Sacred Rest: Increase Productivity and Balance Rest (Replay)

In today’s episode of The Daring Well Podcast, Rita Mercer invites you to slow down, pause, and reconnect with the healing power of sacred rest. In a world that glorifies hustle, productivity, and constant movement, this conversation is a gentle yet powerful reminder that rest is not a reward—it’s a necessity.

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, mentally exhausted, or stuck in a cycle of pushing through fatigue, this episode offers a compassionate permission slip to do less and be more. Rita explores how intentional rest supports the nervous system, boosts creativity, and helps prevent burnout. She also challenges cultural labels and productivity myths that make us feel like we need permission to pause.

Through mindful reflections, relatable examples, and grounded encouragement, you’ll learn how sacred rest helps you reconnect with the present moment, cultivate gratitude, and restore balance in your mind, body, and spirit.

This episode is for anyone longing for peace, clarity, and sustainable energy—without guilt.

✨ You are worthy of rest. Right now.

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Episode Segment Chapters

1. What Is Sacred Rest & Why It Matters

Rita reframes rest as the foundation of productivity, strength, and creativity—not something to earn after exhaustion.

2. Hustle Culture, Labels, & Permission to Be

A powerful conversation about hustle culture, the “soft girl era,” and why we don’t need labels to give ourselves permission to rest or be authentic.

3. Mindfulness, Gratitude, & The Power of the Present

How mindfulness and daily gratitude help us slow down, stay grounded, and reclaim the only moment we truly have—now.

4. Burnout, the Nervous System, & Ignored Body Signals

Rita explains how burnout happens when we ignore early signs of fatigue and why micro-breaks are essential for mental clarity and nervous system regulation.

5. Letting Go of Guilt & Honoring Your Worth

A closing encouragement to release guilt, challenge the hustle mindset, and embrace rest as a form of self-respect and self-care.

Transcript

00:00

Introduction

Welcome to The Daring Well Podcast with Rita Mercer. Looking back on 2025, this episode was the most downloaded episode of the year.

And so for you, I hope that this episode offers you a sweet reminder to lean in to this new year with love, with joy, with peace, and with more stillness.

I hope that you learn to honor the seasons of Letting Go of the Go mode and leaning more into the Rest mode. In 2026, I hope that you hustle less and live more fully and freely as your true self.

All right, let's hit rewind and lean in to this replayed episode. Sacred rest, increased productivity, and balanced rest. Hello, my dear.

Thank you for stopping by The Daring Well Podcast. I'm so glad that you're here today. In this week's episode, we're talking about leaning in to sacred rest.

So what if the key to getting more rest wasn't just doing more, but actually doing less?

So if you often struggle with your mind racing, or you're feeling stuck between hustle mode and wishing that you could just take a vacation just to escape it all, so that you can slow down and give yourself permission just to be, in this episode,

it's just for you. This episode is your permission slip just to pause and to lean in to sacred rest.

So today, we're going to talk about how to balance rest so that more mindfulness and intentional rest, so that you can see how that can help you to recharge your spirit, help you to renew your mind, and to increase your energy levels.

So my dear, it's time to honor yourself with a gift of sacred rest, and just pause and just be. And before we get too deep into today's episode, I wanted to take a quick moment just to invite you out to the sacred rest retreat.

This will be a time to pause and to focus on your self-care, and to lean into mindfulness with grounding techniques, so that you can reset your mind and your nervous system. You can get all the details at daringwell.com/retreat.

So, and if you haven't registered yet, you could do so soon, because seats are filling up really quickly, and I don't want you to miss out. So, and it's daringwell.com/retreat.

2:59

Permission to Pause

For a lot of people, there's so many excuses for not resting. So, what do you do if you don't know how to turn off your mind? What do you do if it's just, I don't know, it's just so hard.

And so, when you think about like this new trend going around, this soft girl era, and for me, I'm not totally sure that I buy into the trend that's going around, that I'm in my soft girl era.

For me, it's because like one minute, I want to embody all of my boss babe vibes, and the next minute, I want to just lean into my feminine energy and pretend that I don't know how to get my hands dirty.

I want to pretend that I don't know how to check the air in my tire and put the correct air pressure in my tire. So I want to pretend that I don't know any of that for just a moment. I just want to lean into that.

And so I find myself getting caught between those two things. And so for me, the soft girl era doesn't just feel right. It just doesn't feel right.

It almost seems too far to the other extreme of the spectrum. So I guess what I'm really trying to get at is labels. Like, the labels that we put on ourselves just to give ourselves permission to just be.

Like, we need permission to rest. Like, we need permission to be feminine. Or we need permission to be strong and assertive.

Like, we don't feel like, I feel like it's just wrong that we need to have all these labels to give us permission to be who we're created to be. Sometimes we can be strong and just embody that.

And sometimes we can feel weak and just be okay with that too. We are humans. We deserve rest.

So we can both be tired and full of energy. All of that is true at the same time. We can be scared and happy at the same time.

Two things can coexist at the same time. So, sis, I just want to encourage you just to take a break. Whatever that thing that you have that's on your plate, it's really not that serious.

In the grand scheme of things, your 80-year-old self, it's gonna laugh at the things that you stress out and you wear yourself to no end about these days.

Your 80-year-old self is gonna be like, girl, that was so unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

And your 80-year-old self is gonna tell you that you should have rested, that you should have cherished that moment with your loved one, or you could, you should have leaned up, leaned in and showed up for yourself.

Those are the things your 80-year-old self would have told you. So think of your future self. When you think about, like, when you're pushing and pushing yourself, think about your future self and give yourself permission to take a pause.

And so for me, you don't have to embody, again, this is just my perspective, but you don't have to embody. I'm in the softgoer era just to feel like you have to give yourself permission to rest.

So give yourself today, starting moving to the starting today and moving forward, give yourself permission to totally and completely show up for yourself authentically.

Whether you're tired, give yourself permission to be tired, whether you're happy, give yourself permission to be happy, whether you're feeling very assertive, give yourself permission to walk in that truth. So yeah, that's my encouragement for you.

6:56

Sacred Power of Now

So whether you deem yourself as spiritual or religious, that doesn't really matter. But the thing that does matter that you can't deny is that we are spiritual beings in human bodies, in a physical human body. And our bodies get tired.

And so we can sense things physically, and we can sense things, so we can sense things physically with our five senses. But we can also sense things spiritually with our innermost, like our innermost self, our innermost being.

And to consider something sacred, sacred is the cause for just like a holy pause, a moment just to just be quiet, be mindful, be present. Like that's what sacred is.

And a pause to just honor the moment, a pause to honor yourself, a pause to honor your place in the world, a pause to honor just the finiteness. And I don't know if that's a word, but the finiteness of life, just life itself.

And there's too many times in life when we rush through the day. We rush through the small and the beautiful moments of life. So mindfulness, it teaches us to pause.

It teaches us to consider each moment sacred and not to take one thing for granted. And sometimes as a parent, I've often heard myself and other people say, I can't wait until the baby comes.

And so we're so excited for the moment when the baby comes. And then we complain about all the sleepless nights. And then the next thing we're saying, I can't wait until the baby learns how to walk.

And then we complain about how the baby is literally getting into everything. And then the next thing we say, I can't wait until the baby and the kid gets to grow up and they can go to school. They go to their first day of school, go to kindergarten.

They're in school full-time. That way, I can have more time. And then we complain about the night staying up with homework, the nights attending parent-teacher conferences, and all the jazz that comes with a kid being in school.

Or for you, maybe it's not parenting. Maybe it's not children. Maybe for you, you're wishing your days away with work.

So maybe you're saying, I can't wait until I get hired. I want to apply for this position at this company and I want to get hired at this company. And then when you get hired, you want to, you say that I can't wait until I get promoted.

And then when you get promoted, then you complain about all the hours and how long they are and your constant complain and that you feel valued, undervalued, and you feel overlooked.

And then when Monday comes, you're wishing the whole week away and you can't wait until the weekend. So the list just goes on and on and on.

And we waste away so much of our time and the truth is, the only moment that we have, the only moment that we have is now. So why waste it?

10:15

Gratitude and Time

So my dear, I dare you to develop a daily habit of gratitude. And the daily habit of gratitude, it will one, boost your mood, but it also will help you to stay grounded. And it'll help to give you more ability to stay in the present moment.

So not like too future focused, which is where oftentimes people struggle with anxiety, again, things outside of their control and not to focus in the past, which is often sometimes where people struggle with depression.

So dwelling on the things that happened in the past, but really grounding yourself in the present moment. And in the present moment, that's where we have the most power. That's where our sense of agency, there are sins of power.

That's where all of that lies. And that, my dear, that's the sacred power of pause. That's the sacred power of now.

That's the sacred power of rest. So rest, it's not just something that we can put off until we have more time. So that's something that's very clear.

And if not, we'll run into burnout and stress and overwhelm and even somatic and physical things within our body. I remember a wise professor from when I was in my undergraduate program.

So one day I was complaining about, I was complaining to her about that I just didn't have enough time in the day. I was a single mom at the time. And so my kids are grown now, but I was a single mom at the time.

And I just felt like I just didn't have enough time to get all the homework done, to show up for myself, like show up for class. Like I just felt like I just didn't have enough time in the day.

And so with loving kindness, she kindly reminded me that Mother Teresa, which she's dead now, but Mother Teresa and I had the same 24 hours in a day. And so she encouraged me to balance my time and just consider my time.

And to be, she didn't say the word gratitude, but just kind of be really grateful for the present moment. And so that moment of like loving kindness and encouragement, that stuck with me. That was, oh my God, probably 15, 20 years ago.

But I still remember that. And so you and Mother Teresa, we all have the same 24 hours in a day.

So when you're comparing yourself to, oh, this person is doing all of this and I'm not, just focus on what you can do and just focus on your season of life that you're in. Focus on what your body is telling you. Like tune into that.

13:02

Rest Fuels Productivity

Sometimes I think we fall in the fallacy that we're being more productive when we're pushing ourselves way past exhaustion, when we're pushing ourselves to do one more, one more, one more appointment, one more thing on our to-do list.

And I promise you, the to-do list, it never ends. The groceries, it's always time to get groceries. The laundry, there will always be laundry to be done.

The dishes, there will always be dishes to be cleaned. There will always will be something to be done. The to-do list at work, there will always be something to be done.

And so, give yourself permission to pause. The truth is usually when we're exhausted, when we're feeling exhausted, it's usually too late. That's the point of like past being tired.

That's the point of I've pushed myself too much. That's the time that you need, the time that you actually needed to pause and rest was way back when your body was giving you those little nudges along the way.

That you just kept ignoring, that you just kept saying, again, I just need to do one more thing, one more, one more, and you just keep piling on the things and delaying your joy, delaying your happiness, delaying the ability to be in the present

moment, delaying your rest, like that's the most important thing for today's topic, just rest. And so if you want to be more productive, if you want to increase your creative juices, then my dear, we've got to fully understand the beauty, the beauty

that comes in sacred rest. Rest, it's the foundation of all of everything, like it's the foundation of it all. And it's where our true strength blows. And it's also, I dare to say, it's where strength grows.

So it's where true strength blows and true strength where it grows. So for our human experience and our human existence, the way that we're created, we're not designed to be on all the time.

Regardless what you think, you're not being more productive by just keep pushing yourself. You're wearing yourself out and you're wearing your body down and you're wearing your nervous system down.

And you're keeping your body activated in this stress response. And we're not designed to be on all the time. That's not how we were created.

When you think about everything in our world, it operates in cycles and rhythms. And it's important to tune in to your body. It's important to tune in to every season of life that you're in and to assess.

To assess the balance of what, when you need to be active, and assess the balance of when you need to be resting.

So being on all the time, being available to everyone at every minute of the day, scheduling every block of time, and not giving you just any breaks. Like, that's what, that is actually what impacts your productivity.

It impacts your mental clarity, it impacts your focus, your attention, and your creativity. And then the next thing, we're left with burnout. We're left with all the doom scrolling on social media until, again, we've wasted so much time.

And it just becomes an endless cycle of unhealthy habits until those unhealthy habits are interrupted.

16:52

Micro Breaks Wellness

So, while much of the research, it varies on how much, like, the number of minutes that are required for the break time and the frequency. So, it doesn't have to be so rigid like that.

But the important thing to remember is to take micro breaks during the day and during the week as well. So, when you take micro breaks during the day and during the week, it allows your brain the opportunity to have some mental space just to rest.

So, have you ever been so focused on something that you forget something? You forget what you're wanting to think about? It's because your brain is trying to remind you.

So, take micro breaks. As you take micro breaks during the day and during the week, it allows your brain the mental space just to rest. And that's what's important.

So, for example, have you ever been so focused on something that you forget something? So, maybe it's because your brain is so tired that it just shuts down. Your prefrontal cortex, it just shuts down.

And it's trying to give you a signal to say you need a rest. But have you noticed the moment that you relax? You suddenly remember what you were forgetting previously, right?

And so, that's because, again, your nervous system and your brain and your body, all those things are so interconnected.

And so, it's just, again, tuning into your body, kind of reminding yourself, take these micro breaks during the day and during the week.

18:38

Embrace Sacred Rest

So, as we wrap up this week's episode, I just want to encourage you to give yourself permission to let go of the guilt, let go of the pressure to perform, to earn your worthiness, and just give yourself grace. My dear, you are so worthy of rest.

So, give yourself the gift of sacred rest and just a pause, leaning into sacred rest, it can lead to you feeling more balance, more clarity, more focus, and productivity.

And I dare you to challenge the hustle mindset, the hustle mindset of go, go, go, do more, do more. But I dare you to challenge that mindset. I dare you to practice daily gratitude.

And so whether you do that daily as like a written habit or an audio, so you're just kind of audio where you're just saying it out loud or written where you're kind of journaling it out, but just kind of be intentional to practice daily gratitude.

Also be intentional to take micro breaks during the day and create a daily and a weekly habit to take those breaks. And that'll actually create a healthy routine. That'll incorporate more mindfulness into your life.

And your future self will thank you for it. So my dear, you are beautiful. My dear, you are strong.

My dear, you are worthy of rest. All right. That's all folks.

That's all for today's episode. Thank you for stopping by The Daring Well Podcast. Don't forget to like, don't forget to share, and don't forget to subscribe wherever you're hearing today's episode.

Wishing you a beautiful day, my dear. Until next time, keep living, keep loving, and keep daring well. Take care, my dear.

God bless. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of The Daring Well Podcast.

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