You Don't Have to Earn Rest: A Burnout Recovery Wake-Up Call for High Achievers

You eat too fast. You scroll too fast. You rest too fast — if you rest at all.

In this solo episode of Hustle Rebels, burnout recovery expert Renae breaks down why so many high achievers and overachievers can't actually slow down, even when nothing is stopping them.

Renae unpacks the moment she realized she'd been treating a meal like a deadline (six ounces of steak, thirty seconds flat), why rest feels like something you have to earn instead of something you're allowed to have, and the three words from her coach — "take your time" — that cracked her programming wide open.

If you've built a life that looks successful on paper but leaves you bone-tired, guilty for sitting still, and living for the next thing instead of the one in front of you, this episode is your permission slip.

Plus: a preview of next week's conversation with attorney-turned-life-coach Lizzy Pennock.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I timed myself eating a steak once. Six ounces. 30 seconds. I clocked it because a nutrition instructor told me to. No judgment, just watch the clock. And when I looked down and saw 30 seconds, I thought something was wrong with the timer. Maybe I just started it late. But it turns out something was wrong with me. This is Hustle Rebels, the podcast for people who still want to win but are starting to question the cost. I'm Renee, your host and burnout recovery expert. I help overachievers get out from under the grind culture, stop sacrificing themselves to a system that literally never gives back, and actually live a life that they worked so hard for like they deserve. Before retirement takes their decrepit body. If you've ever sat down for five minutes and felt a crushing wave of everything you've been out running hit you all at once, stick with me because that's exactly what we're gonna get into today. And by the end of this episode, you're going to truly understand why slow down doesn't really mean exactly what you think it means, why rest feels like something you have to earn, and what to actually do about it that isn't a 10-day meditation retreat. But real quick, if this is already landing, hit subscribe. This show truly exists to help you dismantle the hustle culture without giving up your ambition. So let's hop right into it. Like the bunny that my dog ripped apart last week. So next week I'm sitting down with Lizzie Penick. I'll give you her full introduction then, but here's a little teaser. She's the kind of woman who'll jump off an 850-foot building in Vegas just for shits and giggles. And she still spent years being the high achiever who kept succeeding on paper while quietly losing track of herself. The thesis of her work is basically the thesis of this whole entire show. You don't need to earn rest. You need to remember who you actually are. We got into a lot in that conversation that will air next week, but there's one piece of it that I really can't stop thinking about, and I want to sit with it today before you hear the whole entire thing next week. Okay,

Deadline Living Pattern

SPEAKER_00 2:15

so back to the steak. I used to blame my eating speed on the job. First responder, firefighter, paramedic, you eat like that because you don't know when the next call is coming. So fair enough. But at the time I was recovering from surgery and I was still eating like that. I was still doing that. Like I said, six ounces, 30 seconds every time, with literally no call to beat. And when I told my story to my guests next week, she had an almost identical story. A meal that she inhaled like it was a job to finish, until someone finally called her out. A different scenery, same programming, but that's the thing about this pattern. It doesn't just stay in one lane. If you're eating like it's a deadline, I would bet to say that you're also scrolling like it's a deadline, resting like it's a deadline, even loving people in your life like it's a deadline. Go, go, go, go, go. Check it off. Move to the next thing. We don't experience our life. We clear them like Google tasks on our phone for that next ADHD dopamine hit. And that's not just something that we're doing to ourselves. We live in a society that's conditioned us to always be living for the next thing. Never this thing that's actually in front of us in the moment. Case in point, kids literally just got out of school and the commercials are already running. Back to school is back. Back to school. They haven't even had a full week to enjoy summer break. And we're already being sold the next season, the next deadline, the next thing to get ready for. That's not an accident. That's the whole machine. That is the system that we are a slave to. We have been trained to not enjoy the moment that we're actually in. We've been trained to already be prepping for the next one. And here's where it gets

Coach Says Stop

SPEAKER_00 4:12

personal for me. I work with a coach once a month, and I was telling her about this new kind of exhaustion that I've been sitting with, and I've mentioned this before in a newsletter. Not the regular tired. I know the regular tired. This one was different, bone deep, almost existential. So naturally, the overachiever that I am, I started listing literally everything that I was doing to try to fix it. The supplements, the routines, the five things that I do every morning to try to outrun being tired. And she just looked at me and said, Stop trying so hard. And I fought her on it, at least in my head. My internal response was basically, um, you don't understand. I need to stop being tired, which means I need to keep doing things until I figure out what's wrong. I need to fix this. But say that sentence out loud and hear how insane it is. I need to do more things to stop needing to

Taking Your Time

SPEAKER_00 5:11

do things. Just sit with that for a sec. Let it sink in. And then that night I got out of the shower. And normally my whole routine would be lotion on my face, arms done, out of the bathroom, like I'm late for something in my own house. But that night, for whatever reason, her words were still in my ears. Take your time. And I actually took my time. I put lotion over my whole body. Weird concept, right? I noticed my skin. I noticed that I was standing in my own house with literally nowhere to be, which is a strange concept to think about. That you have to think about taking your time putting lotion on your entire body. Standing in your house with nowhere to be. And I remember thinking, I don't think I know what that means. Take your time. I've been doing this work, helping other people slow down and rebuild themselves for just uh about a year now, and I didn't actually know what taking my own time felt like in my own body. That's the part I want you to sit with, because I think it's the whole trap. We think rest is a category of activity, meditation, journaling, a bubble bath, a retreat, something you need to schedule, something you need to research, something you need to get good at again, the way that you get good at everything else. And when it doesn't come naturally, we just assume you're failing at resting too. So just go looking for a better technique, always looking for that next thing. But slowing down was never about finding the right 10 minutes. It's what you do with the 10 minutes you already have, the walk you're already taking your dog on, that you could actually be present for it instead of listening to something at one and a half X speed, which I do all the time. The coffee you're already drinking, that you could actually taste and enjoy. The shower that you're already taking, enjoying the fact that you have hot water. I actually wrote about this in my newsletter a while back, that our effort is the actual disease, not the cure. Sit with that for a second, especially if you're the kind of person who responds to every problem, including burnout, by just working harder at solving it. And here's the piece underneath all of it, the reason why we don't stop. Somewhere along the way, most of us, especially women that struggle with invisible labor, got the message that rest has to be earned. That you don't get to sit down until that list is finished. But the list is never finished. So you never actually get that permission slip. It's not a personality trait, it's not your ADHD, it's programming. And it runs so deep that when you finally do sit still, it doesn't feel peaceful. It feels like getting crushed by everything you've been outrunning. I think that's why so many of us just keep moving. Stillness isn't restful when you've never practiced it, it's confrontational. So here's what I want you to take from this. If you take nothing else, what most of us miss is that rest isn't a separate project that you add to an already filled life. It's not one more thing to get right. It's not biohacking, it's not another productivity hack. It's a shift in how you inhabit the life you are already living. Eating the meal you're already tasting, walking the dog you're already walking, standing in the shower you're already standing in, enjoying those moments that you're literally already in. What actually changes it isn't a better routine in the morning. It's catching yourself mid-autopilot and asking, am I here right now? Or am I just getting through this? Am I just pushing through? That's it. That's the whole intervention. And what you need to stop outsourcing to willpower and discipline is the belief that you have to earn stillness before you're allowed to have it. Because you don't. You were allowed to have stillness and rest the entire

Permission Slip Wrap

SPEAKER_00 9:34

time. Nobody is handing out permission slips. You just have to stop waiting for one. Here is your permission slip. So let's pull this all together. We have a pattern that we move through our entire lives on autopilot at deadline speed, even when there's no actual deadline. Eating fast, moving fast, resting fast, if we rest at all. And then we have a cost. We don't just lose time. We lose the ability to feel our own lives while we're living them. And when we finally do stop, it doesn't feel like relief. It feels like getting hit by everything we outran, like a freight train. And then you have a shift. Stop looking for a better rest technique and start noticing the moments you already have and actually being in them, experiencing them. That's it. That's taking your time. Three words. So if this hits something for you, if you recognize yourself in the steak story, the lotion story, or you've just never once in your adult life actually tasted your coffee, this is exactly the kind of pattern that we dig into inside Burn the Blueprint for Week identity reset. It's not a productivity hack. It's the work of figuring out who you actually are underneath the performance. I give away the first week for free for all of the listeners, and the link's gonna be in the show notes. And if you want more of this in your inbox, the weekly recharge newsletter goes out every week on Wednesday with stuff just like this, just a little shorter, but same spirit with a little bit more regulation techniques. So the link is also going to be in the show notes for that. And obviously, you can subscribe, follow along, and come back next week for the full conversation. It's gonna be a good one with Blizzzy. You're not broken, you're not lazy, you've just never been given permission to slow down. So give it to yourself. See you guys next week.