You Only Feel Valuable When You’re Productive — That’s the Problem l EP. 53 l

If you feel guilty when you slow down — when you’re not working, not producing, not achieving — it’s not because you’re lazy. It’s because your nervous system and identity were built around performance. 

In this episode, I break down the truth behind why high-performing men struggle to rest, why stillness feels unsafe, and how to start rewiring your nervous system so that peace doesn’t feel like failure. 

I’ve coached almost 500 men through this exact pattern — men who can’t sit still for five minutes without their mind racing, who equate rest with weakness, and who subconsciously sabotage calm because stress feels more familiar. 

We’ll unpack: 

• Why you feel worthless when you stop producing
• How your identity got tied to output and achievement
• Why your nervous system treats stillness like a threat
• The hidden reason you can’t be fully present with your wife or kids
• A 5-minute nervous system reset to start feeling safe in rest again

If you’re the kind of man who says he’s doing it “for the family” but can’t actually be with the family — this episode will hit home. Because you don’t need more discipline… you need to feel safe doing nothing.

Action Step:
Take 5 minutes today to sit in silence — no phone, no music, no input.
Notice the discomfort. Breathe through it. That’s your nervous system learning that peace doesn’t mean failure.
 

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Transcript

Harrison Orr (00:01.366)
If you feel guilty when you rest, you're not lazy, you're wounded.

You're listening to the Be Better podcast. I am Harrison Ohr and after coaching almost 500 men, one truth stands out. Your marriage, business and peace of mind all hinge on one thing, how grounded you are as a man. And it's my endeavor in this podcast and in my coaching to help men rebuild that groundedness so that they can show up better as men in their marriage, in their business and ultimately as a man that they are proud to be.

After speaking with multiple clients this week, there's been one recurring theme and I'm sure as a business owner or as a high performer, you can relate to this. It's the struggle to rest, the struggle to take a day off, to put yourself first, to do something that you want to simply because you want to without needing an ROI, without needing it to be performance based, without having a outcome simply because you feel like

And I've definitely experienced this before and it was a tough mold to break.

Because if you're listening to this, just like those other high performers, you don't struggle with rest because you love the grind. You struggle because you've tied your self worth to that output. So when things slow down, you feel worthless. If you're not working on the business, means subconsciously to you that the business is gonna fail, which means you don't have money for the family, which means you're a shit provider, you're a horrible husband and father, which means you're absolutely useless as a man.

Harrison Orr (01:43.983)
a death sentence to most men. And that inbuilt self-belief is something that I've wrestled with and I've had to coach hundreds of men through.

because it's not a system that you need. It's not like you just, I need to learn to breathe more. I need to like, yes, a regulated nervous system is definitely going to help stay present in these moments and not be so fixated on that productivity. But when we get down to the nuts and bolts of it, it's an identity piece. You have tied your identity to your output, to what you can

provide to society, to your family, to the business, and without that provision, without that productivity or output, you feel worthless, right? Especially as men we've been raised and we've been rewarded for being, for achieving things, for hard work, for doing all these things. And it really goes against that, that raising and that belief to slow down and be present.

And because of that, a lot of men start to then have this resistance to rest. It's like, if I rest, I'm lazy. If I rest, means X, Y, and Z about me. And we start to hate that rest because of subconsciously what it says about us or what we believe it then says about us. But really, you don't hate rest. You just hate how you feel when you stop.

and the guilt, the anxiety, the mental noise, it's not a productivity problem, it's a nervous system, or an identity problem.

Harrison Orr (03:35.073)
because you've trained your body to believe that being still is unsafe because stillness was never praised. You were never praised for sitting down, for being present, for not performing and working hard all the time. You were rewarded for the achievements, for fixing things, for helping things, for everything that you could do for everybody else. And so now your nervous system links doing nothing with being.

nothing. And that's why you can't switch off. And that's why rest actually feels like failure. Because of these downstream effects of if I rest, I won't be able to provide and do all these things. And that will eat at your soul. Because not only in the moment do you feel like shit, but then when there is the slightest sense of peace or of quiet,

we'll find ways to disrupt that. We will find ways to stress ourselves out, to give ourselves more work, to put more tasks on our plate. And this is where we end up being busy over being productive. And we go back to the state that is known and is comfortable to a certain extent, which is the busy and stressed out state.

You may notice this in relationships as well. If you've been in a tense relationship for a significant amount of time to the point where it is start to become the norm.

whether you or your partner consciously recognize it, when you start to make positive moves in being calmer, being more grounded, being more present, having better communication, bringing back the flirting and the fun, that will be enjoyable. Of course you're like, this is amazing. Why can't it be like this all the time? And then you come back to reality and then one of you will start a fight over something so trivial. Like you'll get fixated on something and just nitpick, or you'll get real.

Harrison Orr (05:41.037)
over something that doesn't require a reaction or even a comment at all. Often it's nothing to do with...

the situation or the event that's just happened, it's actually to do with your nervous system not feeling safe in being calm because it has no proof that calm is a safe space. as I recognize how wildly insane that sounds logically, it has felt, it being our nervous system, has felt safe in this level of tension for a significant amount of time.

might consciously say that I want to be calm, I want to be more present, and I want to have this type of relationship all the time, there is a level of uncertainty in that situation if this plays out long enough to say that we would enjoy it if it were like this all the time, that we would have an amazing intimate life and an amazing connection and we would be happy and we would be all these things because we have no proof of it.

That's where it takes the retraining of our nervous system, the resetting of our identity as well to not be connected to that stress, to that tension. And then if you're starting to feel guilty even in these times of peace.

when it comes reframing this back to work. If you're at work and you feel guilty because you're not with your kids and when you're with your kids or you're just trying to be present and at peace on your own, you feel guilty for you're not working. Guilt is just your nervous system punishing you for not performing. It's not because you're bad.

Harrison Orr (07:28.973)
But because for most high performance, that performance equals survival. That means the business is thriving, means you're making money, it means you're doing a good job for the family and you are worthy as a man, Because when you were younger, that's what you were celebrated for. When you achieved and when you weren't, when you didn't, you were invisible. So now that calm, that rest is what feels dangerous.

And that's why your body reacts to stillness like it's a threat instead of a reward. And this is why you can't just take a break. You have to rewire the story underneath it. Rewire the identity and the nervous system. Because I've been there. I used to get physically uncomfortable whenever I took downtime.

even if I was just sitting there with my wife, I'll just let me grab my diary and I'll just journal some notes. now I would have my phone like, okay, cool, I'll just punch in something into chat GBT and I'll work through this loop that's in my mind or create this plan or this thing, whatever, just while we're sitting here. Again, because of that need to always be productive.

because it's wasted time if it's not. And we keep telling ourselves that I'm only worthy if I achieve this thing, or I can't slow down, I can't stop now until I get to this level, till I make that kind of money, till we're in this position, whatever the story is for you. And...

If that's the loop that's going through your mind, it's like, need to be productive. And then you start to overthink, what haven't I done? What can I improve? What needs fixing? And then we start hyper fixating on what we need to do for everyone and everything else outside of ourself and outside of the present moment.

Harrison Orr (09:25.535)
when we really look at it.

You're not guilty because you're lazy. I highly doubt you're a lazy person if you're listening to this podcast and resonated with any of my content. I don't think that's the type of person you are. But you would probably be feeling guilty because your entire identity is focused around proving that you're useful, proving that you can provide something for somebody else. And so when you're not doing that, it's like, well, who am I?

If I'm not making money and providing for my family, what kind of father am I? What kind of husband am I? What am I worth? Like who the fuck am I if I'm not these things? It's an interesting rabbit hole to go down when we realize the way we would describe ourselves is often just labels. Like think about if I asked you, who are you?

You might say, well, I'm a husband, I'm a business owner, I'm a father, I'm an athlete, I'm a biohacker, I'm a this type of, I'm a massage therapist, I'm a chiropractor, I'm a, know, insert your other things here. And these are all just labels. They're not actually who you are as a being. And I don't think there's many...

accurate answers to that question of who I am. The best answer that I've heard so far, which is vague as fuck and not really an answer in itself, but the best one that I've heard so far is simply, I am.

Harrison Orr (11:10.835)
Who are you? What are you? I am. I am everything that is me and everything that is not me is not me. Whatever that means. Because with that comes a certain level of freedom. I don't have to do or not do certain things because that's who I am or not who I am.

when we put ourselves in these boxes of this is the type of person that I am, it can sometimes limit the things that we'd like to do in life because, well, that's not who I am, which can definitely be a positive when it's used in context to staying aligned with your purpose and your mission because living in alignment, taking these actions is just who I am. Why do you go to the gym every single day? It's just who I am. I just love it.

careful not to use that as an excuse or as a justification. Why do you get triggered all the time? Why are you so angry? Why are you this kind oh, it's just because of the way I am. That is not a useful frame for that. But.

Like always, I'd like to give you guys something to action based on this. So hopefully by now you've got a bit of a reframe as to this productivity to identity, why you feel guilty and why you can't relax. Here's a five minute reset that you can put into literally every single day, which is going to help train your nervous system to feel safe in rest, in peace.

Like I said, this is a small step. The deepest step is going to be rewiring that nervous system and deeper than that, your identity, which is not something that I can convey to you via a podcast, unfortunately. If you want guidance on that, reach out for coaching the links in the show notes or do you do the other things there, but it's gonna be deeper than this, but this is gonna be a starting point. Find yourself five minutes in the day, five minutes to just sit.

Harrison Orr (13:07.817)
And now you might think, five minutes, what is that? Five minutes is going to feel fucking painful if you have not sat still. Sat still with no music, no input, no phone, no nothing. Just sit there.

and breathe in for a count of four through your nose as always. Exhale for a count of eight. Just relax your entire body. Now in this, I guarantee you the thoughts will come up. This is stupid, this is a waste of time, why am I doing this? I need to do this, I'm so busy. And all the other fucking stories and justifications will come up to why this is gonna be a waste of your time and not worth it.

That is your nervous system trying to keep you safe and get you back to work because you can't sit still for five minutes.

how this plays out and not being able to sit still for five minutes, it means you can't give your wife attention for more than a couple of minutes because I need to solve the problem. I can't just sit here and just be present with her, with your kids, right? Struggling to be present when they're just playing. It's like, how do I solve this? I need to get back to work. What's this like this thing at work that I haven't solved yet? Like your mind is ticking over and is everywhere else except with your body, except with the people that you're sitting there with.

And if you're like most men, you say that you're building the business, making the money for them. So you're sacrificing the presence with them to make the business which is supposedly for them in the end anyway. You're starting to see how backwards that is. We're sacrificing the presence and time with them to do the thing that is supposedly for them. It doesn't make sense, right? So just acknowledge all that shit that comes up.

Harrison Orr (14:54.645)
this five minutes, it's gonna feel like torture. So set your alarm, set a reminder for five minutes and only get up once that has gone off. And then reflect at the end of that five minutes. Did anything burn down? No. Am I still alive? Yes. Okay, great. Starting to create incremental little bits of proof that you can sit still

without things burning down. It hasn't changed who you are as a father, who you are as a man or a husband. If anything...

Like right now, initially, you're gonna feel more stressed and behind, but that's part of the process. Eventually, once this starts to become normal and you can feel safe and peace, your intention when you're actually doing something goes up 10 fold. Because when you're on, you're on. You're clear minded, you're focused, you're intentional, you're not distracted, you get a 30 minute job done in five minutes, and that's how you roll because you're fucking on. But in order to have that level of on,

you need to have the opposite level of off. Being able to sleep probably, being able to be present and switch off when you're at home or with yourself so that your on is literally 150%.

If you're on 100 % of the time, what originally starts as your 100 % over time goes to 90, then to 80, then to 70, 60, all the way down until you burn yourself out and you're spending more time doing the same task because it's taking you more time because you're not focused, you're not clear-headed and you're all over the place. And that's another reason why you feel guilty for taking time off and slowing down. But remember this, as a high performer, you do not need more discipline.

Harrison Orr (16:46.313)
You need a nervous system that feels safe in rest. Because the reason you can't slow down isn't because you're too driven, isn't because you've got so much work to do, it's because you've only ever felt valuable when you're proving something, when you're focused on output. So when you rest, your body panics because it thinks that you're about to become invisible, become worthless. And that's not motivation, that's trauma.

Until you learn to rewire that, you'll burn out chasing a version of success that never feels safe enough to hold and actually experience. It'll always be that goalpost that you keep moving further and further away. So if you feel guilty when you rest, good.

That means the pattern is ready to be broken, is bringing it to the surface that this is something that you can address. You're now consciously aware of it. That's the first step in being able to do something about it. But you can't outwork this. More work, more productivity, more systems will not fix this. You need to repattern your nervous system and your identity from that depth of a level.

And so if this landed, don't be sorry, be better, take action, implement that five minute routine, be uncomfortable as fuck sitting there for five minutes telling yourself what a waste of time it is. But that's the first step in actually being able to feel safe in resting, in present, in calm. Like I said, if you want more personalized guidance on walking through this and shattering that self belief and working on that nervous system, reach out and let's have a chat. Otherwise.

Don't be sorry, be better. I'll see you guys next time.