319: Why Rest Takes Hard Work (Where I’ve Been The Past 2 Months)

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 319.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

Welcome back 00:46 

Hey, hey, hey. Welcome back to Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, and it has been a little bit. I took a break and didn't tell you guys about it. And I'm back and we didn't talk about it today, but so many of you were so kind and a couple of weeks after you started noticing that there were no new podcast episodes after our last MACROS 101 launch, you reached out and said, hey, are you OK? How's it going? Are we going to see new podcast episodes? And so I let you know, people know that, hey, I'm taking a break. I'm taking a rest. And the plan was to come back in May. And that's what we're doing. 

So, that's what this podcast episode is about, is about that decision that I made where it came from. Why? Why I knew it was time to take a break and, you know, kind of why rest is so freaking hard, even though it is so important. And I learned some good lessons. I've learned some lessons over the last couple of months that I thought it would be fun and hopefully informative to share with, with you as I have tried to intentionally slow down, as I've tried to intentionally ask myself the really important question of what do I want now? What do I want today? Not, not continuing on with what I said I wanted a year ago and yeah, I've just learned a lot of lessons and I'm going to share those today on the Podcast with you. 

Exciting podcast episodes ahead 02:10 

Now I will note that we have some really exciting podcast episodes coming up. Just before I took my break, I actually did two really amazing interviews that I've been holding on to and very excited to share. But wanting to, you know, honor my break and then, you know, release them when we, when we started back. So, the next two weeks we have some amazing interviews. Next week you're going to hear from Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr. I have to remember to throw the Orr in because now she's hyphenating her last name. But if you don't know who that is, that's OK. You're probably not a CrossFit fan like I am. But if you are a CrossFit fan like I am, then you know exactly who Tia Clair Toomey-Orr is. She is the world's fittest woman six times over and has won the most CrossFit games out of any Crossfitter ever and I freaking got to interview her. It was it was like the highlight of my day, week, month and probably year, and someone that I've looked up to and just has been a hero in my eyes for so long. Anyway. You're gonna hear from her next week and then the week after that I got to interview Heidi Powell, who's also been someone who I've followed in the fitness industry for. Like before I even got started with Biceps After Babies. And we had a really good interview as well. So we have some really good interviews coming up for you to listen to. I have some solo episodes that I have prepared. I'm ready to get back into it. I'm ready to reignite the podcast and be excited about it again. And that's what we have coming up for you in the next couple of weeks. 

Exploring the background of my podcast hiatus 03:41 

So let's get into a little of some of the background behind the scenes of my break from the podcast, which was really only about two months, but it's like I've never taken a two-month, not put up any episodes from the podcast since we started it in 2018. That's a long time to have episodes drop every single week for, you know, 6 plus years. So I want to talk a little bit about what, what made me make this decision and hopefully you'll be able to apply it to your journey because like I've been thinking a lot about this paradox of how rest, by this idea of rest, which sounds great, really takes effort and intentionality, which is ironic. It's like maybe, maybe that's not the way it is for you, but it absolutely is the way that it is for me. It's like rest is not my natural state. It is not where I sit naturally it for me, it requires effort, it requires, requires intentionality. And I just think it's it's so interesting. And so a lot of times I don't put that effort in and I don't put that intentionality in. 

So I'm going to tell a little bit of my story and I'm going to try and tell as much of it as I feel comfortable sharing at this point and. And I only say that because there are things that I am still processing. There are things that I'm still trying to understand or learn about myself that I'm not quite ready to like. I haven't quite figured it out yet, so I'm going to share what I feel like I can share and you know, maybe I'll share more as I as I make my way and start to understand myself a little bit more. So I would, I would say that this decision kind of goes all the way back to like October. I feel like October was when I kind of got on this treadmill that just kept speeding up and I'm usually really good about intentionality when it comes to bursts of energy, right? It's like, OK, I know that I'm going to need to have a lot of energy for this season of time, and so I can go into that season of time, put more effort, put more energy, put more time and focus and everything into that season of time and then back off, rest and recover. And I'm going to do it again. I I feel like I'm usually pretty good at that. At least, you know, in a way that works for me. And this time I feel like I got on a treadmill and I never, I didn't get off and the treadmill just kept speeding up. And this treadmill that was really, you know, hard for me or required, I would say it would just required a lot of me was that I was doing a lot of new content creation.  

So starting in October, I created a three-day live event that we had a bunch of clients come to you and then I ended up creating a whole bunch of content for a new business program and then we rolled into the New Year and I was creating a whole lot of new content for the five-day challenge that we ran and I was creating a whole lot of new content for Instagram. And then I was creating a whole lot of new content for MACROS 101 and this is taking us from like October, November, December, January, February, March. And I just felt like all of those months it was, it was just a lot of me creating new content. It takes a lot from me to create. I that's not for me. That's not my natural state of being of like, content creation and just like this creation mode, some people really love that. Some people really get into it and and when I get into it, I I do enjoy it. But it takes a lot out of me. And so I feel like I just was on this treadmill of like, content creation and needing to generate in both. These like new ideas and and new pieces of of things that I was going to put out into the world. I mean, it really is like for any of you who do content creation. It is a little bit like a pregnancy and like birth process. It's like you're birthing this out of you and it it takes a lot out of me. 

Content creation overload, exhaustion, team dynamics 07:35 

So I felt like I was on this content creation just like new, new, new, we needed new landing pages and we need new content and we needed new videos and we needed new like PowerPoints and and all these things and it just kept speeding up and about like January, February I could really start to feel myself getting tired, just like getting tired of of the constant grind, getting tired of the speed at which I was having to run to keep up with everything that I had already scheduled out into my into my year because I and I will know. Like when I used to be a solo entrepreneur. It was just me, and if I needed to push something or move something, it was not that big of a deal. I just did it and one of the benefits of having a team is that now I have a lot of people who are supporting me and are taking things off my plate and are doing things for me and that's a beautiful thing about having a team and one of the hard parts about having the team is that there are a lot of other people that need to be considered in any decision that I make and it's a little bit harder to move things. It's a little bit harder to push things out because there's a lot of other people that are impacted and a lot of other people's workflows and vacations and time and it is impacting. When I make decisions like that. And so I could start to feel myself when we were rolling into like mid January or early February that I was getting tired and I could feel myself. Just like, really feeling the weight of things. But we already had this launch planned for MACROS 101. You know, it was going to happen whether I was ready or not, and I really felt like I, I I feel like I can run through the finish line of this one. I feel like I have the energy I have the, you know, momentum. I can. I can do this. I can finish. I can finish this race now, if I if I didn't think I would be able to finish the race, I we could have moved things, you know we could have figured it out. We could have moved him. But when I took a step back and I said I'm tired. But I do think I have enough energy to finish out this race. 

Launch season hustle, hitting exhaustion limits 09:30 

And so, you know, going through launch season is really busy for me. There's a lot of work that goes into leading up to the launch. I do 5 days of free content where I am, you know, delivering live content every day for five days and then we do our open time where we do enrollment for MACROS 101. I'm doing lives every single day during that week as well. And then we usually close those on Thursday and then Friday we do our kickoff call with our new clients and I'm laughing because I'm just like it just kept going. And then I had, you know, Saturday off, Sunday I traveled to Las Vegas. Monday morning I did a call for our new clients and then Monday and Tuesday, I presented at a conference and had my you know presentation that I need to work out. And again we're talking about more content creation, right. And so Monday, Sunday night, I got in to my hotel and spent all Sunday night finishing up my content. Because I just had so much content creation that I was having to do that I just hadn't gotten around to like finishing up this presentation. So here I am Sunday night, knowing Mondays rolling around. I have to give this presentation. I'm finishing up this content creation, Monday and Tuesday I present at this conference and then Wednesday was my 40th birthday. And I kind of know him to this point. I was like, I just freaking have to make it to my 40th birthday. That was, that was my finish line. It was like if I can just make it to my 40th birthday, everything is going to slow down a little bit and so that was my finish line and and I did, I ran, I ran to that finish line, right. I I was tired. I could feel it in my body. I could feel it with just my energy that I was tired but I knew that I could finish. 

What I didn't quite expect is that when I finished, I would I I gave it everything you know. It's like it's like when you run like you split to the end of a race, but you literally like laid it out on the line to get there. And I'm not used to that. I'm used to giving effort, but I'm used to finishing and being like, OK. Yeah, I gave a lot of effort, but I feel like I can recover and you know, do it again fairly soon. This time I gave it everything. I gave all of my energy, all of my effort, all of my attention, all of everything that I had to the last six months and I hit that finish line and I was was finished. And I was done and I realized that I had. I had gone too far, like I had. I had pushed myself, my body too far. And you know now and then. And now I have all these clients that I need to show up for. So I I still have things that I need to do. I still need to show up. And I still need to give of myself to my clients and I will say that it is. It is in some ways easier for me to show up for a smaller group of people who have paid to for me to show up to you than it sometimes is to show up for, like, free things that I do. 

Negative feedback on free content 12:28 

And I will say that because this is, I don't know, I don't know how this is going to sound to people, but I get a lot of Flack for some of my free content and for somebody who puts in a lot of effort and a lot of energy, gosh, into my free content. Gosh. OK, I can post myself for somebody who puts a lot of energy and effort into my free content when I hear negative feedback from from people, it's it's really hard because it's like freaking. It was free. And it was free what you came to was something you didn't even pay for and then I put all my heart and energy and attention into something. And then people come back and give you bad feedback about it. And I just want to say it was free. So sometimes it's a little easier for me to put my energy and effort into someone who is paying me because there, there's just a different energy when somebody shows up and they have invested in themselves to be there. They show up in a different way and it's easier for me to show up for those people. I don't know. I don't know if that makes any sense, but I will say that even though I felt like I was spent at the end, you know, when I hit my 40th birthday, after we had just on this MACROS 101 launch, I was able to, like, regroup and pull myself together and be able to show up for my clients. And I really think that that is because. And it was just a smaller group of people that I was having to show up for and and and the way that they showed up for me allowed me to show for them and I have had an amazing time with this last round of MACROS 101 clients. They have just been amazing to work with and has been such a joy and something that I've needed honestly of where it is. Just a joy to show up for them is a joy to pour into them because they are showing up in such big ways. 

Intentional break to recover energy 14:19 

So anyway, so I knew leading up to the MACROS 101 launch that I was tired and that I that I had too many balls in the air and that I needed to intentionally let some of those balls drop. And so I told the team that I was going to be taking a break from the podcast after we closed doors to MACROS 101 for at least two months that I just needed some time to recover. I needed some time to not like to drop something from my plate. And maybe you've had the same experience where, like, you feel like you're juggling and you have all these balls in the air. And you can do it for a while, and then there's at some point we're just like, I have to let one of these balls drop because if I don't, I have to put these balls down because if I don't, something's going to drop. And it's way worse to have something drop than for me to take a pause and put a ball down and then go back to juggling the other balls that I have. And so that's what I did is I said I'm going to take a break, I'm going to take a rest, we're going to pause the podcast and life is going to go on. Sometimes it's easy to think that everything's going to come crashing down if I don't do the podcast. But I was like, life is going to go on. We'll come back and then you know, hopefully I'll be able to show up better for, you know, the audience that I have on the podcast. 

Decision-making: rest or push through? 15:31 

So something I've been thinking about a lot as I, you know, made this decision to take a break. And I think for me it was, it was pretty clear that I needed a break. I I didn't really struggle with that decision much. But I've been thinking a lot about sometimes questions that our clients, my clients ask me about how do I know Amber when I need to just like, suck it up and kind of push through the hard part or when I need to rest? And I think this is a really good question and sometimes it's confusing as to which one we need to do right. Do I need to rest or do I need to just suck it up and like, dig deep and and push through this this difficult portion and when now, OK. So we're going to answer that question, but in order to answer it, I want to tell you about another question that my clients often ask me, and that is the question of do I eat the treat or do I not eat the treat? So I'll often have clients. I talk about this a lot in MACROS 101 that the decision you make is way less important than how you made the decision, meaning whether or not you eat the cookie matters way less to me. And matters way less to your results and your outcome than the process that you go through to make the decision to eat the cookie and that's what I really care about, and that's what I really work with my MACROS 101 clients on and so if there's a cookie in front of you and you're wondering, you know, should I eat it? Should I not? What kind of decision do I want to make? One of the questions I will sometimes ask my clients is hey, is it harder for you to not eat the cookie? Or is it harder for you to eat the cookie? And one of those is likely harder for you, and whichever one is harder is likely the skill that you need to practice more. So I will have some clients who it's really hard to not eat the cookie. They're just in the pattern of like, they always eat the cookie. It's like, you know, that's a very easy decision for them to make. It is way harder for them to make a decision not to eat the cookie. That's very hard for them. That likely means that's the skill they need to practice. And for some of my clients, they are really good at telling themselves no. They are really good at saying I'm not going to eat that. And it's very hard for them to actually eat the cookie. And for those clients, that's the skill that they need to develop. So it's always like which muscle is weaker, and that's probably the skill that you need to work on. And so if we go to that question of, like, how do we know if I need to suck it up or if I need to rest, I would ask you, which is harder. Is it harder for you to push through like points where you're worked hard. Like, are you someone who tends to quit easily. Or are you the type of person who, like you, always just push harder and harder and harder and harder until you die? And knowing yourself and knowing which side of the spectrum that you lean more towards can be very helpful in deciding whether you need to take rest or whether you need to push a little bit harder. And again, this is an individual, it's not. There's not one way to answer that question of like is based off of like. What is harder for you and for me it is much harder for me to rest. I'm really good at setting a goal and working towards it. I'm really good at that and it's been one of the reasons that I've been so successful. So that's a really great trait, but it has a dark side and the dark side is that I then often times push myself too much. I push myself too far and I don't give myself the rest that I really need and deserve. And so for me, it's knowing, having that realization, this was a realization I had over the last couple of months as I was making this decision. Because it's harder for me to rest, which means it's something that I need to practice more. 

Embrace strengths, acknowledge weaknesses, self-awareness key 19:15 

Now you may be the type of person who you're like. It's super easy for me to rest. What's really hard for me is to, like, push and keep pushing when it gets hard. Well, cool. There's nothing wrong with that. There's great things to that as well, like you probably are more well-rounded person than I am. That's fantastic. I kind of wish I was that way sometimes. So again, that has a beautiful side to it and it also has a dark side that you may tend to quit when it gets hard instead of pushing through. So really, you know, the older I've gotten, the more I just start to realize that it's a lot about just knowing ourselves. And knowing that there are great attributes, we all have fantastic attributes and all those fantastic attributes have like an Achilles heel or have a dark side to them. And how can we lean into the fantastic, wonderful things about ourselves and then understand the dark sides and minimize the dark sides as much as possible. 

Reflection on goals, resistance, and redirection 20:02 

OK, so that's a little bit about like how this rest came to be and why I decided to take that rest. And I want to talk a little bit about some of the realizations that I've had over the last couple of months and and some of the things that I've kind of woken up to that probably honestly wouldn't have happened if I hadn't gone through that experience of just like running to the finish line, being completely spent and being forced almost to slow down and rethink things through. So one of the things that. So let me just tell you a little bit about our promotional calendar, our promotional calendar. We typically launch MACROS 101 in the Spring and then after that we will do TMCC, which is our coaching certification. And then usually we have some other launches that we'll do in like Q3 and then in Q4, oftentimes we'll do TMCC again. So that's kind of our promotional calendar. That's kind of how we had things run and that's honestly how we had things planned out for this year and when I finished MACROS 101 it was time to like you know from a from a promotional calendar standpoint. It's time to move our our sites on to prepping for and planning out our next TMCC round.  

And I just couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. I every time I thought about it, every time I tried to get into, like, planning and thinking about it, and there was so much resistance in that. And I really, I took a step back and I tried to figure out is there resistance because I just put so much energy and I, you know, I ran to the finish line and had no energy left. Is that why I'm feeling so much resistance? Like is this just a matter of like I need rest and recovery and then I'll be ready to do it? Or is there something deeper? And the more I sat with it and the more I thought about it, the more I started to ask myself a question that I don't ask myself enough, and that is a question of what do you want now? What I'm really good at doing is saying ask myself the question, what do you want? And then going to getting it, I say I want that, I want to go there. I want that outcome and then you know, I'm not saying I will get it in the next month, but I can hold on to a vision for 6, 12, 18, two years like I can hold on to that vision but I will get there. I will get there. What I'm not really good at doing is reevaluating the goal, reevaluating the vision and asking myself the question is that still where I want to go.  

And as I slowed down, I was able to ask myself that question. Is that still where I want to go? And when I sat with that, the more I realized. No, actually some of the things, some of the goals that I had set for myself, some of the goals that I set for the business and where I wanted to go and where I wanted to take us. I don't think that they currently, I don't think they align with me right now and that was a little bit of a tough pill to swallow for me because like I said in the past, I'm always the person who says I want that and then I get it. That's that's just how I roll. And I in that being forced to slow down, I was able to ask that question. Is this still what I want? And actually listening to the answer and the answer was no. 

Reevaluated goals, aligned with new vision 23:31 

I used to want that, I used to. I used to want to go there and I don't want it anymore. And being able to sit with that and then make new decisions, make new goals, make a new vision actually at the beginning of every year, I write out my vision for the year. I write out where I want to be. I write out the goals that I want to hit and we have some big goals for this year. And I sat down and I rewrote all of them. And I they're. I changed. They are different goals. I have very, very different goals. I have different vision. I have different words that I'm focusing on this year, that feel much more in alignment with what I want now, and that's not to say that I made a mistake before. I think this is a really important point, is that just because I said I wanted that thing and I started going after it and I didn't finish it doesn't mean that I made some mistake in setting that goal. I truly don't believe that. I truly believe some of the goals that I've set in the past. And you know, the school that I've decided to let go of doesn't mean that I made a mistake in setting it or in working towards it or in trying to achieve it. And it doesn't mean that I'm quitting either. It means that I ask myself that question. What do I want? And I listen to myself, instead of just asking that myself, that question once and then never asking that myself that question again, I actually think this is a question I probably need to ask myself more often than I do. I probably tend to not ask that question enough. 

Navigating shifts in team vision alignment 24:59 

So you know what previously was really exciting to me in terms of goals doesn't fit me anymore. What previously really drove me and made me want to show up and got get excited to come to work aren’t, is not the same thing. And it doesn't mean I'm beating myself up for it, but it does mean that I'm making some pivots to more fully align with what I want now in this season of my life. And I will tell you, I was a little nervous to talk to my team about this, not because they're not fabulous and not because I didn't think they would understand, but because like I said, when you have a team, my job as the leader of our team is to set the vision. Then it's to say, here's where we're going. And then part of my job is to, like, get everybody on board and excited and totally bought into where we're going. So we use an analogy. It's like, hey, we're going to Hawaii and everybody's, like, super jazzed. They're super excited and they're totally bought into the idea that we're going to Hawaii and they're working their butts off to be able to get us to Hawaii. And then I come to them. I say just kidding. Now we're going to New York. Right. New York's cool too. Hawaii is cool. New York's cool. Like they're both cool, but they're different. And it is like a turn. It's like they were totally bought into going to Hawaii, and now I have to, like, turn the ship and be, like, actually, we're going to New York now, get excited about going to New York. And so I was a little nervous to bring it to the team and and share with them like some of the things that had changed for me and a little bit of a new direction of where I wanted us to go, and I will say my team was fabulous, they were amazing. They were totally on board. They understood what was going on. They understood that, you know, the changes and why I was making the changes like I shared with them some of the details of why I was making this change and and why I thought this was a better place for us to go and they were fantastic and they have supported me and they are on board and you know, we're very excited for what it is that we're going for now, which is different than some of the goals that we have set at the beginning of the year. 

Seeking balance: time with family, service-oriented work 26:58 

And really, when it comes down to what I want right now is I want not to hustle, I want time. I have been saying forever that I want to slow down during the summer months. I've been saying this for years when I think about my ideal business and like what I would love to have, I have this idea that I would love to like slow down during the summers. And like work way less during the summers when my kids are home. And every year I seem to have an excuse as to like why I can't do that and it usually is because we have some sort of promotion or some sort of program that we're running that it requires me to show up and and which is it's fine. But there's a disconnect between what I say I want, which is time away from the business and with my kids in the summer, and then what I'm actually doing and I'm always trying to look for those disconnects, I'm not as good as it as I would like to be and this is where sometimes outside help like outside coaching can be helpful. But when we see these disconnects between, I say this is important, but here's how I'm behaving, which doesn't align with what I say. I say that this is important, but with the way I spend my time, my money, my resources, my energy isn't actually supporting the fact that that's important to me. When we see those disconnects, it's really important to dive into them and this is what disconnect that I'm seeing is, like I say, I want more time during Summer away from working. And yet every single summer, Dang it, I feel like I planned something that makes it so that I can't have that time off during the summer. My kids are getting older. My daughter will be a senior next year. She'll be going away, even to College in a year, a little over a year from now. And I am really starting to realize, hey, my time with my kids is limited. And and wanting to spend as much time with them as possible. So that's what I want right now. I don't really want to hustle. I don't really want to explode my business. I want to keep serving. I want to keep helping. But for the first time in a really long time, like growth of the business is not super high on my list. Service is still high. I still want to show up. I still want to serve the people who want to be served, but I'm not in like this big growth phase. I'm not in like this. I want to just explode and I want to serve thousands and tens of thousands of of people. It's like I want to help and I want to serve. But I'm I'm not willing to give up some of the things that I used to be able to give up or be willing to give up in order to make it happen. 

Struggling with worth tied to productivity, redefining goals 29:24 

And that's a little weird for me, if I'm being honest, I definitely struggle with equating my worth with productivity. I'm a I'm a three on the anagram. I love me a good goal. The three is the achiever and this idea that like productivity defines my worth is one that I've really had to to work on untangling. And if I'm being honest, I still have not untangled it and I think this this kind of shift in my focus is giving me a good opportunity to actually do some of that work of saying who am I if I don't have a big business. Who am I if I don't, you know, serve more clients this year than I did last year. Who am I if we don't actually grow the business this year? And that's I'm working really hard to release that. It's something that for any of you who struggle with the same thing and I of you know, productivity and achievement being a part of what makes you worth something. It's a hard thing to untangle and it's something that I'm working diligently to do, and I think this taking a step back and actually setting some goals that maybe aren't even bigger than last year, right? My goal isn't, isn't on revenue, it isn't on even number of clients that we're serving, which is kind of some of the goals that we set in the past. My goal this year is to detach my goal this year is to have it be easy. My goal this year is to show up and serve, but not like pouring out my cup every single day and I think I think that was one of the realizations. I'm actually just kind of processing this in real time, but I think that's one of the realizations that I had, that was so painful for me about the challenge experience that we had. We had some, we had some great feedback about the challenge and we had some really negative feedback about the challenge this last time and I think one of the reasons that it hit me so hard. Again, it's like it's free guys. Like I don't know what you want for me. It's a free experience and we put so much time and energy and effort into that, that experience and then for people that have like negative feedback about it, that that was really hard for me. 

Realizing limits, redefining goals, giving oneself permission to change 31:27 

So what I'm realizing is that one of the reasons that feedback was so hard for me was because I gave so much of myself. I gave so much, like everything, that I had, energy, effort, attention, everything that I had. I poured into people during that experience and then to feel like I gave, like, I poured it all out, gave everything that I had and then having it not be good enough. It was hard. It was a really hard experience and feeling like. Again, even if I give everything, it's still not good enough. It's still not enough, and that's that was a hard space for me to be in. So I'm I'm just kind of I'm realizing and kind of processing that a little bit of it kind of just leans into that idea of like I am at the point where it's like I want to give, but I can't give everything. Because if I give everything and it's still not enough, I I I don't want to be in that space anymore and so, I don't know I hope this is making sense. I think the moral of this podcast is I I want to give you permission to ask yourself that really big question of what do I want now and be OK if what you want now is different than what you've wanted in the past. And give you permission to go after whatever it is you want now.  

And maybe what you want now is something bigger than what you want in the past, and that's amazing. And maybe what you want now is something that is “smaller” in the past and that's amazing as well, I think when we can live into what it is that we want, what it is that we desire. I've said this before in the podcast, but I really believe that desires are given to us as guiding posts of like where we need to go to be able to have the experiences to have the growth that we need to have and whether your desires are changing, whether desires are same as they've always been. I think asking ourselves that question or getting better. I'm just speaking to myself of getting better, asking myself the question of like, what do I want now and then aligning my vision with that and being OK if it changes and you know, really leading into that when it's different than it may have been in the past. 

Rest remains a growth area; commitment to improvement 33:34 

So all this to say, I'm not an expert on rest. In fact it is probably an area that's not probably it is an area of growth that is something that I have a lot of work to do in of being able to rest, being able to detach my worth from productivity or the things that I do being able to just be quiet and present, and in the moment is something that I'm not great at and it's something that I want to improve, that I want to work on and and yet I say that. And then the question is, do I actually do it? So again that like disconnect that we see between what what happens when we say something? Are we actually following through into action? Because it's really easy to say something's important, but always spending our time, money, resources, energy on those things because that that actually shows us what is actually important to us in our lives so, I'm in it with you. I'm not great at rest. I'm working on it, trying to get better. The two-month break was really good for me and it took gave me time to slow down and recalibrate. I'm feeling much more energized. I've kind of now we here we are like a month and a half out of it. Maybe a month out of it and I have a lot more energy, a lot more excitement for what it is that I have done and I I have told, you know, both my team and my husband that I can't do that again like I cannot. I cannot reach the finish line with nothing left and and that is different than like feeling like I gave it my all. Because I do think that that is something that I value. I value putting my all into something. But I think that's a little bit different than like ending up at the finish line with like completely depleted, right? I don't, I don't know. Like, I feel like they're for me. I feel like there's a difference between ending a race and being like I did my best. I gave it everything that I had. And I feel good about that versus ending the race and being like I want to die because I just I have nothing left to be able to give everything else, you know, these other things in my life that I are important as well. And so I guess I'm I I'm trying to find that balance, but I told my team and I told my husband I'm like, I can't do that again. It was. It was not a good space. It was not a good time and rest is important. And and like I said, paradoxically, the being it freaking takes work, which is so ironic. 

Rest is vital if you want to give 36:08 

OK, this was a little bit a little bit more than I kind of plan on getting into, but thanks for being here. I hope that this gave you some things to think about and maybe some of you are like me and feel like rest is really hard and giving yourself that permission. I hope. I hope that maybe this gave you permission to to rest and to realize that rest is something that makes us stronger. Right. You think about how, how do you actually grow muscle? I did a wheel on this recently where I'm like, what women think builds muscle and then it's, you know, videos of me lifting. And then it goes to what actually builds muscle and it's me sleeping in bed. Because your muscle is built during your recovery, when you lift weights, your body actually like there's like damage that is actually done to your muscles. There are microscopic tears that happen in the muscle tissue. You're actually damaging your muscles during your lifting. And then what happens during that recovery when you go to sleep, when you eat, when you take time off, your body comes back and is able to build like repair and build. And that's where the extra muscle comes from. That's where the strength comes from, is in the recovery. You don't build muscle in the gym, you build muscle recovering from the lifting that you do in the gym. And it's the same thing here and I have to remember that of, like, rest is vital if you want to give. If you want to make a difference, if you want to help other people, we have to take the time to rest and recover so that we can go out and and do our best. 

Thank you 37:38 

All right. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Hopefully this gave you something to think about. I am back at least for the time being and I am excited. I'm excited about we were going and what we're doing. So thanks for being with me. Thanks for checking in on me on the last couple of months as I've been taking time off. It really meant a lot to me to have people reach out and be like I miss your podcast. I can't tell you what that means. To have the things that I'm putting out in the world make a difference to you. So thanks for being here. Thanks for being a loyal listener of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber, now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything. 

Outro

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