On Hard Work and Rest
The Most Controversial Topic in the Working World Right Now
*Read to the end – I have a contest for you to enter!*
It’s my granny’s birthday today. She had my mom when she was quite young, so I was lucky enough to grow up with a relatively younger grandmother than my friends. She was always full of energy and able to chase me and my siblings out of trouble with ease. I wasn’t even allowed to call her granny until well into my adulthood because she just wasn’t one. She, alongside my mom, raised me. She worked almost her entire life in Canada as a nurse’s aid at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. Before that she worked in a factory when she first arrived in Canada. Back-breaking but essential work.
I come from solid working-class immigrant stock. I was taught the power of hard work, and how important it was, from a young age. You couldn’t survive without it. There were points in my life when I proudly had two jobs because I had the time, energy, and need for the money. I was taught that hard work was how you excelled in life. I saw it in my granny, I saw it in my mom, and I embodied it in my own work ethic after I realized in my 20s that I had to use my intellect AND work hard if I wanted to go far—and I wanted to go far, I always have.
So you can imagine the shock to the system when after burning out I discovered the power of rest in allowing me to do better work, be more creative, and live a fuller life. WTF? Rest? That thing that lazy people do who don’t care about success? That is what would allow me to be more impactful and release my obsession with productivity and ultimately live a fuller better life. Like, how?
The stories we (meaning working class folks) grow up with in North America are about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, working hard, being productivity, and achieving success. Our value and worth as humans is inherently tied to our ability and capacity to produce. It is a pervasive cultural belief that you have to work hard if you want to be anything or worth anything. It’s also not true. It’s a beautiful lie spread by the people who benefit most from that labour.
Our work, ambition, pay, level of success, and achievement do not define our value. And our choice to slow down and rest does not make us lazy. In fact, I’ve found that integrating rest into my day-to-day life has made me able to have more energy to put into the things that matter most to me, my relationships and yes, my career. Building my business, shaping and supporting the brands of my clients, writing this newsletter, all of that comes with rest. It comes because of rest and what it opens up—creativity, play, and so much possibility.
My granny retired early a few years ago. She was tired after a lifetime of labour. Labouring for patients but also for our family and its survival. She gardened, putted around the house and rested. Then a few years ago she applied to be a crossing guard in our neighbourhood. It got her out of the house and around the energy of kids. She seems to like it. It’s cold in the winter and (again) hard work, but it’s only a few hours a day and keeps her busy. She’s a woman who knows hard work, but also a woman who has gotten comfortable with the concept of rest as her body demands it more and more.
I don’t think I’ll ever work as hard as my granny did in her life, she did that for me and my siblings, but I will take the lessons she taught about the value of my work but also my intrinsic value as a person beyond what I do and what it looks like when you finally slow down and go about the business of enjoying life. She modeled hard work for me but is now modeling rest. And because of her work I can embrace the concept now and reap the benefits of it and the enjoyment of life that comes with it now, before my body decides to insist.
I hope you will too. I want rest for everyone if possible. Thanks for reading this week, I’m off to wish my granny a happy birthday.
A Story Well Told – Giveaway!
So for the first time in the short life of this newsletter I’m sharing a story well told that I actually haven’t experienced yet. Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey founder of @thenapministry was released last week. I’m still waiting for my pre-order book to arrive but I have been a follower of the Nap Ministry throughout my burnout healing journey and cannot wait to dive into the ideas in this book. Because I have learned so much from Hersey about rest and its power when we reset, I wanted to share it with you. I’m doing another book giveaway! This time with an ask attached. Share one of your favourite notes from the newsletter with someone you think will benefit from following (marketers, entrepreneurs, creatives, and anyone interested in storytelling) and encourage them to subscribe. You’ll get an entry for every person you share it with. If you tweet a post or share on other social media, just tag me (@chantaie everywhere) and the person you’re encouraging to subscribe for another entry. We work on the honour system here, so just send me a note via email (reply to this note) and tell me how many people you sent it to and I will put the same amount of entries into the pot. Good luck and remember to share with folks who are looking to share their stories and may need a bit of help. And thank you.
Chantaie Allick
Writer|Strategist|Storyteller
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