, my nervous system learned early on that, oh, we don't do that. We're not those people that stop. We're productive. And to this day, at 86, my father does not know how to stop. Even when his body is throwing all kinds of shit at him, he still can't stop. So this runs really, really deep. But behind all these stories, that's a layer that until we actually address it, more attempts at boundaries or planners, bubble bars are not going to help you. This is because we tell ourselves stories, but we are most loyal to the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. My upbringing, I was and still am a hard worker. I was the strong one. I could do it all, I could hold it all. I was reliable. I was dependable. I was the one who could do the impossible. If

Identity That Refuses To Stop

Jo Stone (Host) 10:21

you relate to any of these words, then if that's your identity, then the woman who stops is the opposite of that. The woman who stops is lazy. She's soft. She can't hack it. She lets her standards slip. She lets people down. She's not avoiding rest. She's avoiding becoming someone she spent her whole life trying to avoid. This is exactly why I've created the overdrive reset. Not to teach you how to have more bubble bars or give you a lecture on why you need to stop. You ain't got time for that shit. And frankly, you've tried it already. I'm going to show you what stopping actually means to you and what's preventing you from doing it. Because until you can see that, you can book

The Overdrive Reset Invitation

Jo Stone (Host) 11:12

every holiday on the planet and still come back more tired than when you left. We start Friday, the 29th of May. It's completely free. The link is in the show notes. I'll see you there. Thanks for joining me today. If this episode resonated, share it with a woman who needs to hear it. And if you want to be part of the Ripple Effect, leaving a review helps it reach the women it's meant for. I'll see you next time.