Rest Is Strategic. But First I Had to Learn It the Hard Way.

Every year around this time, my nervous system used to rebel.

Palpitations, stomach aches, nausea, out-of-control emotion.

The kind of panic that started building in February, arrived with a bang in March and refused to leave until sometime in April.

When I lost track of dates, I’d find myself wondering what was going on because I just didn’t feel like me. Then I’d realise what time of year it was and know exactly what was happening.

I just had no control over it.

March 11 is a significant date in my life. My partner passed away nine years ago on that day.

When I eventually went back to work, I did what many high performers do when something painful happens.

I threw myself into it.

Work became the place where things still made sense.

Where effort produced results.

Where I could stay busy enough not to sit with what I was feeling, and where I didn’t have to talk about it.

And because I’m good at what I do, the strategy worked.

For a while.

I delivered what I needed to.

For those who didn’t know what had happened, I was delivering like I always had.

For those who did know, it probably looked like resilience.

In reality, it was avoidance.

I used work to try and outrun something that couldn’t be outrun.

But the body eventually pushes back.

Every year around this time my nervous system would revolt.

Panic attacks, exhaustion, a sense that something was unravelling.

(And a lot of arguing with everyone around me.)

As someone who is usually quite composed, this was completely outside my wheelhouse and I had no idea how to navigate it. My normal ability to override emotion with logic had completely deserted me.

It took me a long time to recognise what was really happening.

I didn’t realise that not slowing down meant not fully processing.

And when emotion isn’t processed, it has to go somewhere.

For me, it surfaced as panic and anxiety.

Because I wasn’t slowing down.

I wasn’t resting.

I wasn’t making space for myself.

For many ambitious people, rest is hard.

It’s not the stopping itself that’s difficult.

It’s what surfaces when you do.

In leadership environments we often talk about resilience as the ability to keep going.

But sustainable leadership requires something different.

The ability to step out of constant output long enough to recalibrate.

Without that pause, decision quality reduces. Patience shortens. Perspective disappears.

Performance may still look strong for a while.

But internally, things are slowly unravelling.

Over the last few years, I’ve learned to listen to my body in a way I never used to.

I slowed down.

I started regulating my nervous system.

I stopped treating rest as something I had to earn once everything was done.

And something interesting happened.

The panic attacks stopped.

This year I still took the week off, just in case things went sideways.

But instead I found myself reflecting, going for a massage, and having dinner and drinks in remembrance.

Of course the date is still meaningful. Grief doesn’t disappear.

But my body is no longer fighting me.

That experience reshaped how I think about leadership.

Rest isn’t the opposite of ambition.

It’s what protects it.

Experiencing human emotion like grief isn’t against corporate rules. Of course there are ways to handle it in professional settings, but denying it doesn’t make us more ambitious or better leaders.

High performers rarely burn out because they lack resilience.

They burn out because they never step out of output mode long enough to restore clarity and realign with themselves.

Rest isn’t indulgent.

It’s strategic.

And increasingly, this is a pattern I see in the leaders I work with.

Highly capable people who know how to deliver under pressure.

But who have never been taught how to step out of the pressure cycle long enough to sustain it.

For many of them, the shift begins with a simple realisation.

Rest stops being something you do once you’ve pushed yourself to the edge.

It becomes something you protect because the quality of your leadership depends on it.

Reflection

When was the last time you stepped out of output mode long enough to actually listen to what your body was telling you?