I'm 38 and I noticed last week that I have been waiting for someone to tell me I'm allowed to rest, and the person I have been waiting for is me, and I have apparently been holding out on myself for about twenty years - Silicon Canals

"Most of the productivity discourse assumes the problem is time management. It isn't. The problem, for a very specific kind of person, is authorisation. You know rest is good. You can recite the studies. What you cannot do is take rest without first locating an external voice that grants it."

"Somewhere along the line it stopped being any of those things and became a vague atmospheric pressure: an internal weather system that says not yet, not yet, not yet."

"I had been waiting twenty years for that weather to break on its own."

"The psychological literature has a strange gap here. There is a substantial body of work on self-compassion, thanks largely to Kristin Neff at the University of Texas, Austin."

Rest is essential for cognitive and physical health, yet many struggle to allow themselves to rest without external validation. This internal conflict often stems from a long-standing habit of seeking permission from authority figures. Despite knowing the importance of rest, individuals may wait indefinitely for an external signal to take a break. The psychological literature highlights a gap in understanding self-permission, emphasizing the need for individuals to grant themselves the right to rest without waiting for external approval.

Read at Silicon Canals