Lazy
Speaker 0: Welcome to Takeout Therapy. I'm Rebecca Hunter, an anxiety specialist private practice therapist, and total mental health geek. Stick with me for the next few minutes, and I'll teach you what you need to know to have emotionally healthier and more peaceful way of life. I promise a little free mental health education can't hurt. We should have had it much earlier, but It's never too late to learn.
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Let's dig in. Well, hello there. Do you ever just feel like laying down, taking a rest from life. So do I, especially when it's hot out, or when it when it's cold out. Or I'm, like, yeah, on the weekends, I guess, it's a good time or, like, basically, whenever I don't want to.
I think that it's really, really healthy to rest. If you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time. You know that part of taking care of yourself is taking care of your body. And so today's podcast we're gonna talk about the word lazy because, oh my goodness, this comes up so much in the therapy office. So if this word is part of your vocabulary.
And something that you use to describe the downtimes Do you Are you one of these people like me? This is how I used to think about it too. And it's one of the reasons that I wanna talk about this because over the past, like, three years, I have really worked hard on chilling the heck out. I did not know how to relax at all. And so part of my mission was to create some time for some lazy.
But here's the word. I mean, the here's the problem. The word is tricky, isn't it? The word is very stigmatized. We don't go a bit around being like, oh my gosh.
I'm like so lazy today. Aren't you so impressed by me? No, we don't. We are embarrassed about the fact that sometimes we just lay around. We don't do a damn thing.
We just lay like slobs We watch TV. We watch all the episodes. One of my clients said, hey, have you watched that new Bridger Trim series? And I said, yeah, I watched it in a couple days. That's how I like to roll.
Let's talk about this word lazy because it is so unhelpful, my friend. Stick around for a few minutes and we can kind of poke around at it and see If this is a word that you'd like to keep in your self concept or perhaps you'd like to change your concept. Of what lazy means. But before I start the episode, I want to tell you something really quick. You know if you've been listening to the Takeout Therapy Podcast for any length of time that I teach mindfulness and I do it in a really sneaky way.
And so if you've been listening for a while, you are practicing mindfulness. Did you know that just all mindfulness is, it's not meditation or anything like that. It's just literally paying attention. It's not a hard concept. Paying attention to something of your choosing on purpose has been shown to flat out help our mental health.
Lucky for you. Once again, I've made you a little visual guide. A mini book full of pictures and simple instructions, I'm gonna show you how to dig into your mindfulness practice as part of your everyday life. And it'll teach you to be present and be less overwhelmed, no more overthinking. Right?
All that hand ringing, and perhaps you'll find some peace. All you gotta do is head to my website at takeouttherapy dot com. You cannot miss it. The helpful guide I have made for you is right on the front page. You're welcome.
Now, let's talk about the problem with the word lazy and the concept that when we just lay around by our own choice by the way, that we are being lazy because so much of the time in the therapy office, this is a big problem for people. They really struggle with rest. They really are they talk down to themselves when they have to take a break. From their lives. They refer to themselves, rest times, moments or days, as lazy.
And I gotta say, it is not helpful to our mental health because what are we even saying about ourselves? They were, like, so unambitious that we, like, did nothing were saying, like, I didn't produce anything yesterday. Right? We're, like, saying that whatever we did this lazy was not good enough. There's that yardstick again.
Did you guys hear the episode last week on competition? There's that yard sick again. We measure ourselves against this BS standard, and that's where this idea of laziness comes from. It also came from our parents that were always making us do things. Were your parents like that?
Like, go play, go blah blah blah blah blah. Do this, do that. I do remember my parents doing that from time to time. And so the idea of lazy develops We learn it in school too. Right?
There is no rest for these weary, weary poor poor children in the school. You know, if you don't do the work, if you can't do the work. Perhaps you're gonna get labeled lazy. So you have to remember the historical context and the bigger context of the word lazy. But what is being lazy anyway?
Like, what do we refer to as lazy? Well, friend, rest. That is what we call rest. They call it being lazy. Because maybe it happens like in the middle of the day or maybe it happens all day long.
Right? And so we call ourselves lazy. But really what it is, it's rest. It's brain regrowth. It's our body.
Repairing any damage that's been done through the movement of the day. It's sometimes, oh my gosh, such a much needed nutrients of oneself. That's the thing. It it's not lazy. If it's intentional.
So let me tell you how not to be lazy. Okay? Here's the thing. This life is bananas. Our bodies, our systems, our poor poor selves.
We are not set up for this. I say this all the time. We're not made to go and go and go and go and go. The human body, not you, not me, but us, we, the humans, the earthling. This life that we are living is very stressful for a lot of different reasons.
And it's really important that we rest. Rest our system. The body, the mind rest are poor weary spirits. Right? And so if you wanna not be lazy, you gotta learn to rest.
Because sometimes when we don't rest, the body goes, yeah. We're gonna rest now, and it's gonna be for a while because you got some catch up to do. The body is not having it. The body is not gonna let you just go and go and go and go without telling you to slow down or making you slow down. I'm one of those people that goes and goes and goes and then I get sick.
And that's how my body is like, dude. Come on now. Look what you did to me. So we have to rest. So if you don't wanna be lazy, then great.
That's awesome. That means that you don't wanna be a human sloth who doesn't achieve anything. Right? And who is just laying around with no conscious effort whatsoever. So it has to be intentional.
Build rest into your schedule. Build it into your life. Teach your kids to just chill out. They don't need to be entertained all the time. Those busy little beavers they're just gonna grow up to be just like us.
Right? And so it's okay to have this, like, downtime. We don't always need to be doing things. We need to learn to give ourselves some rest. It is for our health and our well-being, and frankly our connection with ourselves.
If we don't rest, and this is why so many people don't rest because I've been a non restor, And I'm a therapist, so I know some stuff. People keep busy, so they don't have to deal with themselves They don't have to deal with their house. They don't have to deal with their person. They don't have to deal with their kids. They just go and go and go and go.
And there's no room to reflect, to feel the difficulty, the life always has in store for us people. We don't get to get out of it. You can't stay busy to avoid life. If you are a fan of Tara Brock, she does an amazing talk about this and she calls this like keeping it above the line. If you don't wanna be lazy and if you wanna get rid of that from your vocabulary, then start allowing yourself to rest.
Change your vocabulary. Change your connection to yourself and your willingness. To bump up against the hard parts of life. And if it feels hard to just relax, then you, my friend, are doing the work you are above the line. That is a place that you can learn something about yourself from.
You cannot learn anything about yourself when you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off. And then every time you just relax for a hot second, you call yourself lazy. It just doesn't work like that. The impact is that that really gets in the way of your relationship with yourself. And personal growth is all about getting at the root of who you are and what you need and want from this world.
And so my friend, don't call yourself lazy. Give yourself a break every now and again, and just watch your activities. Keep it above the line. Be conscientious. Like, okay, I'm gonna take a rest.
What are the things that I'm gonna do? And how long am I going to do them for? Personal growth work takes self discipline. We have to have boundaries. You know?
And I, like you, have had days and days of being quote unquote lazy. When I ran my up into the ground and I just was like, no, I can't know. I can't. I can't life, you know, and it stretches on and it turns into all this crap. Yeah, we don't need to do that to ourselves.
All we need to do is keep it above the line, which means you determine what your downtime is gonna look like, how you're gonna spend it? Are you a napper? Do you like a hammock? I love to porch sit. I also enjoy watching TV, but it doesn't always count.
I do love reading and I just adore laying in my living room and turning my music all the way up and just like feeling it. This is all rest. Right? These are always that we can rest, taking a back getting in a hot tub. Right?
Just sitting down for a while. Watching your kid color. Right? A little bit of rest. We don't always have to be doing something.
So I'm here for you to let you know. That you get to rest and you are not lazy for doing that. If you have boundaries and you keep it above the line, you are entitled to a break and frankly, you better take one or it's gonna take it from you. Right? So I hope this has been helpful.
One thing I think is just really important is that we just start to eliminate some of these words from our discussions about life with ourselves. You know, like some of these things that we just handily think. Like, it has an impact. For us to call ourselves lazy, it has an impact. It's just basically saying, hey, you just didn't do good enough.
And that's not true, friend. Because here's the deal. You make up the rules. You're a grown ass person and you get to make up the rules for your life. So you do that and build a little rest time in, Woodja?
Okay. I'll see you next time. Take care. I'm so glad you joined me today, and I hope it was helpful. Always make sure to get the appropriate level of help for your unique patient.
Check out the resources at takeout therapy dot com, and hopefully you can find something there. As always, Thanks so much for showing up and doing your work, which in a way changes the level of emotional development in your community, in your town, Even in the world, yeah, it's kind of a big deal. This podcast is intended as education and prevention, not medical or mental health treatment. See you next time.
