Rachel’s Room🛋️

Live from Sayulita, Mexico. I'm on vacation right now, and I'm just sitting outside the apartment I'm renting, enjoying the sun. And I thought I would bring you outside with me because. So I thought that today it would be really nice earning rest or deserving rest, because this is something I struggled with for a really long time. I am historically very hyper productive. I have a high level of expectation for myself in my performance levels, whether at work or in relationships, and have been very success oriented for many, many, many years.

And so the concept of rest being something that I have the right to, regardless of whether or not I've worked hard enough or not, is something I'm still working on. And this is really. It's just. It's very interesting to me, because when I think about being a human being that we've conceptualized in our brains this idea that in order to give our bodies rest, we have to somehow earn it by doing enough. And so combating that belief is, I think, is really vital because we need rest. And not only that, as human beings, we are wired towards experiencing pleasure and joy.

These are important experiences for us to have as human beings. Without pleasure, without joy, we live in a constant state of survival or fear, and that wreaks havoc on our systems. And it's not good for our actual survival to be in a constant state of doing. We need rest. We need joy, we need pleasure. These are important things for us. And our bodies know how to experience joy. Our bodies know how to experience pleasure. And we deny ourselves these things because we think right, based on our beliefs, based on our experiences, based on culture, based on society.

We think that we're not. Unless we done enough, unless we've earned it, unless we've produced something, unless we enough body of evidence that we are deserving of something that we inherently and naturally are deserving of by existing as people. Tarboo, does she think she is? I'm just hearing this. Rachel asks, where are you? Looks amazing. I am in Sayulita, which is a small beach town in Mexico. I'll give you a little. A little view. You deserve to see this. Look at this. How beautiful is this?

How beautiful is that? And it was so funny because last week, bad news that I'm gonna keep private to myself. And I also, my grandma also passed away last week, which I think I talked about in my live. And I was very distracted, and I could not. I couldn't do the amount of work that I had planned to do last week. And I started to think at the end of last week, that I should cancel my vacation. I literally thought to myself, you know what? I should probably cancel this trip because I didn't do enough.

I should cancel this trip because I didn't work enough this week, and I didn't earn it. And so I'm gonna need to work more, and then I can go on this trip very quickly. I thought, no, Rachel, number one, you don't have to earn rest. You don't have to earn play. You don't have to earn joy. You are allowed to experience those things simply because you exist and simply because you desire to. And also, after years and years and years of living with a trauma oriented brain, what a gift that I can even experience joy.

Right? Because if you've experienced trauma or if you're in recovery from any kind of trauma, you know how hard it is to actually allow yourself to experience peace, to experience calm, to experience joy, because it feels so unfamiliar, that almost feels uncomfortable. And so to actually allow myself to be in a place where I actually am feeling safe and comfortable with joy, with rest, with ease, means that all the work that I've done in therapy is actually working. And we get to allow ourselves that, right.

We get those moments of glimmer where, oh, wow, the work I've been doing is actually effective, and it's showing up in my life because this does not feel like something I have to be guilty about. And so I quickly reframed my thought, and I went, you know what? I don't have to earn this vacation. This is something that I have already committed to, and I desire. And. And not only that, I've had a really stressful week in my personal life, and this is even more of a reason to go rest and recharge and find myself in balance again.

So I think that, you know, this is just a reminder I have to remind myself of all the time. And hopefully, it's a reminder that you can carry with you as well, that you deserve rest, you deserve joy, you deserve pleasure. And these are not things that you have to earn or do anything in order to acquire. You simply get to experience them because you exist. And if it's difficult to embody joy or pleasure or ease, if it feels unsafe or unfamiliar, that's okay. It gets better and easier over time. The more you remind yourself that this is something that you are deserving of, you don't have to work hard for.

And also acknowledge that there's a reason that your mind doesn't feel safe in the comfort. If there's a reason that your mind feels more comfortable with chaos than it does with something that is so simple and mundane. And that it's simply because it's what you're more accustomed to. And it doesn't mean that that's actually the way it needs to be. Doctor Strange, I'm so glad you chose yourself and took time away. Thank you. Me too. Rach says you deserve it all. Thanks, Rachel. Thanks for the heart stuff.

I hope that you all find some pockets of joy today. Moments of rest. And if your body is telling you. I just need a moment for me. Listen, you don't have to do anything extra before you get there. You can take a break as soon as you need it. Thanks for spending a little bit of time with me here in the sun. I'm gonna go enjoy my vacation with lots of joy and lots of rest. And I will see you next week.