Issue 13. You’re Performing Rest—Here’s How to Do it Right

Dear Collective,

This past week, I’ve been sick. I can’t stop coughing, and it’s really put a damper on the activities that I’ve been able to do while in Da Nang. Lately, my days have looked much the same—wake up way too early because I’ve been coughing all night, journal, go back to bed for a few hours, and then try and do some work, eat lunch and dinner, and then back to bed. The cough has forced me to slow down, but instead of fighting against it, I’m trying to surrender to the stillness.

As a part of my personal development goals for 2026, I’ve been wanting to implement more mindfulness practices into my daily life—meditation, yoga, less screen time—but I’ve found myself unwilling to push past the initial friction and start. Well, it seems that, whether I like it or not, stillness has found me. At first, I tried to fight it; I cried and got angry because I didn’t have the energy to complete all of the tasks on my to-do list. But as I began to accept my new reality, something happened.

I started to decrease my screen time, not because it was a conscious effort, but because I was still enough to realize that I was weary of mindless scrolling. I started to meditate in the mornings, not because of a strict program that I was running, but simply because I felt like it. I even started to stretch during the day. The surrender to my illness showed me how much I try to force, not just productivity, but productive rest.

As accomplished women, we optimize for everything in order to get everything done during the day. And we do this so much that “rest” becomes another item we check off our to-do list without actually slowing down to reap the benefits from it. You may go to yoga four times a week, but does it actually nourish your soul or is it feeding your compulsive need to check something off your to-do list? Are we using our wellness routines to hide from something else—our need to stay productive lest we actually have to sit with ourselves?

Perhaps the goal is not to rest, but to choose stillness. Because in the stillness, you discover what you’ve been hiding—especially from yourself.

Wide Awake, Now What?

Bethany