Steep Your Soul

Relaxed Woman: On Resting Ep 67

• Annabelle Matson

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Do you ever find yourself believing that everything depends on you — that if you stop, things will fall apart?

In this episode of Relaxed Woman, we’re exploring the practice of rest — not as laziness or avoidance, but as a powerful posture of trust.

Rest isn’t wasted time; it’s often the very space where peace, provision, and clarity flow in ways we can’t manufacture on our own.


We’ll talk about:

  • Why constant busyness keeps us stuck in fear and striving


  • How rest expands our capacity, heals our nervous system, and reminds us we’re already enough


  • The cultural pressure to “always be growing” — and why honouring your season brings more joy and freedom


  • Why rest can feel uncomfortable at first, and how to gently retrain your body and mind to embrace it


  • A faith perspective on rest as trust — and how letting go invites supernatural provision beyond what we can achieve alone


If you’ve been carrying the weight of the future on your own shoulders, this episode will remind you that rest is a way of saying: the weight isn’t yours to carry alone.


✨ Resources mentioned:

Private Coaching - book in for an Initial Breakthrough Session or work with me in a 3 or 6 month program

Reclaim Your Calm $20 workshop

Visit my website

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Submit a question for an upcoming episode.

Welcome back to Relaxed Women. This is a nourishing series on the podcast, steep your soul to help you slow down, soften your grip, and live from a place of deep trust and peace. If you're tired from carrying it all, you're in the right place. Before we begin, let's just take a really deep breath together and let's get into the episode. I was talking with my sister, Jenny the other day about how I'd been overthinking and over planning, trying to control every detail of something that was still way out into the future. And she looked at me and she said, if you are planning, you're not trusting. And she didn't mean that kind of healthy planning that we do, that wise planning. She was meaning that restless, anxious kind of planning, the kind of planning that pulls us six steps ahead and leaves us feeling really drained. It's that same energy as like checking our inbox every five minutes or filling up every quiet moment with noise. And one of the best ways we can break that cycle is through rest. And that's what I wanna talk to you about today. So we need rest and we need rest for a number of reasons. But first, rest clears the noise so we can hear ourselves again. These days, even when we are alone, we're actually very rarely alone because we reach for our phones, we check messages, we scroll. That constant input drowns out our own inner guidance. Rest also creates capacity. So we say we want more opportunities or more growth, or more clients or more responsibility, but we're already stretched thin. There's actually no room for these things. Rest makes space for what's next. It seems counterintuitive, but some of the biggest breakthroughs have come when I've chosen to rest and slow down. It actually hasn't been from doing more. It's been from doing less and without rest. We are often living reactively. We might find ourselves reacting from the same old ways of being that keep us chained to the same experiences. So without rest, we often feel on edge. We feel easily triggered by comments or people or situations in life. When we create rhythms of slowing down, we give our bodies a chance to come out of fight or flight and into a calmer baseline. And from there we can respond to life from a more intentional place. So rest invites a feeling of sufficiency. Busyness often hides a quiet belief. That quiet belief sounds a bit like I'm not enough yet, and if we were to stop and get honest with ourselves, this is often what is driving all of the doing and the over productivity. It's that belief of I'm not enough yet. I haven't done enough yet, but rest disrupts that When we choose to rest, even when there's more to do, even if we are not yet where we want to be. It reminds us that we're worthy of care and time without producing or achieving, and that shift is powerful. It changes how we see ourselves and how we show up in our life. Here's something that can feel confronting. Not every season in life is meant to be about growth, and our minds will often insist that every season that we are in should be about progress. Going to the next level, moving forward, achieving more. But the truth is we can't keep expanding endlessly. There are always seasons when we're being asked to consolidate, to slow down, to restore what's been stretched and to prepare for what's next. Fighting against that season is a huge dream. And I lived this when I first returned to work after having Eloise. I was in a season of restoration and finding my feet again, but my mind resisted that, and I was doing a level of work that felt really great, but then my mind pushed me to do more than that, more than I had the capacity for. And that cost to me energy and peace of mind. The fearful mind resists slower seasons. It whispers like you have to keep busy or you're gonna fall behind. But I found some of the biggest breakthroughs and the biggest leaps forward have come out of out of a period of rest, rest. Not only prepares us for where we are heading, but it also helps us to embrace where we are and that creates peace. So when I finally surrendered to the season that I was in, the more relaxed I felt, and I found that doors of opportunities started opening very easily for me without me having to strive for them. And if you're interested in, this idea of honoring the season of life that you're in. I've actually dedicated one whole episode to that and it's coming up on the podcast. So let's be honest. Rest doesn't always feel good, and I often say this to my clients as that don't set the expectation that. Resting is always gonna feel good, especially in the beginning. And it's not actually the point for it to feel good in the beginning. When we've used a busyness as a form of self-protection, our nervous system gets wired to believe this is what keeps us safe. And when we take that away, we take the busyness away and we try to prioritize rest. A part of us starts to panic about that. And then the mind will kick in as we are resting with the to-do list and we sit down and find that we don't even really enjoy the restful activity that much, and that's okay. I know I've gone to have massages before in the past as a way to rest and prioritize rest and left just as stressed as when I went in because my mind wouldn't shut off in that moment. So what I want you to think about is if you were training for a running event, but you'd never run further than down the street at the beginning, running feels difficult. Your legs hurt. You puff a lot, you get the stitch. But if you stick with it over time, you build fitness and eventually you find your flow and running becomes something that you actually enjoy. It's the same with rest. I used to never be able to sit still, and if I did, I'd undo that period of rest by throwing myself straight back into my to-do list. My nervous system at that point in my life needed a lot of healing, and it took time and that's why it's so important to be patient with yourself and to start small. Let your choice to rest be like an act of faith, not in the sense of it always having to feel good right away, but entrusting that each time you do it, you're showing your body and mind that it's safe to put down that old armor of busyness. And over time you're gonna find that it becomes a lot easier and actually more and more enjoyable to rest. So what are some ways that we can actually rest? Rest doesn't have to be a full day off, although it can be, and I'll share about that in a moment. It actually can be woven into daily life, into little micro moments. It can be about taking your cup of tea or your coffee outside and putting your sun in the face, your, your face in the sun and not having your phone in that moment. It might be taking your tea or coffee outside first thing in the morning and watching the sun rise. It could be about a short lie down. I know when I was first healing my nervous system, I would set myself a goal where I'd actually put a timer on my phone and I'm and I for 10 minutes, and I would say to myself, okay, I'm just gonna lie down in the middle of the day for 10 minutes. Even if it feels uncomfortable, I'm gonna stay here. And that was like my running training. Each time I did it, it started. It became easier and it made rest, um, more and more accessible for me. Resting can look like a slow, gentle walk outside or some gentle stretching, maybe reading a light fiction novel, maybe taking a bath. There are so many different ways that we could rest. Those are just a few ideas. Even five minutes can reset how you feel. So it's not about thinking I've got no time to rest because I've got all of these things on and I can't rest until they're all done. If we are operating from that place, honestly, there will never be a time where we feel like we can rest. So it's not waiting. For an easier time or, or a period in our life when we have more time to be able to rest. It's looking for where are the micro moments. Where are those pockets of time in my day already that I could be bringing intention to and choosing to rest?'cause we all have them. There are pockets and moments, even if it's just two minutes in the day. If you just think about if you scatter these across your day, three times a day, you do two minutes of stopping to breathe deeply. Or maybe you do that a couple of times a day, and in one moment where it's sort of like 10 or 15 minutes of a gentle walk at lunchtime, you can kind of see if you stack these things up across the course of your day and then across your week, how much of a difference that can really begin to make overall. If you wanna go deeper, I know a full day of rest is very restorative for me, and a full day of rest with a two and a half year old looks different to what it did before I became a mom. But a day of rest is actually still possible when you've got young children because it's about the intention that you're bringing. It means letting go of some of the extra jobs and the to-do list for that day. For me, it's like putting my phone away and like not, not using my phone to search things or look things up for that day. It's just like putting it away, not racing around and doing lots of things. It usually means for us spending slow time together, it mean, it might mean sort of prioritizing making a yummy meal together, that we sit down and enjoy together around a table. Instead of the TV going on at night it's sometimes about like reading instead. So there are definitely ways that we can make a full day of rest work for us, no matter what our commitments are during the day. And a lot of it, I think, has to do with dialing down stimulation. I also believe that rest is a posture of trust. For me, it's like saying, God, I believe you are working. Even when I pause, and I remember a time in my business when I was worrying about something that I couldn't control, and I had a day planned with my daughter, Eloise. We were gonna go and ride the tram and have lunch together. But my thoughts kept saying, you can't enjoy this until this thing is sorted. And that's an old program of mine. And in that moment, I had a choice. I could move through the day feeling distracted and on edge, or I could choose to rest and really lean into what this day was offering me. So I chose rest and we had a great time together. You know, we laughed together. We enjoyed being out in the sunshine together, and by the time we got back to the car, ping, the very opportunity I'd been waiting for, landed in my inbox. That moment reminded me that rest isn't wasted. It's an act of trust and faith. It's saying, I'm gonna rest even though this thing isn't figured out yet, because I believe you are working to figure this out for me. So rest is a way of saying the weight of the future isn't mine to carry on my own, and what a relief that is. So thank you for being here for this episode of Relaxed Women. If this spoke to you, you might also enjoy the Reclaim Your Calm Workshop. It's a simple$20 resource with practical tools to help quieten your mind and feel more grounded and peaceful, and everyday life. You'll find the link for that in the description of this episode. And if you'd like more personal support. I also offer private one-to-one coaching. It's a space to go deeper into all of these themes and to get tailored support. And you can learn more about that through the link in the description as well. And finally, if you're listening today and you're curious about faith, maybe this idea of God's peace stirred something in you, I've put together a free getting started with faith guide. This won't be for everyone, but I think if you've been wondering what it might look like for you to start exploring Faith, this guide will just walk you through it really gently. I cover off a lot of the questions that I had and the things that I wrestled with in the beginning of my walk with God. So you'll find the link to that free ebook in the description as well. So don't forget to subscribe and follow the podcast. There are plenty more episodes to come in the series. And please share them with a friend. If you think of someone who would get value and benefit from what I'm sharing in these episodes, please send it to them, and I look forward to being with you again soon.