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Transcription
REBECCA FLEETWOOD HESSION | BUSINESS IS HUMAN | Your Vacation Isn’t Rest: What You Really Need to Recover
Episode Transcript
This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:03]:
Welcome back to the Business is Human podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession, and we're here to bring you episodes that blend meaningful work with profitable success. Here to steward what I call the age of humanity. I believe if we transform the way we work, we can transform the way that we live. As always, my friendly request. If you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss any episode and leave a review to tell the other humans that they might like it, too. Always looking to help you and connect with others.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:40]:
All right, let's get into it, shall we? Okay, I need you to lean in. I need you to prepare to get honest with yourself, and I need you to know that I love you enough to tell you the truth, because I've heard some of y'all say this, which is what has inspired this episode. So it didn't come from my imagination. It came from my experiences with some of you said with love when you said, if I can just make it to June, we've got a vacation planned. We're going to the beach. Like, somehow dragging yourself to the brink of burnout will be cured once you're sitting in the sand with your sun hat and your bevy. But the reality is you're just gonna have sand in your car for the next three months, and your vacation isn't the recovery that you hope for. And y'all, it was never meant to be that way.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:01:48]:
Somebody's gotta love me enough to tell you the truth, and here I am. All right, so I want to look at the science of why your vacation isn't enough. Because my advice hasn't netted the results that I want for some. So we're going to go the science route today. I'm also going to tell you what the Bible says about rest, because, again, I love you and. And what vacations are actually good for. Listen, I'm going to Italy, too. I want you to take vacations, but I want you to have realistic and reasonable expectations about what they're for.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:02:28]:
I want to talk about what true recovery really takes to get the rest that you crave as a lifestyle style shift. I've got some solutions for you. I've got some help. Not just this podcast, but I wanted this to be the starting point of a bigger conversation. So let's get into it, shall we? All right, let's start with a neuroscience nugget. Your nervous system doesn't reset on command. You can't say, okay, nervous system, we leave on June 8th. I'm going to need you to switch things down to rest and digest at about 10am that's not the way it works.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:03:15]:
Chronic stress builds up in your body. Harsh example coming like plaque in your arteries. A vacation is going to give you some reprieve unless you're the one that's in charge of doing all the preparation up until the vacation. And if you're the one that's in charge of planning everything when you get there, especially if you're taking those humans that you've created and when you come back, if you're in charge of catching up on email and laundry, I'm just saying it might not have the rest that you think it could give you some momentary reprieve. There'll be certain days when you are sitting on the beach with your bevy. The bevy is actually wrecking your nervous system even though it's making you feel calm. I know I'm coming with a lot of hard facts today because I love you. Vacations don't rewire patterns.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:04:08]:
And we as human beings are a byproduct of our patterns. Your vagus nerve just isn't getting fooled by the smell of the ocean air and the palm trees. If you are constantly in a state of fight or flight, I want to really be careful with how I say this because those of you us, I'm now out of it. That recovered. When you are constantly in a state of fight or flight, you see that as your normal. Many are in what I talked about a few weeks ago, which is functional freeze, which means you don't even recognize. And you wouldn't probably call your state chronic. You'd call it who you are.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:04:55]:
And that too is a big part of the problem. This constant state of sympathetic activation, fight or flight might be your normal. That's a challenge. That's a problem. It takes rhythm and practice to reestablish a state of calm and connection. And so maybe we just take a little moment of reflection time right now and say, when was the last time you experienced without use of some outside source of a bevy or something else, when was the last time you experienced calm and connection? And I'm talking about the kind of connection where you actually want it and you feel it. You're not just with somebody, but you're feeling the feels about being with somebody. There's real rhythm of recovery.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:05:57]:
So regulation happens, nervous system regulation, which gets us to that place of feeling calm and Connected to the people that we love, the work that we love, the life that we love or want to love. It happens in daily doses, not biannual breaks. You know, two or three beach trips a year aren't going to do. Happens in daily doses. Therefore, it's a lifestyle shift. So a vacation's like putting a band aid on a stress fracture. Needs more physical therapy, not just wrapping it for the weekend or putting a band aid on it. I mean, y'all even got rested on the seventh day.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:06:42]:
He didn't do it every fiscal quarter. And he was busy. He was creating stuff. So throughout the Bible. So if we're talking about your soul, it says, come to a quiet place, get some rest. If you pay attention to when those messages show up, it's usually after they were doing something really hard. And so there was this modeling of a regular rhythm of rest. And so rest isn't just when you're tired.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:07:19]:
It's about obedience and trust and faith that you are going to get it all done. And another harsh work. You're not the creator or the center of the universe. So God's got a lot of the things taken care of that you're hustling around, worried about. So rest is holy. It's not lazy, and it's not optional, and it's also not earned. It's decided. It's designed into your human makeup.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:07:51]:
Your nervous system is designed for rest and digest and renewal. So you can't shortcut that system because you're busy or because you have a deadline or an unreasonable boss. Your nervous system doesn't care. It says, we have to have this. So let's go back to a high point. Vacations are really good when you need, and we all need this occasionally, a change of scenery. Because then your brain gets inspired and says, oh, what's this? Where are we? What's happening? Which is activating. But it's activating in the good sense of imagination and exploration.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:08:34]:
And oftentimes, on vacation in a new environment, you'll get new ideas even for the project that you're working on. So your nervous system is in a new location and it starts to tap into some creativity. You may get great ideas when you're on vacation. Awesome. See, I'm not saying vacations are bad. Time with family is beautiful. Even if, you know you're fighting in the car sometimes or whatever, you know, vacation always has those. Those weird situations.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:09:04]:
My mom shut my hand in the car door one time on vacation. I was probably, I don't know, 7, 9, and we pulled up to the motel and we were running back and forth from the car, unloading. I went to reach in and grab something, and, yeah, my mom not only shut my hand in the door, but it latched. And my mom was being a mom. Back and forth, running, trying to unload the car, barely paying attention. Listen, we all do it. And didn't realize. I think my dad came and was like, Connie, which is my mom's name, shot her hand in the door or something like that.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:09:41]:
And then they put ice on my hand and we went to the pool. Those were the days, y'all, when nobody worried too much about anything. So time with family, even when there's a little bit of chaos, is beautiful. And so I highly encourage us all to take some vacation time with our people. But just don't confuse a break with an actual reset. Vacations are more like the cherry on top of the sundae. They're not the ice cream and the syrup. Vacations are like dessert.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:10:14]:
You can't live on them and expect to stay nourished. Although I did used to let my kids have ice cream for dinner once in a while because that was my way of, like, shocking their system. If things had just been in kind of a. A lull and I wanted to get their attention in a fun way, I would just randomly, not too often to where they expected it, but randomly just come home from work. And a lot of times it was after I had had a long day and I didn't want to come home and make chicken and broccoli and nourish their bodies. I wanted to just nourish their humor and their soul a little bit of. With fun. And it gave me a little bit of a break.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:10:55]:
And then we'd make, you know, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or something later, so they had a little bit of nourishment or protein. You know, I'm just remembering this. I was in the elevator leaving a meeting one time, and this lady was in the elevator with me, and she. You could just tell she was having herself a day. I said, how's it going? And she said, long day. And it was probably 4:30 in the afternoon. I said, headed home. And she said, yeah, gotta make dinner.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:11:21]:
You know, she was a mom and she was thinking the next shift of her work life was starting. And I said, I get it. I said, mine are older now, but vivid recall of the state that you're feeling right now. I said, you know what I used to do sometimes? I used to go home on nights like this sometimes and say, how about ice cream for dinner. And then it just shifted my mood and their mood and y'all, you should have seen her face light up. She actually looked at me puzzled and she said, I can do that, can't I? When I said, yeah, you can. You're a grown ass woman and those are your kids. You can.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:11:59]:
And then her face lit up and she was like, I'm gonna do that. I said, I hope you do. And she just, you could see her wheels completely turning and it totally changed her mood in the elevator that day. I hope she's listening and she messages me. I would love to hear how that night went. So anyway, vacations are like dessert. You can't live on them and expect to stay nourished. That was my original point.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:12:23]:
Here's another little metaphor that just to drive the point home, because I love ya. Vacations are like putting your phone on airplane mode. It pauses things. But when you turn it back on, all the notifications and the apps are still running in the background and come after you when you flip the switch. True recovery takes a lifestyle shift because we regulate in daily doses. So real rest means daily stillness, self awareness, having the ability, having the interest to observe yourself without judgment or shame. Just asking yourself, what do I need right now? What am I feeling right now? What would be helpful right now with love for self, not judgment, shame. All those things.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:13:16]:
All of these are nervous system regulation suggestions and they are God centered rhythms. There's really very little that's different in the science of nervous system regulation. And what the Bible is telling us, not more hustle to earn the break. We don't want to be in that. Like I'm going to work really hard and get caught up, which you know, isn't a thing if, especially if you read my book, it's a whole chapter. We're not earning a break. We're creating more capacity to handle our work by taking a break and giving ourselves space to breathe. So I created this 90 day reset because I don't know more than probably 5 handful of people that are really great at this rhythm of regulation.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:14:15]:
I have worked diligently to practice it and get the rhythm going and now I enjoy the results so much that you cannot get me out of it. Nope. But most people that I know and love, if they've done some good resets, they kind of bounce in and out of it. And so even if you've had it and lost it, the 90 day reset is just that, a reset. And for those that have never had it and don't know how to do it because there's so much on that treadmill of just keep going. This walks you through how and I want to help you. I want to serve you. I want making money to feel better because it should.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:15:04]:
And so I would love for you to hit the link, learn more about it. It's urgent in terms of this solution is a May through August deal. Best summer ever. It's got some one on one coaching with me and it's got some really great reflection questions. This beautiful workbook that I created some little videos to help you. It's all about the least amount of disruption to your life with the highest return on that time. That's what I'm all about. So if you've been sitting there googling beach houses, I'm not saying you shouldn't take a vacation.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:15:39]:
But if you're doing it hoping that's what's going to save your sanity, maybe you should message me and we should talk about the reset and take a look at something a little deeper and more sustainable. So I would like to help you create a great rhythm for your life. You can check it out when the link in the show notes or message me on any of the platforms. All right, so just coming at you with the hard truth today about vacations. Yes, you should take a vacation and just make sure you have realistic expectations about what it's for. All right, Love you. Mean it. Happy summer.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:16:16]:
Bye. I never left it on the ground. Thanks for being here. You can follow us on Instagram Business is Human or TikTok Rebecca Fleetwood Hession. It's a great way to share some of the clips with your colleagues and friends. All right. Make it a great day. Love you.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:16:36]:
Mean it.