Read time: 4 minutes • A quiet moment for you

Hi Reader,

Welcome to my weekly newsletter, designed to help you Rise on Purpose.

Last week, I wrote about Get Better, Not Bitter. If you missed it, you can read that, and all previous articles, here.

And because a few good words can change the direction of your whole day, I wrote a FREE PDF guide: 7 Things to Tell Yourself Every Day. If you'd like to receive it, hit reply and I'll send it straight to your inbox.

Protect Your Rest

I've been thinking a lot about rest this week as the shutters come down on summer and the back-to-work season is in full swing.

There are a lot of ways to end up without enough rest in your week, some are more sneaky than others.

For some, it's straightforward. Too much to do, too little time, and rest is the first thing that gets cut when the list is long. Amidst all that overwhelm and overwork, there's no room left to even ask the question.

For others, the warning signs are less visible. The work doesn't feel too heavy in the moment, so there's nothing obvious telling you to stop, until you're already running on empty.

Whatever the reason, the outcome is the same: rest keeps slipping off the list.

Then I caught a glimpse of the US Open this week and remembered that even elite athletes rest. Time to decompress, unwind and spend time with family and friends. It's all part of their routine, not a distraction from it.

Think of it this way: rest is not the opposite of performance. It's part of it.

This week’s tool: The Recovery Checkpoint

→ Build the break in before you need it​
Waiting until you're depleted means the break arrives too late to do much good. Put rest into the day and the week on purpose, the same way you'd schedule a meeting.

→ Make it small enough to actually happen​
A rest break doesn't need to be a holiday. Ten minutes away from the screen, a walk without your phone, 2-minute dance break, a wholesome lunch. The long game is built from small, repeated ones.

→ Treat it as part of the plan, not a reward for finishing it​
Rest isn't what you earn once the work is done. There's always more work. Build it in regardless. (My overachievers, please re-read this one).

Why this works

The long game, in life or in business, isn't won by whoever pushes hardest without stopping. It's won by whoever can keep showing up, season after season. Elite athletes understand this better than most of us do. Their rest is scheduled with the same commitment as their training, because without it their performance drops off.

Rest goes missing for different reasons. Sometimes the warning signs are too quiet to hear. Sometimes they're loud, but there's no space left to act on them. Either way, the fix is the same: build the break in on purpose rather than waiting for the right feeling, or the right gap, to arrive on its own.

So this September, as the pace of things picks back up, it's worth deciding where the breaks go before your calendar fills in around them.

Keep rising,
Lauren

P.S. What does rest look like in your week, and is it scheduled or only happening when everything else runs out?