What if the key to overcoming life's greatest challenges lies in something as simple as rest? I'm opening up about my struggles, including a complicated foot surgery, and how the necessity of rest played a pivotal role in my recovery. I learned the hard way that pushing through without adequate downtime only makes the process harder. As I share my story, I invite you to reflect on your own habits and consider the transformative power of giving yourself permission to rest and heal.
I'm also sharing a looking ahead, and my excitement about attending the Walk to Emmaus women’s retreat, a sanctuary for connection and spiritual growth without distractions. I encourage you to explore how rest impacts your mental, physical, and relational well-being, and I promise to share insights from my retreat experience in the next episode.
Thanks for listening. Follow me in Facebook and Instagram.
What if the key to overcoming life's greatest challenges lies in something as simple as rest? I'm opening up about my struggles, including a complicated foot surgery, and how the necessity of rest played a pivotal role in my recovery. I learned the hard way that pushing through without adequate downtime only makes the process harder. As I share my story, I invite you to reflect on your own habits and consider the transformative power of giving yourself permission to rest and heal.
I'm also sharing a looking ahead, and my excitement about attending the Walk to Emmaus women’s retreat, a sanctuary for connection and spiritual growth without distractions. I encourage you to explore how rest impacts your mental, physical, and relational well-being, and I promise to share insights from my retreat experience in the next episode.
Thanks for listening. Follow me in Facebook and Instagram.
Speaker 1:
Hi, I am Christy Ballard-Fellaini. I am a certified life coach who found herself at 42, freshly divorced kids off to college, and having never dated in my adult life, I was starting in the middle. If you haven't yet hit start on your middle time in life, let's do it together. Let the journey begin. Hey there, friend, how are you today? I hope that you find this podcast in an amazing space. I hope that when you tune into this, that you are well, that you are happy and that you are just in a space of soaking things in, of just bringing all that life has for you into abundance.
Speaker 1:
So, this particular podcast I've been thinking about it for some while, I've been mulling over it for some time, and there's two things that I want to share with you today, and I hope that you find the information useful. I hope that it gives you exactly what it is that you are needing in this moment, because I love when things fall into place like that. I love when things work out exactly as they are supposed to, and that's the thing is that things are always working out exactly as they're supposed to. We just get caught up in our own thoughts about whatever the circumstance is. We get caught up in past thinking, we get caught up in things that scare us and we tend to forget that things are always happening the way that they are supposed to. And, as I mentioned, you know, we get caught up, something that I want to talk to you about today, and I'll get to it in just a second. Because, first, if you are just now finding this podcast, welcome, and please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Christy Fellini. I am a certified life coach and I love helping women to stop just existing in their lives. I love helping women become more aware of themselves, become more aware of how they are thinking about things, of how their past shapes how they are showing up for their lives today, and I love helping them become more aware of how they actually get to create and choose on purpose what it is that they want their lives to look like.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so, if you are someone who is finding this podcast and you are in one of those situations where you're just feeling stuck, I hope that this message that I have for you today really hits home, really resonates and gives you a good plan or some good ideas for how you can move forward. So something that I have been thinking a lot about, and it's not so much that I keep bringing it up in my mind, it's that things keep happening to bring this up in my mind, like things keep falling into place that keeps bringing this idea to mind. So it's not that I am telling myself, oh yes, you need more of this. It's that in some way, shape or form, it keeps coming up to me, say, for instance, through a podcast. It keeps coming up to me, say, for instance, through a podcast, through a event that I have coming up here this afternoon, in fact, through different areas of my life that maybe I've got coaching on and my coach has brought it up to me. And so what I'm talking to you about is the idea and the action of rest. Okay, and the reason that I say the idea and the action is because you physically have to decide that you are going to do rest, that you are going to participate in rest, and I know that a lot of times we just think to ourselves. I mentioned this keeps coming at me in this particular season of my life.
Speaker 1:
So if you are an avid listener, if you've listened anytime over the last 10 weeks, you are probably familiar with the fact that in early April I had foot surgery and I did not know at all what that foot surgery and recovery was going to entail. I knew that I had been in pain for so long and that foot surgery was the last resort. And that foot surgery was the last resort and I was so ready for it that I basically just thought about my calendar ahead of time and thought, yeah, this is the perfect time to do that, and I did not think about the amount of rest that I was actually going to need, rest that I was actually going to need. I did not even register rest in my recovery process, and the biggest reason that I did it is because I work from home, because my coaching practice allows me to work from home, and so my mindset of being someone who can do all of the things all of the time because I am a very independent person my mindset was that, well, I can just continue working. And that is exactly what I did, and I am now understanding and I am now seeing just how much I actually needed to just rest, because the first four to six weeks of recovery was really hard, and the reason that it was really hard was because I made it hard.
Speaker 1:
I didn't rest. I thought that I could still do all of the things and I didn't allow my body the rest. In fact, even the first two weeks when I was still on the heavy medication, I was still trying to do all of the things. I was at my desk with my foot up, trying to get in on all of the calls that I do, even with my own coaches, when I could have opted in for watching and practicing on the replays, with Empowering Women's Coffee and Connections, it was still full steam ahead. I did this monthly women's group from my desk at this point, so I gave myself a little bit of grace in that I didn't attempt to do it in person, like I normally did, but I did do it from my desk and I still did all of the things. That leads up to creating that hour and a half to two hours of meaningful content and community with the women that are inside this group.
Speaker 1:
And so, as a teacher, as a mentor, as a thought leader, I just want to come clean and to say I messed up, I messed up, I got caught up in the. If I don't continue full steam ahead, things are going to fall apart. You know that old, stinking thinking that if I don't push forward, forward and do it anyway, even though my body is screaming at me that I need the rest, that things are not going to fall into place, that the progress that I'm wanting to make in my business, in my relationships, isn't going to happen. And so, admittedly, I pushed myself. When what I really needed was rest. I worked just as hard, if not harder, when what I really needed to do was take care of myself. I tried staying in the loop of all of the activities that I had normally been used to with all of my friends, when what I really needed to do, and what really would have really helped nurture those relationships, was allow myself to rest.
Speaker 1:
Because the truth of the matter is, when we are not rested, we are not operating on all cylinders firing, we're going through the motions without focus, we're multitasking, where what we really need to do is take the time that is necessary to focus on one thing and be all in at a hundred percent. And when our body is not rested, when our mind is not rested, we can't do that. And so where we meant to do A plus work, because we are not rested, it really does feel like more of B and C type work and, yes, there is a time and place for that but when we truly allow ourselves to rest is when we are at our most creative, where things seem to flow rather than trying to force them, and we're truly able to see that life is happening for us. Another reason why rest is so important is because when we are rested, we are fully able to invest in our relationships. We're able to hear our partner when they are speaking. We're able to feel the partner when they are speaking. We're able to feel the emotions that they are feeling when they're trying to communicate with us, able to be in appreciation for all of the ways that they do show up as part of our partnership. We're able to nurture them and have compassion for them. We're able to nurture them and have compassion for them. But when we are not rested, the opposite of all of those things are true. We're cranky, we are in less gratitude for all the ways that they do help us and bring more meaning to our relationships. We're able to focus on the connection that we truly want in all of our relationships, and the most important reason that we absolutely need to lean into rest is for our own well-being.
Speaker 1:
To reflect on this timeframe in my life of trying to recover from this foot surgery and being limited in my mobility, being limited in my activities, being limited in my stamina, I start to think back to how many years that I spent unrested, how many years that I spent with my body itself so tied up in what's the next thing? Right, what am I supposed to be focusing on? Years of worry, years of anxiousness, and reflecting on that, thinking about how different life could have been if I leaned into rest? Because I think that, as independent women, as moms, as women out in the career field, as moms, as women out in the career field, we're constantly shuffling things. We're constantly feeling like we are bound by all of the activities that we are supposed to do. We do not even know how to rest anymore, and I'm starting to see that as part of a pattern in the clients that I see, in that they have been multitasking for so long. They have been doing, doing, doing for so long that they're not at all used to checking in with their body and seeing how rest could actually benefit them. In fact, they're so caught up in I can't rest, I don't have the time to rest. It is causing so many problems, not only for our own mental wellbeing, but also for our physical wellbeing.
Speaker 1:
Now I know for myself that I have a mysterious illness. There's no explanation for it. I've been to several different doctors for it. I've been to a periodontist for it. I've done food allergies periodontist for it, I've done food allergies, I've done stress testing. But, like I said, it's a mystery. And the thought that keeps running in the background of my mind is how much of this mysterious illness may be due to lack of rest. Because I promise you, if you are not rested, more than likely you are stressed, and that's where these mysterious illnesses come from.
Speaker 1:
So I want to encourage you today to do some reflection for yourself. Really, think about how much rest you are actually getting. And when I say rest, I mean real rest, I mean not spending time scrolling through your phone, scrolling through Facebook, scrolling through Instagram, because truly, if you are scrolling mindlessly, stopping every now and again to catch what's going on in that video or to catch what your favorite thought leader is saying, are you really resting? Are you really allowing your brain the downtime? If you are someone who says rest, who's got time for that? I really encourage you to look at your calendar. Are all of those things on your calendar truly a necessity, and how can you work in more rest in your homework assignment? Because in this podcast, I shared with you how I am noticing the lack of rest is affecting me, and so what I encourage you to do is to Google all the different ways that lack of rest could be affecting your mental wellbeing, your physical wellbeing and your relationships. So I could sit here and I can give you all of those, but I want you to be vested in this, I want you to do the research, I want you to look those things up for yourself so that you can identify for yourself what resonates personally with you. All right, so the other thing that I wanted to share with you today is how I am choosing to lean into rest.
Speaker 1:
So, starting this afternoon, I am going on a pilgrimage. I am doing a women's retreat it's called the walk to Emmaus and I wanted to record this podcast before I go on this retreat because I wanted to have the opportunity to reflect on the retreat after I have experienced it. So I have done some research on this retreat. I have had a wonderful group of friends who have done this retreat as well, share with me some of the aspects of the retreat, but for the full effect, the full experience, they have not shared with me everything, but what I do know is that rest is going to be a huge factor. I know that connection and relationships is going to be a huge factor, specifically my relationship with God, and so I am so excited to go into this experience with a smile on my face, with an open mind, with an open heart, to experience everything that this retreat has for me.
Speaker 1:
So what does it look like in terms of rest? Because what I do know is that there is going to be a lot of opportunity for worship. There's going to be a lot of opportunity for connection and community with other women, there's going to be a lot of opportunity of learning from other women, and the biggest thing is that there is absolutely no electronics, no cell phone, no smartwatch, and I've actually decided I'm not even going to take my Remarkable, even though the Remarkable does not hook up to the internet or anything like that. I've decided that I don't want to have question in anyone else's mind and I don't want to be a distraction for anyone else and their experience. So I am really, really looking forward to all that this weekend has to offer me, and when I come back, I will record the second half of this podcast and tell you as much as I absolutely can share with you about this journey.
Speaker 1:
So make sure that you tune in next week, all right? So, as I mentioned, your homework assignment, google, how rest affects your mental wellbeing, affects your physical wellbeing, affects your connections and affects your relationships. I can sit here and I can tell you how they affect mine, how they have affected all of those things in my life, but I want you to be vested in it and I want you to do the research for yourself, alrighty? So until next time, you guys have a great week. If you have any questions or comments for me, please reach out to me at Christy K-R-I-S-T-I at Christ kristifellainicoachingcom, or you can also visit my website, kristifellainicoachingcom. I'll talk to you soon. Who is your life coach? I would love the opportunity to work with you as you are rediscovering the woman you were meant to be. Visit kristiballardfellainicom for more information on how we can work together to ignite that passionate, enthusiastic woman who may have been tucked away for some time. Let's start in the middle together. Thank you.
