Maggie Reyes:
Hello everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode. I am so excited, I have one of my besties here with me and we are both feminists. I didn’t know I was a feminist. We might talk about that in the podcast for half of our friendship she was like, ‘Uh, Yes you are.’ And we’re gonna talk about rest because I think that rest is something we don’t talk enough about in the context of our marriages, in the context of our relationships, how to prioritize rest, what happens when we feel guilty about resting, and what does rest actually look like?
And we’ve both been on our own journey with rest. We haven’t totally figured it out and we’re still on a journey with it, and we just wanna share a little bit of our own experiences with you. So first of all, welcome, Melanie Childers to the podcast.
Melanie Childers:
Hi. I’m so glad to be here and I have to introduce you like personally and professionally.
Maggie Reyes:
So personally, Melanie’s one of my best friends. She just is the most amazing human. And anyone who gets a chance to be in her presence is just so blessed. I’m so happy to get to be in the inner circle of her presence on a regular basis, which is awesome. And professionally, she is a master coach who teaches women how to have feminist values in their business as they’re going their businesses.
She has a mastermind where people make hundreds of thousands of dollars and do beautiful work in the world according to their values. And really take some of the patriarchal habits and ways that we are used to relating to the world and really sort of dismantle them and make businesses that just match with who you wanna be in the world.
So before we dive into rest, just please tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do for the people that are hearing the podcast, maybe for the first time, and then we’ll dive in.
Melanie Childers:
Oh my gosh. I’m so glad to be here. I’m Melanie Childers. I am, as Maggie said, a master-certified coach. I am a business coach for feminist entrepreneurs and I have a master’s degree in adult education in designing online learning.
So it’s like I kind of have the blessing and the curse of knowing a lot of things and also trying to distill it down into, you know, what are the basic simple things that people need to know, and that has been such a gift to bring to business and to bring to bringing your values into your business.
Cuz I think so many people see the word feminist or they think that they might be a feminist, but they’re like, ‘Oh, if I wanna bring my feminist values to my business, this is gonna be hard. It’s gonna be complicated, it’s gonna be heavy. It’s gonna be a lot of difficult work that I’ll have to stop and think about and think critically.’
And it may require you to do things a little bit differently, but it’s not in ways that you don’t already know and you don’t always already believe in your values. So it’s like if honesty is a value, it would be in your relationship and I would hope you know how to be honest. Even when it’s hard, you know how to be kind.
Even when you know you have to say something that’s difficult, right? You know how to have those conversations. It’s not that complicated. It’s actually pretty simple. It’s the same with bringing feminist values into your business, and I just love the humans that I work with. I love that I get to do this.
I love that I got to create this for myself. Onto your show with you talking about it through the lens of your relationship.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, it’s so fun. So Melanie and I have both known each other since we were like zero and have been on sort of parallel tracks and the growing of our businesses Doing one-on-one coaching, private coaching, then doing group coaching, and just our whole evolution has been something that we’ve had the blessing to be able to share and support each other in, in different parts of it. So something that I give as homework a lot in The Marriage MBA and when I’m coaching is making a friend and she and I will talk sometimes for hours about different things that are on our mind and you know, sort of like business operations or things that we’re working on.
And it’s so important to not put all of your emotional eggs in the basket of your partner. And in our case, you know, we run businesses, but if whether it’s a hobby that you love, whether it’s something that’s going on at work that you wanna unpack, it’s like sometimes that expectation to have your partner be the person.
The healthiest, most loving thing to do is to have that person that you can sort of go to and who wants to listen to the whole story with every significant little detail. And it’s to the point where my husband will turn to me and say, ‘So when’s your call with Melanie.’
Melanie Childers:
Mine too. He’s like, ‘Okay, can you talk to your besties about your business?’
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. So, just to model that and to share that with everybody, let’s make a friend. Especially if there’s something in your relationship that it’s like your partner’s just not into that thing. I talk to my husband about, uh, the executive summary.
I’m like, Can we give each other the executive summary? Like how much level of detail do we need to include in some of the things? And it’s for both of us. Sometimes I go crazy on the details. Sometimes he goes in depth on the detail and it’s like, maybe your partner just gets the executive summary, but then your friend gets to have the whole, you know, all of that.
Melanie Childers:
The whole twisted drama and all of the things he said, and then she said, and then can you believe what she did?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, and all and all. So I just wanna share that. Then, so one of the things that has come up with both of us and as we’ve sort of navigated different chapters of our life together is this idea of rest of resisting rest, of like knowing we need some rest and then not doing it or not prioritizing it.
So, where do you wanna start with, really? Cause I know you also teach that and talk about it for months, entrepreneurship level, but where do you wanna start with rest?
Melanie Childers:
Well, first I wanna roll back just one second and say that if you would love to hear about our origin stories.
And the way that we’ve supported each other as business besties through the last, you know, 5, 6, 7 years. My podcast is called The Bad Bitch Entrepreneur and it is episode 59.
Maggie Reyes:
Oh Yes, we’ll find that.
Melanie Childers:
That’s a good one. Yeah, that’s a really good one. Yeah, as we are recording, it comes out next week, but I know that this won’t air until much later. It’ll be episode 59.
Maggie Reyes:
It’ll be out by the time you hear this. So we’ll definitely link to it in the show notes. And we just sort of shared everything that was on our mind that day and talked about all the things. So yeah, I love it.
Melanie Childers:
Great. So, but yeah, like what I noticed, you know, my experience with rest is I come from a – Let me just back up for even a second there. I come from a very white southern religious background that was very patriarchal, and then I got into schools and I was very smart and so they send you through like a gifted program and AP track and all of that stuff. Then I went to college and then I got out into the corporate world and discovered, oh, this is very cutthroat and everybody brags really loud. Everybody’s ladder climbing and they don’t care who they step on to get there. And one thing that I used to bitch about – Sorry, can I say bitch here?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah.
Melanie Childers:
One thing I used to bitch about a lot was like office politics. I was like, I don’t wanna play this game. Everybody’s inauthentic. Everybody’s just trying to say what they need to say to get where they wanna go, and the odds that they’re gonna turn their back on you are good. And I just found that very exhausting and overwhelming.
In 2011, I was diagnosed with cancer. In 2012 I went through chemo and continued to work, and then went to another corporate job and then went to a startup and it was like, I didn’t know I was doing it to myself, but I was burning out. I was already burned out by the time I got to the startup. I thought that would change things, and it just magnified that I was exhausted. My brain was mentally overwhelmed, my body was overwhelmed and I needed to stop working. And I got up one day and walked out. They were also extremely toxic and abusive, and one day I just packed my things and I got up and walked out. I told my husband, this is probably gonna happen and he did not love it because what we were looking at, what that meant, was like bankruptcy.
But I was like I will take the financial hit, I will let go of my car, I will let go of our house that’s on the market. I will declare bankruptcy if it means that my body can rest cuz I cannot use my brain. I have no time to be creative.
I need to sleep for like two months. And I did. I slept a lot. I laid on the couch a lot. I spent most of my waking time allowing myself to rest or doing creative things, whatever sparked my imagination was fun for me, including quilting and knitting and rehabbing furniture. And then when I went to grow my business, I realized that my brain was bringing all of that back in with me because that was the only way that I had known.
Go fast, hurry up, do it right. Find all the right strategies so that you can go quick. And I’m also very good at over complicating and overthinking. I’m smart.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, me too. Overcome overthinking. Overcomplicating. Yeah. It’s like my middle name.
Melanie Childers:
Yeah. And so I would get very stressed out and very overwhelmed and burned out very easily because I’m like, I’m taking in learning all of these new things, how to run a business.
I’m learning all of these new strategies and techniques and it would take me forever to get anything then back out of my brain and out into the world in the form of like a marketing post or a blog post or to offer something. And I was just like, maybe this is not the way. Maybe I’m not cut out for this either.
But that was when I really realized, wait a minute, I just need to stop driving my brain so hard, I need to stop being such a jerk to myself. I need to allow myself to go for a walk in the middle of the day if that feels like the next right step. To take a nap if my brain and my body are just like shutting off to go splash around in our little, we bought the dog a pool – like go fill it up, splash my feet around in it, right?
That one thing even if it’s for 5, 15, or 20 minutes, it has changed my entire relationship with my business. Even just five minutes in the morning of slowing down, sitting down, taking a breath, checking in with my body, being present in my body, and meditating has been life-changing for my business.
I said this morning to myself, as I walked into my office, what I used to say was, ‘Oh my God, where’s my to-do list? So I’ve got to get to work. I’m already behind. I’ve got piles of things to do and books to read and things to think about.’
And I walked in today, so it used to always make me feel like I dreaded being in here and I almost couldn’t work in here because it felt terrible. And today when I walked in, I took a great big sigh of relief and I said, ‘This is my sanctuary.’ This is my business, my beautiful office is my sanctuary because I’m resting, because I’m taking the pressure off and that is what I teach my clients, and I will tell you that it is the hardest.
One of the hardest things I think we’ve ever had to unlearn because it’s everywhere. It’s everywhere in our culture.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. So I remember when I left corporate and started my coaching business, my biggest fear was that I would just recreate what I had in corporate. And I have a fabulous online business manager.
Her name is Megan, and she helps me do all the things that you see me do out in the world. And one of our like company values is basically spaciousness. We don’t rush anything that has to be rushed we change the deadline versus rushing. That’s a company value that we have. If it requires anything that feels like I’m bending myself into a pretzel to get it done, we assess why does it need to be done?
How is it being done? How could we change it? For those of you who’ve listened to the podcast for a long time, and if you’re listening to the podcast for a long time, I love you, so happy you’re here. And if you just discovered it, I’m happy you’re here too. But I used to publish weekly and then I went to biweekly every other week and it was part of that. It was like I was in master coach training and I was like, something’s gotta give I can’t keep twisting myself into more of a pretzel there’ll be none of me left to do anything. Right? And we were just like, what if we did it every other week?
And I love producing the podcast, I love all the things that we share, I think it’s so important to have different conversations about what marriage could be in this century, how we can recreate it in a way that works for us as women. And it’s all from that place of like, no, rushing is not the way forward, twisting yourself, you know, putting a round peg in a square hole is not the way forward.
It’s like, what is the way forward? If we’re gonna reinvent what works looks like, what does it look like? And sometimes, I know having come from HR, that so many of the people listening to us right now aren’t in situations where they can reinvent what it looks like. But what you can do is decide how you are gonna relate to those things.
What you can do is decide what your boundaries are around your work hours, when you’ve reply to emails, when you are on call or not on call, if you are on call, when do you get time off, where you’re not on call? Like there are pieces of things no matter what situation you’re in, where there are decisions that you can make and I always wanna just be a reminder of you do have choices. Sometimes we have to look, you know, sometimes you have to work with a life coach to be like, where are the choices? They’re hidden under a mountain of what looks like obligations, but we can still find the choices somewhere in there.
Melanie Childers:
Yeah, a hundred percent.
And I love thinking about this through the lens of like your relationship because I think so many of us feel all the have-to’s and the pressure and the obligation at work, and then we get home and it’s job number two. And how do we just not do some of the things without guilt? How do we dismantle the win-loss or the point system in a relationship. Because I know so many people like unconsciously keep score and it’s like, oh, how do we just stop doing that? That was a thing that my partner and I had to work on cuz he’d be like, Okay, I did this so it’s time for you to do that. And I was like, Why?
Maggie Reyes:
Nobody wants to do that.
Melanie Childers:
Hold on. I don’t think I signed up for that. Yeah. Why does this have to be 50/50? Hold on. Can we, can we negotiate here? Yeah. Can we discuss?
Maggie Reyes:
And it’s so interesting because 50/50 sounds so benign. Right? But really in your, in a relationship, it’s like, how do we work to our strengths? In some areas of the relationship, it’s gonna be 75/25, and in other areas of the relationship, it’s gonna be like, 60/40 and then other areas is gonna be like, Oh, I do all of that piece and you do none of that piece but you do all of this other piece that I don’t wanna have anything to do with. So it’s like really zooming out to rethink. Here’s the question that I invite everybody to ask, especially if you think about your relationship and you’re frustrated or you’re tired, like zero in on what is the thing that you’re tired about. It’s like, is this still working for me? Is the way we’re doing it right now? It’s still working for me. And if it isn’t, that’s it. That’s all you do is you’d sit with your partner and you be like, You know what? The way we’re doing this right now isn’t working for me, let’s brainstorm together how we can we make it work for both of us.
Melanie Childers:
Well, and I love that you said that because that really came up for us. So like it, we adopted a dog in February of 2022 and I was so unprepared for what a bomb that was gonna be on my life like this. Bless his heart, he’s the sweetest dog, but he is like the energizer bunny. All the way wound up the batteries don’t run out until he falls asleep. That’s it. And you know, we got him in the first four, four months or so. We were constantly having to negotiate with each other. Who gets to sleep right now? Who sleeps with the dog? Who, you know, has him in, in their room in the crate? Who’s taking him out to pee? Who’s playing with him, who’s engaging him, who’s training him, who’s, you know, watching him while the other like works?
Right. Cause like suddenly he was a literal, like, full-time job and we both have full-time jobs – I have a business, he has a day job, and like we were both like well when do I get to do something fun? You, just took three hours of time off and like got to play video games. My three hours off was a nap. I didn’t get to do anything fun. I got to sleep. That’s not fun.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah.
Melanie Childers:
Yeah. And so like, there were many, many conversations as some of them with like, ‘Hey, if we keep going the way we’re going, we’re, we’re gonna need therapy. We might not stay together. So we keep the dog or we don’t keep the dog or we keep the dog and we need to make some choices.’ But those were some of the most productive conversations that brought us closer together because we were like, okay, we might need to dial down into specifics about what’s not working here. Okay, the way that you get frustrated with him is not working. Oh, the way that I’m training him is not working for you, and like just coming home to what is working for us and what’s not. Let’s talk through it without being activated or defensive or frustrated with each other. Let’s just lay it out like, okay, these are, these are the facts. These things are not working can we figure out a solution together? And maybe some days that looks like if he slept with you in the morning, you come wake me up so that you can go take a shower and I’ll take him to daycare. No problem.
Or it looks like, hey, I will, I will watch him while you play your game tonight and then Wednesday night I’m going out and grocery shopping ain’t going out.
Maggie Reyes:
That’s not the same thing.
Melanie Childers:
Nope, it’s not the same thing.
Maggie Reyes:
I wanna season something that is gonna be a totally shameless plug.
For The Marriage MBA because I believe in being shameless about the things that you love.
Melanie Childers:
Like love it. It’s so good. Get in there. I will plug with you.
Maggie Reyes:
And so a year before, I mean I think it’s a year before you got the puppy, you were in the inaugural group of The Marriage MBA, and you just had that feeling like, I wanna lay this foundation for how I want my relationship to go moving forward. And you did all that work.
I just wanna say like, you followed this nudge, like nothing was terribly wrong, there was no huge stressor going on at the time that you did that did the program with me. And I just wanna honor the infinite intelligence that guided you because all of us have this infinite intelligence inside us.
I call it your highest inner wisdom. We have this highest inner wisdom that sometimes doesn’t make logical linear sense, but you’re like, I think I wanna do this thing. Then of course you did six months at that and then when you had a major stressor, that then was something that could have gone in a variety of ways that would not.
It’s been fun. You had already practiced. Cause when you said without being defensive, I know that one of the things you focused on the most in our time together was like, how can I just show up in my relationship and not be defensive? So you had that muscle so well built that when this thing happened, you were just like ready to handle it.
Melanie Childers:
Yep. We definitely came out stronger for it. Because we were both like, even though we were exhausted, even though we were frustrated, we both came to the table together so much faster to really discuss without and, looking and being solution-oriented, not just like, complaining and like griping at each other or getting mad at each other. It was like, okay, here’s what’s happening and here’s what about it isn’t working for me. What about you? Okay, here’s what I see is happening. Here’s what about it isn’t working for me. Okay, how can we do this different? Can we maybe like one of us goes and googles and then try some things and then if it works, show the other person and like, let’s problem solve.
And we have been problem-solving masters with this dog. And one of the big problem solvers was like, take him to daycare three or four days a week to burn off that energy. But some of the others were like, we just needed a different leash so that he would stop pulling and stop making walks a nightmare.
You know, we needed different treats that he would love more. We needed, you know, different ways of playing and teaching him, like taking him to training classes so that he would learn how to play with us so that he’s not biting us as part of play. It’s like, nope, that’s not playing and that’s really painful.
But it was like coming together to problem-solve those things is what really helped us create a great relationship together and with our dog.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so much and one of the things I just wanna pull out of everything that you’ve shared is that you tried a bunch of things. So many of us, and I will include myself in this list.
It’s like I, you know, worked my way up in HR where I was a manager and I had a team and all the things and it’s kind of like I’m not used to being a beginner. So when something feels like I’m a beginner, I don’t wanna try things, I just wanna try the first thing; I want the first thing to work, and I don’t wanna do anything else.
Right and it’s like when you’re going through something in your marriage or you adopt a puppy or you start a business or you change jobs, you change something significant in your life. We have to put on that spirit of experimentation, that spirit of playfulness around trying a bunch of new things and letting ourselves be beginners and letting ourselves not, be you know, the most polished version of ourselves, but letting ourselves be the messiest version of ourselves.
I just think it’s so important to talk about that and acknowledge that because that can feel so hard for people. And the same thing with rest. We’re like, Oh, I rest plenty. I get my eight hours every night. Or in my case, I sleep average of six hours every night, but I get my hours, it’s fine.
As opposed to actually if you’re constantly overwhelmed or feel burnt out or feel tired or feel what I call unresolved resentment on a regular basis, then somewhere in there there’s rest that’s missing. So even though we might be sleeping, reading a book or all these different things like knitting, doing something creative, singing a song or talking with your friends, right? There’s different kinds of rest, like mental rest, spiritual rest.
Right.
Taking your, your body and laying down without having to fall asleep – rest, right? I think that we live at such a pace in sort of our modern, industrialized society that we often unconsciously think of humans as if we were machines, right?
I love sometimes looking at my phone because I think, Oh, even my phone has to be plugged in at night or it’ll stop working, right? Even my phone needs rest and re it needs to be recharged to continue working. It just reminds me, even machines
Melanie Childers:
A hundred percent. And I think what’s so valuable about that because people equate rest means sleep, rest means napping. And what we’re really talking about is giving your brain a rest. So being present without guilt, being like, maybe it’s cycling and like every time your brain thinks of all the things that you should be doing instead, like – I really should be doing the laundry, I should have done the dishes, so and so’s gonna be home later and I haven’t cleaned up. Nope.
Be exactly where you. Being present on the bike with the ride is a form of rest. Yeah, your body’s moving, but your brain is engaged in a different way when you check all the have-to’s and the guilt and the responsibilities at the door. That’s why so many of the Peloton instructors, like they’re always talking to you. Right? And one of the things that they say is, close the door drop, whatever is happening in the next 30 minutes from now or whatever just happened five minutes ago and just be right here because it is a form of mental rest.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, I love that so much and when we start causing The Marriage MBA, I often am like, let go of whatever happened five minutes ago, five hours ago, let’s tune in to be here now with each other and to have that moment where you just take a breath. One of my favorite ways of, remembering to rest sometimes in the moment if I have a lot going on is just to connect with my breath, to slow down my breath. Am I breathing? Am I holding my breath?
One of the things I tend to do is clench my stomach and hold my breath, and it’s like, Oh wait, I can breathe. So it’s like micro rest, which is something I didn’t even think about, but I think that’s part of it. Then something that happens to me is my husband has a more traditional, he’s like a senior VP at a credit card processing company, and he has a schedule that is very much like 8:30 to 5:30. And because of the nature of things he does, he’s also on call. And sometimes I feel guilty resting because he’s working now. I have the type of schedule where I might take the morning off, but then be writing emails at 10 o’clock at night and some of you who are in my programs, have gotten emails from me at 10 o’clock at night.
You know that’s the case. But I’m like, Oh, should I be working now? Should I be resting now? And, we’re working through that guilt. It’s like, wait, the way that I create the planet I wanna live on is by honoring the rhythm of my body, which in all the jobs I had had previous to this, that wasn’t even something we would talk about or was on the table.
And it’s like, what? How does my body like to work? Or what kind of rest does my body need now? And for so many of us, like, so if, if you’re in a creative endeavor where you do have that control over your schedule, great. And if you’re in that situation where you have to be in a place at a certain time, then I just wanna lovingly remind you, it’s like even within those constraints, what is it that feels overwhelming or like too much? And what do you have control over? Is it the schedule that you agree to? Is it the hours? Is it what you’re available to respond to or not respond to? Is it the deadlines you create for your projects? There’s always a place where you have some measure of control, and I always just wanna be the reminder to say, let’s check in and see what that is.
Melanie Childers:
Yes. I love that. It’s so brilliant and, I think that it’s so important to think about because so many – there’s also a story of laziness that comes with the rest and the guilt. That’s also the patriarchal programming out in the world is that if you aren’t grinding and hustling 24/7 and working longer than everybody else, then you’re lazy.
If you’re doing anything that’s not work, you’re lazy, and I just wanna say – BS. We can just check that story at the door. You have a human body, it needs rest. You have a human body that has a different way of working than everybody else because everybody has different rhythms and different needs.
Maggie Reyes:
I was just gonna say something I’ve noticed is we live in a culture that discounts women’s contribution. And then we internalize that and we discount our own contributions. I have had days where I’ll do a daily check-in with my husband and I’ll tell him, oh, you know, I rested most of the day today and I really didn’t get that much done. Like that’s the story that I’ve told myself. Then I look at my actual calendar and I’m like, well, actually, I recorded a podcast and I wrote up a new coaching concept then I coached in my group program then I, you know, ended up paying five bills or whatever, but it was just like a half day. I would list out like eight different things and it was like, wait, I am discounting my own self and telling myself that story that I’m lazy but that, oh, I didn’t really get a lot done. And this wasn’t like five years ago – this was like last month.
Melanie Childers:
Oh yeah. I’m right here’re with you my brain’s the same way. It’ll be like, okay. You know, I worked for, five hours and I got, you know, X, Y, and Z done, but I didn’t get everything on my to-do list done so that wasn’t good enough. I didn’t work enough. I’m not allowed to go rest until I get like at least one more thing off the list.
And it’s like, why? Why? Where is this conversation coming from? Why is that here? And why are we gonna choose to listen? What do we have to prove here? If you have a business, you make the rules. And if you have a day job, I get it that there are people you know, and deadlines and stuff, but also your brain needs a break sometimes.
I worked in a very creative field that required my brain to come up with things all the time, and I probably had to spend 20 or 30, maybe even sometimes 40%, just scrolling Facebook sometimes, and my boss would be like, You’re spending a lot of time on the internet. I’m like, yeah, I am because my brain needs a break from processing all of this information and trying to winnow it down into the simplest way to say it. And the best way for me to do that is to not do it.
Maggie Reyes:
So step away. To step away, step away, let your mind wander, and then come back.
Melanie Childers:
Yep. And suddenly I’ll have a thousand ideas and it’s brilliant.
And you love it. And I get all my work done on time. So yeah. I’m living over myself.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. What matters is that it gets done. It’s not how it gets done. And I think in our society, we judge how things get done a lot. What’s so interesting to me about that is that judgment doesn’t really serve us and we don’t even notice it’s happening and then we internalize it.
So I love tv. I love tv and I’ve had different chapters in my life where I’ve watched more TV and less tv, but I’m in a chapter in my life where like I find TV very comforting, and one day I sat down and I’m like, am I watching too much tv? And I’m like, wait, I run a multi-six-figure business, I help people every day, I can read all these free resources and help people do all of these different things. I think it’s okay. So I’m saying this for anybody who has judged themselves for either spending time on social media or spending time doing a hobby or something that isn’t directly tied to productivity and say, I invite you to check in on the rest of the things you do in the rest of your life. Just check-in. Like, it’s highly likely you’re, you’re contributing in a highly productive way to humanity and that thing that you think is, is a problem. It’s just your brain resting.
Melanie Childers:
But it’s, and it’s also actually contributing to the world because we are changing this narrative that you have to go, go, go, go, go, go, go in order to be successful.
And that’s just not what human bodies do. And the more of us that are modeling that out in the world, the more freedom we create for other people to take care of themselves. Like, how about let’s not all get cancer or have heart attacks and die because we’re so stressed out?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, and I really think it’s like a next-level thing to think about making space for rest for you and your partner.
And that the rest doesn’t need to look the same for both of you. So like my husband plays video games. I don’t play video games, but it’s like he can play video games. I can very happily read a romance novel and how do we make space for rest as we live through all these different things in our lives?
What do we need to say no to? In order to be really exquisitely well rested for the parts of our life that we want to engage in. And I think we’re giving you these questions today to give you like food for thought, to think about it. These are simple questions that don’t have usual answers like, sometimes it’s renegotiating your whole schedule, how everything is organized.
Melanie, gave such great examples at the beginning, how they had to go through every single thing they were doing with the dog to figure out how to make it work for them. But it’s like, if there’s one thought I want you to have as you listen to this episode it’s, how do I make space for rest in my life?
What feels overwhelming to me right now? And what would it look like if I was not feeling overwhelmed?
Melanie Childers:
Such good questions and I wanna add that again because so many people judge rest again with the whole laziness narrative. One thing that really helped me reframe it is, what would feel really nourishing today to my body, to my soul, to my mind? And that brought up so many creative ideas. I was like, oh, I could meditate, I could pull some terror or oracle cards, I could go make myself some soup or some hot tea, get a snugly blanket would feel really good, or go on a nice long walk would feel good. And that really helped me break the you know, ‘Oh, all the things that are rest’ and ‘Oh, I’m being lazy.’
It’s like, wait a minute, I’m nourishing myself and how do I wanna model feeling and being nourished outside of work?
Maggie Reyes:
I think we really need to redefine what is lazy.Right. Resting is taking time to rest, is not lazy in fact, in nature, we have so many examples of night and day, right? Of planting the harvest, letting it grow, and then reaping the harvest, right? There’s so many – seasons of the year, right?
Melanie Childers:
We would never say during winter – Well, the trees are so lazy.
Maggie Reyes:
That would be so funny if we said, those lazy trees…
Melanie Childers:
Lazy trees make some leaves already. God.
Maggie Reyes:
Right. And yet we do that to ourselves.
Often while we’re making the freaking leaves. We’re doing the thing and then we’re still calling lazy, so we wanna check what and how we define lazy and how can we redefine it. Most of the time I venture to say, if you’re listening to this podcast, most of the time that you think you’re being lazy, you’re probably not.
It’s probably an internalized, patriarchal cultural narrative that we wanna break and rest is allowed. Rest is encouraged. Rest is what helps you show up for everybody else, including yourself. Right?
Melanie Childers:
Yeah. Yeah. The way that I love to reframe lazy is, No, I’m filling my own cup right now, and whatever that looks like is okay.
Maggie Reyes:
And let’s say you were lazy.
Melanie Childers:
So what? Right. Who cares?
Maggie Reyes:
Like, like let’s say somebody’s listening like, Oh my gosh, what if I discovered that I actually don’t wanna do half of the things that I committed to doing?
Melanie Childers:
Okay. Don’t do ’em.
Maggie Reyes:
What if, what if you just said, Okay, what would my life be without these – without half of these things?
Then what? How would I handle it? What would it look like? Yep. I think that’s so important.
Melanie Childers:
I think even just giving ourselves permission to question every time. Every obligation you feel like you have, every to do that you think you have? Like, can we question all of those? What do you really gonna stop spending if you don’t do those things? Or if they get reassigned to someone else or delegated. Like what’s the life you wanna live? We are not put here to just work until we die. And that’s true in your relationship too. You shouldn’t be the one doing all the work either.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, and if you feel like you’re doing all the work, this is the moment to pause, check-in, say what actually needs to be done, and what can I totally let go of?
Now, sometimes we feel uncomfortable letting go of things cuz we want them a certain way. And ask me how I know, right? So today is like a food for thought episode. It’s like some of these things really don’t have similar answers. That’s okay but start asking yourself these questions because these are the things that become poisoned in a relationship later when we haven’t rested and it feels like we haven’t rested in 10 years and then we turn around and we’re just like, I’m just done.
Whether it’s a job or a relationship or a dynamic that you’re in, it’s much better to be like, Hey, what would I need to feel nourished to stay in this, in a way that works for me.
Melanie Childers:
I love it. I had a client, I just have to share this and then we can go.
But I had a client many years ago when I first started coaching, and we spent a lot of time coaching. The way her partner unloaded the dishwasher.
Maggie Reyes:
Oh, yes. I’ve coached on this. Loaded and unloaded the dishwasher.
Melanie Childers:
Yeah. And it was all about, you know, I just want it done this particular way, but I don’t wanna have to do it.
And helping them have that conversation together and come up with those. Like, let’s break it down and be on each other’s team in this relationship so I can stop worrying in my brain about how the dishes are getting done and you can stop feeling like I’m watching you all the time. So our brains both get a little bit of rest and the dishes get done and everyone’s happier.
It was so transformative.
Maggie Reyes:
This is a common thing, and one thing is in order to get help, we must receive the help. Like in order to not do everything, that means some of the things are gonna be done, not the way that we would do it. That can feel hard to accept sometimes. So we will link in the show notes of this episode to number episode I did with Melissa Parsons about being a control enthusiast.
We did that. Reframed. We just unpack that completely. So we’ll link to that in the show note in the show notes. But the idea that we can let go and still be okay with some of the projects, of some of the things that we can check in and see what is it costing me to do all the things for all the people.
Melanie Childers:
Or to even obsess about other people doing all the things the wrong way, right?
That costs you your peace and is that really worth it?
Maggie Reyes:
That’s such a thing to, to really like take in and say, Wait, what would my life be like if I could just really, truly not pay that price?
Melanie Childers:
Whew. We’re dropping some deep thought bombs on y’all today.
Maggie Reyes:
And everyone, as you’re listening, if this is like activating you, The Marriage MBA then go to www.maggiereyes.com/group to check for the next cohort. You might want to get in there and you might need some support around it and that’s all right. But these are the kinds of questions and when we’re sort of talking about different things that are happening for us, we ask each other these questions. And then how do we do it and where do we get stuck? Like this is just part of growth, right?
And so many times in marriage we have routines we get into, but then our life changes, whether it’s our career, our business, kids grow up now they have different activities, all these things and we have to say, is this still working for me the way that I did it before? And if it’s not, we have to go into all of this inquiry to figure out what we wanna do next.
So Melanie, this has been so delicious. It’s just been very nourishing to my soul.
So thank you. I want to always love to ask a question from one of the Questions for Couples Journal. Somebody asked me the other day and I was saying, oh, my book was in the top 10 on Amazon, and they’re like, what book is it?
I’m like, I feel like I talk about it incessantly, but for anyone who just met me, Hi. I wrote a book, it’s called The Questions for Couples Journal, and there’s 400 questions that help you get closer to your partner in the book.
Melanie Childers:
And it is an amazing book. We have it, we use it all the time.
Maggie Reyes:
I love it so much.
And one question from the book is, ‘What is one tip that you would give your partner on how to best communicate with you?’
So for everyone listening, think about this. What is one tip that you could give your partner how best to com communicate with you? And for extra credit points, you can just tell your partner tonight. Here’s a tip, on how to communicate with me better, but what would your answer be?
Melanie Childers:
How to communicate with me better? Oh God, now I’m like, I have so many tips, I don’t know. Well, I think like one of my like personal love languages is gifts so communicate with me, like buy me shit. And then the other is really like if we’re bringing it down to like everyday communication, it’s really like always assume good intent.
Always assume that I’m on your team. Even if I like snap, it’s never intentional. Always assume good intent. And I will self-correct if you assume – have good intent.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so, so much. And I’ll tell you one of mine is use your words cuz my husband’s a very smart man. His brain works very quickly and he’ll have a whole conversation with himself and then he’ll tell me the end of it. And I’m like, I think something was missing. Now, listen, I do this too. Right? Life, full transparency I’m a hundred percent sure that I’ve done this too, but one of the jokes we have is just, to use your words, like you’ll communicate with me better if you use your words. Walk me through what’s going on. And the other day he said – I cannot know what you have not told me.
I was like, Okay then.
Melanie Childers:
I can’t know until I have all the facts here.
Maggie Reyes:
I cannot know what you have not told me. So how about that? So that would be one, just use your words. That would be a great way. Okay, Melanie, I know everyone listening wants to know how to follow you, how to know more about you.
We’re gonna link to our episode on your podcast. We’re also gonna link to your first episode on this podcast where you talked about, we talked about internalized patriarchy. We talked about really not how to not be defensive and what, what your process was around that. So we’ll link to that in the show notes as well.
But how can people stay in touch with you? I love
Melanie Childers:
So I am www.melaniechilders.com that’s my website, and you can also find me on Instagram @MelanieChildersCoaching and if you go there and click the link in my bio, I have an amazing freebie for you if you were an entrepreneur called the Consensual Sales Conversation.
It is so good, so juicy. It will be out by the time this episode drops, so feel free to grab that and that will put you on my waitlist. It will get you the download. You can go start having consensual sales conversations today. It’s so good.
Maggie Reyes:
You know, on this podcast. We love talking about consent. We love talking about communicating more clearly and more powerfully.
So if anything in your work life is, has any part of sales or getting somebody to agree with you on something, you’re definitely gonna wanna download that. I have seen the behind-the-scenes as it was being and it’s phenomenal. It’s a great tool. Thank you. So Melanie Childer’s Coaching on Instagram and you can get it there and follow her.
Thank you everyone for joining us today. We wanna hear your favorite takeaway. Tag us @TheMaggieReyes on Instagram. Tell us what was your favorite takeaway from today and what is the question you’re gonna be asking yourself about?
Absolutely tag us. We’ll see you over there. Bye everyone. Bye.