Permission to Pause: Why Rest Is a Strategy, Not a Luxury

Estimated Read Time: 5 minutes

July 23, 2025

We live in a world that romanticizes hustle and often confuses busyness with value. Many of us—especially those in service-oriented professions or leadership roles—have internalized the message that rest is indulgent, optional, or something you earn only after you've pushed yourself to the brink.

But here’s the truth: Rest is not a reward. It is a strategy.

We pause not because we’re weak or lacking drive, but because we are wise enough to know that constant output without input eventually leads to burnout, disillusionment, or a version of success that leaves us hollow inside.

I know what it feels like to run on fumes. To work twice as hard to prove you deserve your place at the table, only to find out the table was never designed with you in mind. I also know the transformation that happens when you decide to step away—not in defeat, but in defiance of a culture that wants you to break yourself just to belong.

Rest Is Strategic, Not Optional

When we allow ourselves to pause, we create space for more than just physical restoration. We create room for:

• Clarity: In the stillness, answers emerge that busyness drowns out.

• Healing: Emotional wounds don’t stitch themselves closed while we sprint.

• Reconnection: With ourselves, with our values, with what truly matters.

If you’ve been functioning in survival mode for too long, the simple act of stopping can feel disorienting. But rest isn't the absence of action—it's a deeply generative act. It’s where our next ideas are born, where our vision returns, where our self-worth is recalibrated.

"Rest isn’t a reward for finishing the race.

It’s how you ready yourself to run the right one."

You Don’t Need Permission—But I’m Offering It Anyway

This series, Rooted & Rising, was born out of my own journey of choosing to pause. Not because I had the luxury of time or money—but because I could no longer afford not to. I had to unlearn the guilt that crept in when I wasn’t producing and begin to understand the value of simply being.

So I offer you this: You don’t need permission to pause. But if you’ve been waiting for it, let this be it.

You are not behind. You are not failing. You are not lazy for needing a break.

You are strategic. You are wise. You are reorienting.

A New Type of Productivity

When we normalize rest as part of our strategy, we start showing up with more:

• Intentionality: Doing fewer things, but with greater purpose.

• Creativity: Our ideas become more inspired, less reactive.

• Sustainability: We're not just surviving one season—we're preparing to thrive across many.

The world doesn’t benefit from a burnt-out version of you. It needs your sharpness, your softness, your vision—all of which require recovery.

And yes, you’re still ambitious. You’re still driven. You’re just choosing to root before you rise.

Feeling this? Forward it to someone who needs to hear it. Then ask yourself: Where can I choose rest, without apology, this week?