Rest To Success: The Seven Types Of Rest You Need with Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith - Medical Doctor and Author
Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith is a Board-Certified internal medicine physician, speaker, and award-winning author. She is an international well-being thought-leader featured in numerous media outlets including Prevention, MSNBC, Women’s Day, FOX, Fast Company, Psychology Today, INC, CNN Health, and TED.com. She is the author of numerous books including her bestseller Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity, including insight on the seven types of rest needed to optimize your productivity, increase your overall happiness, overcome burnout, and live your best life. Over 250,000 people have discovered their personal rest deficits using her free assessment at RestQuiz.com. Learn more about Dr. Saundra at DrDaltonSmith.com.
Rest is so much more than just getting enough sleep. In this episode we explore the seven types of rest we all need, and how to get them with Medical Doctor and Author of 'Sacred Rest' Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith.
Rest is critical for all human beings to how replenish and restore our energy to perform at our best. Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith believes that identifying your rest deficits is the first step in being your personal and professional best self.
In this conversation we explore the 7 Types of Rest with Dr Dalton-Smith and unpack our own rest deficits to explore where we need to improve.
Find out where your rest deficits are with Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith’s free rest quiz and join the community converstion at Human Leaders or LinkedIn to share the areas you’re going to focus on to improve your rest.
Learn more about Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith and find her books here.
For accessible access, view the podcast with closed captions below and access the full conversation transcript.
Episode Transcript:
Spk0 Alexis Zahner Spk1 Sally Clarke Spk2 Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith
[00:00:08] spk_0: Are you getting enough rest and by rest? I don't just mean sleep. I'm Alexa Zahner and welcome to the We are Human Leaders podcast together with my co-host Sally Clarke. Today we're speaking to Doctor Saundra Dalton-Smith around rest. Today's conversation dives into the seven different types of rest that we need to be high functioning human beings. And I'll give you a little insight. There is more to it than just sleep. Doctor Saundra Dalton Smith is a board certified internal medicine physician speaker and award winning author. She's also an international well-being thought leader. She's the author of numerous books, including her best seller, Sacred Rest, Recover Your Life, renew your energy and restore your sanity, including insight on the seven times of rest needed to optimize your productivity, increase your overall happiness, overcome burnout and live your best life. Doctor Dalton Smith has helped over 250,000 people understand where their rest deficits lie. And we are excited to bring you into this conversation with us today to understand more about rest and where you can improve your life through optimizing your rest. Now, let's dive in
[00:01:33] spk_1: Doctor Saundra, thank you so much for joining us today on the, we are Human Leaders podcast and we'd love to start firstly, by getting to know you a little bit better by understanding a little bit of your own personal journey that has brought you to the in incredibly important work that you're doing today.
[00:01:50] spk_2: Yes. Well, I spent 20 years in clinical practice as an internal medicine physician and about 10 or so years into that, I decided to have a family and it was during the time that my sons were both toddlers that I burned out. And that's really what took me on the journey of evaluating. How do I stay in a very challenging and taxing and labor intensive and mentally intensive career and still enjoy it and still have time for my family and still have time to care for myself. And so that led me down the road of the research that I did regarding rest and what are restorative activities and how do we prevent burnout? Even if you're, you're going to be dealing with stressful situations every day. That's what also let my book Sacred Rest and the work that I'm doing now
[00:02:30] spk_1: Incredible! And I think it's such a potent question for so many people right now because so many of us are exposed to quite high levels of chronic stress through work through life generally. So I imagine it was quite a big undertaking though. It's a big question, isn't it to think about what rest means and how a lack of rest can lead, leads to things like, yeah,
[00:02:52] spk_2: I think for myself, you know, I initially went into this process just thinking I needed more sleep back in those days. It feels like forever ago. Now all the conversation was based around higher improved sleep. A whole sleep revolution is what the conversation was kind of framed around. And so that's where I started. My journey was ok. Well, how do you get more sleep when you have toddlers and when you have a busy schedule? But then the problem was even though I finally got to a place where I felt like I was getting those 678 hours, I was still waking up exhausted. And that's a very desperate situation because it's like, ok, well, this is what everybody says is the problem. I'm sleep deprived. Why is that not working? And so I think a big part of that for me was getting to a place where it was ok to continue to ask questions beyond what everybody else said was supposed to be working. When I saw that for myself, it was not working. And you know, being a physician, I had plenty of patience I could go back to and really kind of start bouncing some of these ideas off and some of these strategies off of and seeing the results for things that hadn't been determined or defined things like creative rest, things like social rest terms that weren't really out there in the research or the media, but people were showing living evidence that it helped when they start incorporating these type of restorative practices.
[00:04:07] spk_0: I think that's such an important discernment. Doctor Sondra, because we often hear in our work as well the confusion between what rest is and what sleep is. So I'm really grateful that you've taken us there so early in the conversation and we know in your work, you've just touched on a few of them. We know in your work, you've identified seven types of rest that we actually need. Can you briefly run us through each of these and give us a bit of an explanation of what these seven types of rest are, please.
[00:04:36] spk_2: Yes, just to name them. The seven include physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, sensory and creative. And so when we think about physical, that's kind of where sleep falls into. But I put sleep and napping both under passive examples of physical rest. And then we also have active examples of physical rest, which are those things like yoga or stretching or a leisure walk or massage therapy or using a foam roller. It's all those things that actually just help your body feel better and help your body heal, help with circulation and lymphatics and muscle integrity. So I think it's important to be aware of that as well as just the body ergonomics of the type of work that you do your workstation or your home work station effect is having on your physical well-being with mental rest. It looks at how well you're able to clear your mental space. Do you have busy brain syndrome where you're always thinking all the thoughts all the time and you can't clear your head space. Do you have problems with confusion and clarity and memory? All signs of rest deficit. Uh Spiritual rest really gets down to evaluating your own beliefs about purpose and life meaning and whether or not you feel kind of interconnected with humanity in general. Some people experience that through a faith based type system, others experience it through other ways like volunteerism or community service, things that they're involved with causes that still are meaningful to them. Emotional rest looks at your emotions and so just making sure that you're having space in your life and people in your life where you can be openly authentic and you're not having to conceal your feelings or feel like you have to dampen them in any way to make it easier for other people to adapt to social rest. Deals with the people specifically how you engage with the people. So who are the people that are pulling from your social energy and who are the people who are life giving and pouring back into you and actually make you feel restored and renewed. Um And then the final two are sensory which deals with our sensory inputs into evaluating what are the light sound smells, tactile experiences that you engage with on a regular basis. And do you have a system in place to downgrade your sensory input, whether that's downgrading your use of electronics or downgrading the noise pollution in your work area? But evaluating that and recognizing that excessive amount of sensory engagement can lead to exhaustion and fatigue in that area. And then finally, with creative rest, it looks at how much creative energy you expend throughout a day, whether that's through innovation, through problem solving, whether that's through creative activities that you're doing, and then making sure that you have an intentional way of restoring that part of yourself. And creative rest can include anything from being out in nature to listening to music. So wherever you appreciate beauty and you allow that experience of appreciating creative things that are around you kind of birth creativity inside of you.
[00:07:25] spk_0: Thank you so much for taking us through those. Doctor Sandra and I can't help. But thinking when you were describing both the passive and the active ways that we can rest, that they all seem to me to feel like ways to really down regulate the nervous system. Is that a big piece of what rest does for us as human
[00:07:42] spk_2: beings. It is a big part of rest is that restorative component of it. It's an energy in energy out type situation. So you're using energy in specific ways in each of these bucket and then what are the things you do to put energy back in to restore the places that have been depleted? I think that's the differentiator that many people have to first kind of get over the hump with when they're thinking about rest and dividing it up from sleep is that rest is very intentional. It's very specific. You are restoring something that has been depleted. Whereas sleep is kind of more generalized, you're gonna lay down and the body's gonna do what the body is gonna do. It's more of a cessation type activity with rest. It's a component of where you have a say so in what happened and it's that lack of say so that some of us kind of give up that leaves us in the situation where we say chronically fatigued and it seems like nothing's working. And
[00:08:34] spk_1: I love the also Doctor Sondra, the kind of almost cusp of those two words, rest and restore that rest is a restorative and almost to some extent, I think a healing practice perhaps even at a physiological level when we're in burnout, but allowing our energy levels in these beautiful seven areas that you've identified to restore so that we're able to optimally enjoy the fullness
[00:08:57] spk_2: of life. Yes, I think that's the whole point of rest is to help us to be able to continue to have the energy to do the things that we are passionate about. I find that that's usually the problem. That's why people leave jobs. It's not necessarily that they no longer have a passion for the work. They just don't have the energy to do the work they're passionate about. And so it's like I just can't do, do this and they leave it. I think restoring people to a place where they understand that rest isn't simply a vacation. You can't leave your burnout prevention to three times a year or holidays. It can't be this thing that you do after you've completely got to the end of yourself. It needs to be a process that you build into your day to day system so that you have restorative practices that you're doing on some type of regular schedule. So you never get to that place where you just completely depleted.
[00:09:46] spk_0: Yeah. And I can't help but thinking, I feel like the pouring from an empty cup analogy is the one most often used here. I've been there. I know Sally's been there. Sally's had, you know, a big bout of personal burnout as well and I can't help but think that so many of us who are very career ambitious, wait until that cup is completely empty before we're willing or ready even to do anything about that. Is that sort of when you see most people in your work as well.
[00:10:12] spk_2: Doctor Sandra, honestly, it really depends on personality. I tend to work with some specific group of people. I find that if I'm working. I do a lot of work within my company restores is with corporations where we're going in and we'll be talking to leaders and we're talking to employees and we're talking to C Suite executives and those different groups respond to rest the rest conversation a different way and it's not good or bad. It's just personalities really. But within certain groups, people who are type a s who are very driven, who have a specific mind that uh I want X Y and Z accomplished by this number of years approach rest in a very different way because rest to them almost feels like giving up. And so you have to retrain even their belief system around what rest is and can do for them so that they understand the power of it to actually help them to accomplish what they're trying to get to faster without getting to a place where they have to un involuntarily take a break. I think
[00:11:11] spk_1: it's such a salient point, don't just, and just thinking of the kind that we've worked with who have been training for marathons and considering to our yoga practices as rest. And this almost lack of permission that they grant themselves to rest. Seeing it as I think almost a fear that if I start to rest will everything stop, will everything fall
[00:11:30] spk_2: apart. Yeah, it's breaking past that fear that rest is in some way pain, something away from them. And actually seeing as pouring back and actually adding to their own ability, we've done quite a bit of work with some different agencies like athletic agencies and military related agencies where the focus has been more so on, kind of a tactical approach even to rest and to view it more as how do we use this almost as a way of preventative weapon, so to speak in our arsenal, to be able to help us to stay stronger for longer. And I think that's the mindset, we have to get executives to actually see as well. I mean, athletes and people that are in combat and things, I mean, they get it because they're actually seeing the restoration of that energy be actively used to go out and expend that energy in a new way. However, when you're in a corporate type setting or business setting, it can be harder to see because you don't have mouths to clock off or, you know, specific activities that you're being trained and evaluated on to clock off. But you see it in other ways, you see it in the clarity of which you're able to do your work. You see it in the ability to be able to brainstorm faster and to be more innovative. You see it and even in your passion and how you talk about your work, you know, that's one of the things we've seen quite a bit with a lot of different entrepreneurs that we've worked with. They got to a place where they didn't even have energy to be passionate about talking about their work. And I let them listen to themselves doing interviews before they understood how to get better rest. And after, and it's surprising for them to even say that first person doesn't even sound like me. I wouldn't buy my product. It doesn't sound exciting. I don't even sound genetic about it. And I think we have to realize there's so many underlying aspects of how rest affects our personality, our mood, our behavior, and even our work ethic.
[00:13:17] spk_1: Such an incredibly potent point, Dr Sondra. And you know, I know the title of your book, Sacred Rest, Recover Your Life, renew your energy, restore your sanity. It touches on the sanctity of rest. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts as to how we reach this point in our society where rest is so devalued.
[00:13:38] spk_2: Yes, I think for many of us, we have just grown up in this culture where rest is the enemy. We hear these things like work till you drop rest when you die, grind. Don't stop, keep grinding it out. All of these like platitudes that make us think that like rest is the bad guy. Like we should avoid it like COVID, you know, we should be all running away from it. And I think that's the problem because then it makes other people feel guilty when they then want to take up the charge and act. Actually begin to use rest and restoration as a part of their strategy, their life strategy. And so I personally, I feel like it takes more courage to be a person who effectively rests and does that a needed self-care and have the level of self awareness to be at the highest level of themselves that takes more courage than actually just blending it with the culture of I'm gonna grind till I drop.
[00:14:26] spk_0: I'm so grateful that you use the word courage there because I certainly in my experience, feel like it's been an internal narrative that rest is the antithesis of productivity, especially for someone who's career ambitious. And it has taken me 32 years to allow myself to not pick up the computer on the weekend or just even the little behaviors where at the end of the day, it's just that or one more email or one more thing I feel like for my entire life, there's been a sense of needing to earn the rest that I'm not inherently deserving of that rest.
[00:15:03] spk_2: Yeah, I think that's always a dangerous mindset when we feel like I always say that mindset of rest when the work is done. However, for us type a is the work ever done. It's never done. You never rest then because the work is never done. Certain personalities, there is always something that can be done because your mind is always looking at what things can be improved. And so when you have that, that mentality. I always have my clients shift that conversation to saying to themselves in order to be the best version of myself, I must honor my need for rest because it restores the respect that rest needs. It's something that we need to honor our own need for and stop treating it like it's the bad guy treating us like something we should be running away from or even feel guilty or ashamed that we need. And I get it because honestly, that's how I was when I started this journey. That's why I burned out. Rest was for losers and I wasn't a loser. So I didn't need rest and I could just grind and work and keep going and going. And so my mindset was because certain personalities do have very high natural levels of resilience. That higher level of resilience actually will probably predispose you to be worse when you burn out than that. A person who has a lesser level of resilience and would burn out faster before they actually burn down their whole village. So I think it's important to recognize that if you are the type of person who can be a functional burnout. In other words, you can meet all of the World Health Organization criteria for burnout and still show up at work every day and keep producing that. The problem with that is you tend to burn the whole village down when you burn out, you take down the whole company, your family and everything else with you. And so we need to be aware that when we step in sooner and start allowing ourselves to see that there's other ways we can approach this and still do so in a way that lets us grow, our families grow, our businesses stay healthy, can still enjoy life and not get to that place where we want to burn the whole village down. It's worth taking that route. It's worth taking that journey to figure that out.
[00:17:11] spk_1: I think that's such a beautiful point. And what you're speaking to, Doctor Saundra really reflects a lot of my own experience burning out as a finance lawyer as well. And I think, you know, when I reflect on that time, there was also so much tension, not only in my body in the way that I was behaving around work, it was like this gripping on to a sort of identity that I had. And as much as it was a devastating experience to collapse at an airport to realize I was burnt out and to sort of be faced with having to recover and having to sort of put my life back together. I think that opportunity in retrospect was a real gift in a lot of ways because it has allowed me to come to a place of being able to work where there is not that continuous tension where I allow myself to have sprints, to experience stress because it is a beautiful thing that humans can use to grow. It is necessary for us, but also to really permit myself to rest. And I have to say that like exploring these seven types of rest that you so beautifully sketched out for us is a really interesting one as well because I think for a lot of us, we think about mental rest, we think about physical rest, but we're maybe not turning our minds to things like creative or social or even sensory rest as well.
[00:18:20] spk_2: Yeah, I feel that most people are very comfortable with the thought of physical rest and mental and spiritual. Those have been out for some time when I first started this journey. Those were the three that there are lots of research well documented on. Not always everybody agreeing to the same thing but but very well documented in the literature. Some of the other ones, particularly this concept of emotional rest and even social rest and creative and sensory as you mentioned, not as well documented in the literature that the research was very segmented. And I think that was the connection point that people kind of gravitated to within the book sacred rest is because seeing them all kind of put together because it's like there are conversations happening all over the world with bits and pieces, but having them all kind of put together together where you could actually then start evaluating if I'm a whole person who has these seven buckets, which bucket is empty that's causing me to be fatigued. If my eight hours of sleep is no longer serving its purpose of making me feel revived. I think that was the connection point for a lot of people where it's like I get it. There's something else that's depleted and my whole person recognizes something is off. It just doesn't know what's off.
[00:19:33] spk_0: I'd have to agree with you there. I think to reflect on my own personal journey, I had exactly the same experience in my young career of waking up feeling like I'd been hit by a truck even though I'd just slept for 10 hours and not understanding why that was the case. And I'd love to know from you. Doctor Sandra. Is there one of these types of rest that you've noticed is the most undervalued type of rest or perhaps the one that people put the least amount of preference on, but can actually go so far in helping us restore and
[00:20:02] spk_2: recover. I would say creative, the one I get the most pushback on because people are like, I'm not a creative. I do X Y Z. I love it when doctors say I'm not a creative, I'm a doctor. It's scientific. And I'm like, ok, well, you know, you have two people come to you, both of them have complaints and the complaints can sound similar. But then you have to make a diagnosis based off of differentiating information that's creativity, you're pulling in different pieces, you're evaluating that you're spitting out something different. So I think it's helping people understand that innovation and problem solving. All of those are forms of creative energy being used. So when they start to kind of view creativity in a little bit of a different way, you then can start seeing how this bucket can so easily become depleted. And it is for quite a few people, that's the bucket that stays empty. And because they feel like spending time in nature is this fu thing that's like otherworldly and doesn't make any sense to them and they can't scientifically get all the dots to line up perfectly. They think well, that it's not really important. How can that really be beneficial? But it's the one that I find that the most people, when they start doing these things, they're like, I can't believe how different I feel when I do whatever that thing is, whatever their creative rest element is that helps them feel restored. And I think that's the other aspect of it. It's so varied. One person gets creative rest by being around water elements, another person around forest, foresting, being outside in nature, just with grass and trees. And another person, person gets it when they're around music, when they're around creative experiences, when they're watching other people dance or listening to sound because it's so different. You can actually attempt to do this and be doing it in a way that actually isn't intentional enough for you and what actually restores you. Everybody's not gonna feel great by being outside with their fair feet on the ground that doesn't fit everybody's kind of mentality of creative rest. But for the right person, it could be life changing
[00:22:03] spk_1: if I'm standing correctly. Doctor Sondra, it sounds like there's maybe some general ideas about what can help with rest. Things like for example, nature perhaps disconnecting from technology, spending time with people who nourish us. And it's also a very personal journey in finding exactly what really does have that very restorative impact for us as individuals.
[00:22:24] spk_2: Absolutely. That's exactly right. And I think for us when we first started this journey, like I said, I started this journey just for my own well-being. I had no intention of sharing this with anybody other than my patients who I was just kind of like having casual conversation about, hey, you know, I tried this thing and it really helped you try it and see what you think. That's kind of how this whole thing started. And one of the questions we continue to have when I was sharing this just with a couple of 1000 people that were coming in, in and out of our practice was there's seven of them. And people would say, how do I know which seven I need? And I would be like, well, let's kind of walk through it and I think we walked through that so many times and my nurse got so sick of me being behind schedule that she was like, you've got to figure out another way, walk people through this because we don't have time for this. And we actually we developed a quiz based on that specifically for that reason. And I think from there, that's when things really kind of started blooming out. People started sharing it and off it went so to speak at that point. From that, what we're seeing is always mental rest is always number one. It is always the most the highest level of rest deficit across the board across every continent, across every season, except for 2020 for three months between April through like June or July. Sincere rest overtook mental for that short period of time. And I'm thinking that's because everybody went remote and you, you started hearing terms like zoom fatigue and you know, all of these terms from sensory overload type syndromes. And so that was the only time anything overtook mental rest. But then it went right back to the top after that.
[00:23:57] spk_1: Incredible. And this is a beautiful segue for us because both Alexis and I have done the quiz. And if you wouldn't mind, I just wonder if sort of each of us poses a question to you sort of based on our results. Sure. And for me, the one that sort of stood out physical and mental rest was certainly something for me to keep an eye on, but it was also sensory risk that sort of stood out to me as a finding that I could definitely use some more work around. What are the sort of general things that you would advise if you would sort of share with us some ideas around what I might be able to do to increase the restoration of my sort of sensory input.
[00:24:32] spk_2: Yeah. And that's an interesting one because with sensory rest deficit, there's a very wide differentiator with that. When, if someone identifies themselves as a highly sensitive person H S P, which I do, I'm really sensitive to a whole lot of stuff. I can pick up on things very quickly and can't brush it off as fast as other people do. So if that's your personality, you'll find that you actually need more sensory rest than let's say someone who isn't highly sensitive. And so for myself, some of the things that have really been helpful, like in my home office, if my kids, especially in the summer, if my kids are around, they're doing their thing, they're not necessarily loud, they're teenagers, but I'm hearing stuff having our put on noise cancellation, earphones. And I'm just like, if you need me, you're gonna have to literally come and walk around my computer and wave at me because I'm not gonna hear you because I need complete silence for some periods of time. I'm actually being aware of how you're sleeping at night time, complete darkness in the rooms. If some people actually freak out a little bit about complete darkness, so know your own predisposition to that. But H SPS tend to do really well with complete blackness when they go to sleep at night because it's the only time that their body gets a chance to fully shut down. And when I say complete darkness, I mean, including like the little bedside clock having it turned away from you. So you don't even have the light from it shining and messing up your circadian rhythm. So things can actually get back in proper alignment as far as your hormones. A couple other things that have helped me quite a bit is even driving home. If I have a long commute from somewhere, I used to always drive home, like listening to something, audio book or radio or something, there was always something I try to make sure before I get home the last 30 minutes I turn everything off because usually if I leave it on the entire time all the way up till I get to the door. By the time I walk in the door, I'm already a little bit kind of like wound up and agitated. And so I find that I'm a little bit grouchier with my family than I would be if I take just those last 30 minutes of a commute just to let my, as much of my senses can wind down as you can driving, but it's just taking away some of that extra input that helps me not just be so on edge when I walk in the door. That's
[00:26:40] spk_0: a really fascinating one because I think that we often discount the impact of sounds and stimulus even in the background of our own lives. And I grew up in a household where, and I hate to call out my mom here, but I have this conversation with her regularly where the first thing she does in the morning is turn the television on the news is on. And it's also the last thing that's on in the evening. And it's only been really since the last 15 odd years that I've not spent a lot of time in my family home. But I've realized now when I go back there that the constant sound of the television drives me crazy. And I cannot feel relaxed the entire time that I'm in the house. And I can't help but think that because she's never experienced the silence that her nervous system is also just used to that constant vigilant state that I think comes from that background. Sound all the time. So that's a really fascinating one for you to point out there.
[00:27:34] spk_2: Yeah. You know, it's really interesting because most of us think because your mom probably has, like, zoned it out for the most part. She's like, oh, I don't hear it. I don't think about it, but the strange thing is her brain has to process that for her to not think about it. You know what I mean? She's not thinking about it, but her brain has to process and filter that noise to be able to block it out. And so it's using energy really unnecessarily.
[00:27:58] spk_0: I appreciate you pointing that out because I, I think it's so important that we realize that all of the stimulus in the background is still having to be filtered by our brain and our body somewhere. So thank you so much for that, Doctor Sandra. If I may ask really quickly, one of my lowest scores or worst scores was around emotional rest. Can you give me a little bit of insight into what I can do to help regulate myself in that particular area?
[00:28:24] spk_2: Yeah, emotional rest is always a interesting one because it takes into account a couple of different things and I'll give some examples that might help you be able to see kind of maybe why that one was hired or something with emotional rest. If you have professional stress related to your job, as far as your emotions, an example of that would be like a flight attendant, you know, a flight attendant's working with people and sometimes they're working with jerks and they can't really say, hey, you're a jerk. I don't want to work with you, you know, that have to keep a smile on their face and kind of go about it as if nothing happened. That's a form of emotional labor. Professionally, they have to take on the emotional labor of not having to be able to openly share whatever they're feeling. Nurses and doctors do that when they're, and counselors and therapists do that when they're working with people who have trauma and they're not robots, they feel bad for whatever they're listening to. But professionally they take on the emotional labor of not sharing their emotions in the process of supporting and helping someone else. And so sometimes if you're working with clients, you can have the very same situation. There's never a time where it feels like you have permission to just share your emotions because professionally you've learned how to shut your emotions down to do the work you need to do. And so then on the flip side of that, you then have to determine when is it OK? When can I share my emotions who are the safe people to do this for whether it be a friend or therapist or counselor or someone where you feel safe to do that? Sometimes we don't have anyone that we feel safe to do that with and that emotional rest might come from things like journaling for some of us, emotional rest comes out through artistic expression. And so it's always confusing for people sometimes when I talk about this because they're like, isn't that creative rest? Like no creative rest. You're not creating anything, you're appreciating what's already been created and letting it create something inside of you. Emotional rest used kind of expressed through creativity. You're getting emotional rest by creating something where you no longer feel the need to suppress what you're feeling as you create. So this is the artist who is slinging paint against the wall and walks back from it and goes, that feels better.
[00:30:35] spk_0: I resonate with that so deeply,
[00:30:37] spk_2: I feel red. So you throw the painting out, you know, or whatever, or the person who writes poetry and the poetry is so raw that most people would not even be able to like read it, you know, because it's so deep and so raw and so real that that is their emotional rest. They are putting their authentic out through creativity because when we create authentically, people are less likely to judge it because it's like, oh, OK, it's abstract, it's whatever it is, you feel permission to release it without fear and shame, which is what as at really at the core of creative rest. And
[00:31:13] spk_0: I can't help but think that in terms of my career journey, every job I've has had what I consider to be a performative element as you've described. There, there is just my day looks like a lot of client facing meetings, a lot of external stakeholders, a lot of opportunities where I need to be a version of myself. And I really appreciate that a term emotional labor because it does require us to invest in the relationship or in the situation, using our emotions to an extent, to build that relationship in a way that doesn't entirely feel completely like our whole selves and natural to us. You mentioned everyone from school teachers to doctors to I recall reading research during the pandemic as well that some of the folks who were experiencing the most stress and the highest level of emotional labor were the folks working at supermarket checkouts because they had to pretend all day long that they weren't scared and that everything was ok because everyone around them was ranting and falling apart. So it's really something that I feel can be apparent in so many jobs across the board as well. And potentially something that many of us aren't aware is really detracting from our capacity to get that emotional rest.
[00:32:30] spk_2: You're absolutely right. And you know, since 2020 initially, when we started stores, this work life integration and well-being company, when we initially started the whole thought process was we work with physicians and we work with people in tech. They were the ones who had the highest number of mental rest deficits. The highest number of creative rest deficits with 2020 it blew across the board from teachers to retail stores, to ag tech to everything in between because every single person has some level of this. And in one of the seven areas that has the potential to be depleted. And so to be able to not lose more employees and be able to keep people at the best version of themselves. More and more companies are starting to recognize we need to take personal well-being important within our corporation because it's affecting how well our people show up every
[00:33:19] spk_1: day. And it's also having a very real impact obviously on things like retention turnover if you have people burning out and particularly people who are at a senior level and who have a lot of contact with clients, for example, who are suddenly, you know, having full off the pitch is where they really so sick that they can't work has an incredible impact on team. And obviously on the bottom line for organizations, I think it's almost a bit of a wake up call there, hopefully for organizations for leaders to be able to see that rest in all of its facets is so important for people to be able to tap into. And I really love just to reflect back also what you mentioned about the different ways that we can find rest. And I'd love to just sort of reflect back that word that you use authenticity to be able to sort of express who we authentically are as a form of rest as a form of expression of what's going on inside, I think is a really powerful one that I'll certainly be taking from this conversation. So, thank you so much.
[00:34:14] spk_2: Yeah, I think that's hard for a lot of us because it's not something that's been modeled over the past couple of years, you know, um social media and all of the different Instagram Pinterest, perfect kind of mentality has made it harder for people to be authentic. But I think that's what's actually added to the amount of emotional rest deficits that a lot of people are experiencing.
[00:34:34] spk_0: Mm. That's a really interesting perspective and I resonate with that deeply. Doctor Sandra. This conversation's been so enlightening for both Sally and myself as folks who are on the journey to get better at rest in our lives and in our business. And I'd love if we could leave this conversation with a tidbit, if you will, what is the one thing that all leaders who are listening to this conversation right now could do or where should they start to improve their
[00:35:00] spk_2: rest? I always say, start with understanding your own personal rest deficit. You know, if you don't know what you're needing to improve upon, you can't be intentional. So I welcome them to go to rest quiz dot com and to take the quiz as you two did find out what their own personal rest deficits are. And then rather than trying to get more of all seven, focus their attention on the one or two areas that are of greatest deficit, begin to restore those areas. And once they start seeing the improvement. They'll have the energy to be able to then see what other ones they want to include as
[00:35:30] spk_1: well. Amazing Doctor Saundra, this has been such a wonderful and joyous conversation for us. Thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate you being with us here at. We are human leaders.
[00:35:41] spk_2: It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
[00:35:48] spk_0: Thanks for being with us for this conversation with Doctor Saundra Bolton Smith on rest rest is a critical piece of optimizing our lives as healthy and happy human beings. And we encourage you to learn more about where your rest deficit lies by taking the rest quiz. For more information on the rest quiz and all of Doctor Saundra Dalton Smith's work. Please see our show notes at W W W dot We are human leaders dot com. Thank you for being with us in this conversation and we look forward to seeing you next time.