I Didn’t Think I Deserved Rest...Until Rest Saved Me
Take a quiz to discover 7 powerful kinds of rest and how to reclaim your peace, purpose, and dreams today.
C.B.
5/25/20258 min read
I Didn’t Think I Deserved Rest—Until Rest Saved Me
Once upon a time, I truly believed I didn’t deserve rest.
Not because I didn’t need it. I desperately did.
I was grieving a deep personal loss while carrying the unnecessary weight of a toxic work environment. And somehow, I had convinced myself that rest was something I had to earn.
I thought I could rest after I finished the checklist.
After I helped everyone else.
After I proved myself.
After I was productive enough.
After I had made everyone proud.
Basically, rest was always waiting for me at the end of some imaginary finish line.
I laugh now—that little laugh you sometimes use when something is so painful that crying feels easier—because I can see just how heartbreaking and incredibly inaccurate that belief was.
But it was real.
It was mine.
And, in many ways, it was the beginning of my rest journey.
I Had to Unlearn What Grind Culture Taught Me
It wasn't until I left that job and finally began to heal that I started opening myself up to intentional rest.
Community helped me.
So did the work of people who were already challenging the way we think about rest, including Tricia Hersey and The Rest Deck, which gave me another language for understanding what my body and spirit had been asking for.
Slowly, I began to realize something that now feels obvious:
Grind culture had taught me to undervalue my body, my spirit, my creativity, and my dreams.
I had been taught to see rest as a reward for productivity instead of recognizing it as something I needed simply because I was human.
To heal, I had to detach from that belief.
I had to stop asking, “Have I done enough to deserve rest?”
And start asking:
“What kind of rest do I need?”
That question changed everything.
And I'm still on that journey.
What’s Really Stealing Your Rest?
Maybe, like me, your exhaustion isn't simply about not getting enough sleep.
Maybe you're exhausted because you're carrying grief you haven't had space to process.
Maybe you're constantly being “needed” by everyone around you.
Maybe your brain never gets to turn off because there is always another email, meeting, notification, decision, or problem waiting for you.
Maybe you're surrounded by noise and stimulation all day long.
Maybe you're creating, producing, caring, leading, and performing so consistently that you've forgotten what it feels like to simply be.
Or maybe you're tired from trying to convince yourself that you're okay when you're not.
Sometimes what we call tiredness is actually our body, mind, heart, or spirit asking for something very specific.
That's one of the reasons I believe learning about the different kinds of rest can be so powerful.
The 7 Types of Rest We All Need
The framework of seven types of rest has been deeply influential in the way I understand and talk about rest.
Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, a physician, researcher, author, and speaker, has extensively explored the difference between sleep and true restoration. In her June 2023 conversation on the We Are Human Leaders podcast, “Rest To Success: The Seven Types Of Rest You Need,” she discussed the seven types of rest her research identified: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, sensory, and creative.
I love this framework because it reminds us that rest isn't one-size-fits-all.
Sometimes you don't need another eight hours of sleep.
Sometimes you need a different kind of restoration.
1. Physical Rest
This is probably the type of rest we think about first.
Sleep. Naps. Stretching. Yoga. Massage. Lying down. Letting your body be still.
But physical rest can also mean noticing when your body has been asking you to slow down long before you've actually listened.
If you're constantly pushing through fatigue, your body may not need you to push harder.
It may need you to pause.
2. Mental Rest
Have you ever been physically still but mentally running a marathon?
Your body is on the couch, but your brain is answering emails, replaying conversations, planning tomorrow, solving problems, and worrying about things that haven't happened yet.
That's exhaustion, too.
Mental rest can look like stepping away from your screens, taking a quiet walk, journaling, meditating, or simply giving yourself permission to stop solving things for a while.
You don't have to think your way out of everything.
Sometimes your mind needs somewhere quiet to land.
3. Sensory Rest
Our senses are constantly being asked to process something.
Notifications. Screens. Traffic. Music.
Meetings. Bright lights. Conversations. Background noise.
Sensory rest is an opportunity to turn the volume down.
Maybe that's sitting in a quiet room. Taking a walk outside. Putting your phone away. Turning off the television. Sitting in darkness. Spending a few minutes without anything demanding your attention.
Sometimes peace begins with less input.
4. Emotional Rest
Emotional rest is what happens when we no longer have to perform our emotions.
You don't have to pretend you're okay. You don't have to make your grief palatable for everyone else. You don't have to immediately turn a difficult experience into a lesson.
You can simply acknowledge what is true.
I'm angry. I'm sad. I'm disappointed. I'm overwhelmed. I'm tired.
Emotional rest can happen through safe relationships, supportive communities, therapy, journaling, spiritual practices, or simply giving yourself permission to feel without judging yourself for having feelings.
There is something deeply restorative about not having to pretend.
5. Social Rest
Not every interaction restores us.
Some relationships leave us feeling seen, safe, and nourished.
Others leave us feeling like we've just completed another shift.
Social rest doesn't necessarily mean isolating yourself. It means becoming more intentional about the people and environments you allow to have access to your energy.
Sometimes you need time with the people who let you exhale.
And sometimes you need time alone.
Both can be rest.
6. Creative Rest
Creative rest is especially important to me because creativity needs room.
If you're constantly producing, solving, designing, writing, leading, or creating, eventually your creative well can run dry.
Creative rest gives you permission to experience beauty and inspiration without immediately turning it into something productive.
Look at art. Listen to music. Go outside. Read something just because you enjoy it. Visit somewhere beautiful.
Daydream. Let your imagination wander. You don't have to make anything. You can simply receive.
And sometimes, when we stop demanding that creativity perform for us, it finds its way back.
7. Spiritual Rest
Spiritual rest is about reconnecting with something deeper than the demands of everyday life.
For some people, that may mean connecting with God or another higher power.
For others, it may mean reconnecting with purpose, nature, community, intuition, or a sense of wonder.
For me, spiritual rest is deeply connected to remembering that my life is bigger than my productivity.
It is remembering who I am when I'm not performing a role for anyone else.
It's remembering that I am a whole person—not a machine designed to produce.
Your Rest Journey Is Yours to Define
Learning about the seven types of rest gave me language for something I had been experiencing for years, but understanding the different kinds of rest is not the same as actually allowing yourself to rest. In many ways, that's where the real work begins.
Your rest journey may start with something as simple as taking a nap or turning your phone off for an afternoon. It may look like saying no when you would normally say yes, asking for help when you're used to carrying everything yourself, or finally giving yourself permission to feel what you've been trying so hard to hold together. Sometimes, rest may even mean recognizing that a space, relationship, or environment has convinced you that your worth is determined by how much you can endure—and deciding that you no longer want to live that way.
But sometimes the beginning is much quieter than that.
Sometimes, it starts with noticing.
Noticing that you're tired. Noticing what kind of tired you are. Noticing what your body has been asking for and what actually helps you feel like yourself again.
My own journey began when I finally said, “No more.” With the support of community, resources like The Rest Deck, and a growing commitment to reclaiming my worth, I slowly began making room for something I had almost forgotten how to do.
I began to dream again.
Rest Creates Room for Possibility
This is the part of rest that continues to fascinate me: rest isn't only about recovering from exhaustion. It can also create room for possibility.
When we're no longer operating solely from survival mode, something begins to shift. We have more capacity to imagine, to create, to ask ourselves different questions, and to consider choices we may not have been able to see before. We have more room to notice what we actually want—not simply what is expected of us—and perhaps most importantly, more room to dream.
And I believe that matters.
Because so many of us aren't simply exhausted. We're out of room.
We're out of room to imagine a different career, to think about what we actually want our lives to feel like, to create something just because it brings us joy, or even to sit quietly long enough to hear our own thoughts. We're so accustomed to filling every available space with work, responsibility, productivity, and the needs of other people that we rarely have the opportunity to ask ourselves what might be possible if we weren't constantly trying to keep up.
Sometimes, creating more freedom in our lives doesn't begin with doing more. It begins with making enough room to hear ourselves again.
And when we can finally hear ourselves, we may discover that the life we've been longing for has been trying to get our attention all along.
What Kind of Rest Do You Need?
If this article has you wondering what kind of rest you're actually missing, take the quiz at the bottom of this page.
Consider it an invitation—not another assignment.
You don't have to get a perfect score.
You don't have to immediately fix everything you discover.
Just notice.
Ask yourself: Where am I depleted? What have I been trying to push through? What would feel restorative right now?
Let that be your first step—or your next one—on your own rest journey.
Because you don't have to earn rest. Let me repeat that: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO EARN REST! Let that sink in; you are already worthy of rest.
And sometimes, receiving the rest you need is what gives you enough room to discover what's possible next.
Ready to Make More Room for What’s Possible?
I'm a career, creative, and rest coach who believes that people deserve lives with more flexibility, more breathing room, and more opportunities to become who they actually want to be.
Through 1-on-1 coaching, I help care-centered professionals and creatives reconnect with themselves, navigate career and life transitions, make more intentional choices, and create space for the things that matter to them—including rest, creativity, and their dreams.
Because I don't believe coaching should be about helping you become better at tolerating a life that is exhausting you.
I want to help you create a life with more room in it.
If you're ready to explore what that could look like for you, I'd love to work with you.
Book a Coaching Session
Book a 1-on-1 Coaching Session → HERE
Looking for support beyond individual coaching? I also offer workshops and organizational experiences designed to help individuals and mission-centered teams rethink their relationship with rest and sustainable work:
The Rest of Your Story — A transformational workshop for women in mission-led work who are ready to reclaim rest and rewrite their relationship with burnout culture.
Sacred Work, Sacred Rest — A 3-hour experience for mission-centered organizations and community-focused teams ready to make rest a more intentional part of workplace culture.
A Note of Credit
The seven-types-of-rest framework referenced in this article is informed by the work of Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, whose research and writing have helped broaden the conversation around rest beyond sleep. She explored the framework in her June 2023 We Are Human Leaders podcast conversation, “Rest To Success: The Seven Types Of Rest You Need,” with hosts Alexis Zahner and Sally Clarke.
I'm grateful for the language her work has given so many of us to better understand what it means to truly restore ourselves.
✨ Your rest is not a reward for how much you've accomplished.
You are worthy of rest simply because you are human.
And maybe, with a little more room to rest, you'll find that there is still so much left for you to dream.