Letting Go of Guilt: Why Rest Is Not Something You Have to Earn

(air whooshing) (mouse clicking) (bright music) Headspace Studios. (bright music) (light music) Hey, friends, it's Rosie here. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Tuesday. After I got sick recently, I took time off fully, like out of office, out of reach, out of everything. I knew I needed it. My body knew I needed it. But the guilt, it came knocking. Today, I wanna talk about what comes after that, when you finally do pause, take a breath, and rest, and that little voice creeps up and says, "You should be doing something." You know that feeling, guilt, for not being productive, for resting, for logging off. I remember lying on the couch watching a rerun of a show I'd seen 800 times and thinking, "I should at least be folding laundry "while I do this. "I should be multitasking." It was wild. I was physically wiped. My brain was still running on some imaginary productivity scorecard. And the worst part, no one else was doing that to me. It was me. The voice was internal, conditioned, learned. As someone who's been conditioned to equate productivity with value, I had to take a moment and ask, "Where did this belief come from?" It was a few days into my forced rest reset, and I was feeling better, but also weirdly agitated. I couldn't figure out why. I had done what I was supposed to, rested, unplugged, canceled everything, so why did I feel this low-key shame? Then it clicked, and like most core stories, the answer came through a memory. So I was maybe six or seven years old. My abuelita, who was my main caretaker, had a terrible cold. I remember having a minor stomach ache once, and she let me stay home from school. She tucked me in and made me tea. She gave me rest. But when she was sick, she didn't stop. She still got up at the crack of dawn, started cooking, packed lunches, helped us get ready for school, folded laundry with tissues stuffed in her sleeve, and by the time her Bible study friends arrived, they were all sitting around the table praising each other for everything they managed to get done while being sick. That image stayed with me, and without realizing it, I internalized this idea that rest was something you extended to others, but not to yourself, that strength was about endurance, that being valuable meant being relentlessly available. And listen, I've worked in the entertainment industry, and now I work in wellness, and let me tell you, the praise for pushing through is alive and well in both spaces. It just wears different outfits. But at some point, we have to stop and ask, "What do I really believe about productivity? "Where did I learn that pushing myself to the edge is noble? "And is that something I still wanna carry?" Because it's one thing to inherit a pattern. It's another to choose whether you want to pass it on....