How do you know when it’s time to pause, and how do you trust yourself enough to do it?

In this solo mini episode, I’m sharing the behind-the-scenes story of why I’m pressing pause on podcast episodes, newsletters, and my inbox in September. I also share what it took to give myself that permission. Spoiler: it’s way harder than it sounds.

From grief and mold exposure to big creative growth, my life and business have been full. In this moment, I’m choosing to protect what matters most by temporarily setting a few things down. I walk you through the reflection questions, mindset shifts, and logistical steps that are helping me honor this pause, not as giving up, but as preparing for what comes next.

What you’ll discover:

• The emotional cost of continuing when everything feels like too much (02:05)
• Why pausing creative output is sometimes the most strategic move (06:08)
• Scarcity fears that show up for entrepreneurs when we stop producing (10:43)
• Reflection prompts to explore your relationship with rest (14:06)
• An invitation to treat your next pause as a living experiment (17:38)

If you've been craving a break but feel afraid of losing momentum, this episode is your reminder that rest is not a detour. It’s part of the path.

You can watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qAiu997zsWY

[00:00:22] Maybe even something you love, and letting it rest so that you can rest too. For me, that moment of pause is happening right now. Today, I wanna talk about what it looks like to press pause as a business owner. I wanna talk about why it feels so uncomfortable and why it might actually be the most compassionate, strategic thing you can do for yourself and for your work.

[00:01:14] That's on top of having lost our first dog, Joanie, back in January. So, in addition to still feeling the grief of losing her, we're now facing all of these health issues with our other two senior dogs, and it is pulling at my heart and at my energy in a really big way. And then there's professionally, right?

[00:02:05] So, as I've been weaving together the personal and the creative and the business, I have realized, or more accurately stated, my body has let me know that it's all becoming a little too much to handle. So this past weekend, I had to do a kind of reckoning with myself. A, hey, hold on a second. What's going on here

[00:02:57] And second, what can I take off my plate right now without compromising my business? So I started that process. I started asking myself, what are three things that feel most important to me right now? My three top priorities in my life at this moment in time and after much soul searching. The three things that I landed on.

[00:03:42] And I have a lot of questions about how that's impacted my body. So item number one, take care of my family, take care of myself. Item number two: make sure that I have plenty of energetic resources to show up fully for my private coaching clients. I have reduced the number of private clients that I'm working with right now.

[00:04:32] Nancy and I are deep in the process of creating the next version of this show with our podcast consultant, Jeremy, and I really wanna show up fully for that process. So those are my top three things. That's what I landed on: taking care of my family and my health, tending to my private clients, being fully resourced for the people I'm working with right now in this moment, and making sure I have plenty of bandwidth to create the next version of this podcast.

[00:05:19] What tasks am I giving energy to right now that are not directly supporting my top priorities for me? The answer was clear. Even though I didn't like it and the answer was creating podcast episodes for this current iteration of the podcast, writing my weekly newsletter, and being in my inbox. Also, if you don't know this about me, I might have a tiny problem with compulsive inbox checking.

[00:06:08] I love it. I don't wanna stop doing it, but I also know that all of the energy I'm putting into creating episodes and writing newsletters right now is energy. I'm taking away from creating the next iteration of what this show is becoming, and I am 10 times more excited about that version of the show than I am about this version.

[00:06:47] It's often said I have to do a little bit less of the things I love doing. Ah, but that's the honest truth. There's another part of me, too, that when I think about pausing this podcast, the newsletter, I get pretty scared, right? I feel afraid that if I step away, I will lose my creative momentum, right?

[00:07:45] But those fears, they're inside of me, and they definitely show up when I start the process of giving myself permission to pause. Okay? That's like my process, where I landed to be succinct, I'm going to give myself what I'm gonna call a silent September. I can't pass up any opportunity for a good alliteration, I'm gonna give myself a silent September.

[00:08:30] And as I say it all out loud to you right now, I realize A, it sounds like pretty logical, pretty practical. B, also not that big of a deal, but it's so challenging. It feels like such a big deal, even though when I say it and I look at it on paper, I'm like, yeah, it's totally reasonable. Like, just do it.

[00:09:10] Why? Why are we so freaked out? Well, first of all, there's our ever-present capitalist conditioning, right? We have been taught and conditioned since birth that our worth is tied to our productivity. We've been taught that if we're not constantly producing, we're falling behind, right? It's there's no options here.

[00:09:57] But spoiler alert, the hard work is never done; therefore, we are never able to rest. Ah, there are lots of different thoughts and ideas, and different types of conditioning. That we carry in our body, and they all lead to the same end results or the same end belief, which is that pausing is not permissible.

[00:10:43] We can call this entrepreneurial scarcity thinking, and I kind of referenced this earlier when I was telling you about some of my fears that show up. We're told as business owners that if we stop showing up even for a really short amount of time, that we will lose everything we've built, right? People will move on, the algorithm will punish us, and our momentum will disappear.

[00:11:24] There's also another layer here of creative fear, and it's this fear we carry that if we step away from our work, the inspiration will stop flowing. If we step away from creating whatever it is we're here to create, we'll lose our spark, and we'll never be able to catch back up with where we left off.

[00:12:20] Pausing is nourishment. My conditioning makes me think that when I need to pause, when I need to take a break, that I am abandoning my vision. I'm abandoning my business, I'm abandoning my clients, and I don't wanna be a person who abandons people or abandons things that I care about, so I'd better not do it.

[00:13:06] We're stepping away. We're pausing because we're actively creating the conditions for our next chapter to emerge even stronger than the last. When I choose to pause, I am choosing to create a space, a container where I can nourish myself and my ideas so that I can live my deeply rested, best, most beautiful life.

[00:13:40] So if you're still listening and you're thinking, yeah, I could use a pause too, I would really like to do that for myself. I wanna give you a few ideas to help get you started on that process. Let's start with some reflection questions. As always, what are the questions you can ask yourself to help determine what kind of pause you need and how you should go about giving yourself that gift?

[00:14:34] Those are the things that you can set down just for now to create some breathing room. Question three: When you think about pausing, what fears come up, and what might be possible if you trusted yourself enough to take a break? Those are the reflection questions. Next, I wanna move into a few practical steps that I think will help, well, they help me at least, and I think they might help you too, create some structure and some expectations around the pause.

[00:15:33] So ask yourself, how much time can you give to this pause? Make it realistic. Make it reasonable, right? Yeah, sure. I'd love to take a pause for a whole year, but that's not realistic; four to six weeks is totally realistic. So I'm going to start there. Choose a clear timeframe for your pause. Then communicate it to the people who need to know your clients, your team, your audience, and your family.

[00:16:24] Next, I wanna give you this pro tip to be mindful about protecting your time by intentionally not filling it with other forms of work. This is really hard for me personally. I literally earlier today told Nancy, Oh, hey, in September I wanna do this thing. And I told her about the thing, and she was like, Hey, super cool idea, but reminded you are taking a silent September.

[00:17:11] We need to make sure that the time during the pause is truly dedicated to our priorities and that other life things, exciting, life things, or things that feel like obligations, don't sneak in and fill up all this space, and finally, I wanna invite you to treat this pause like an experiment, right. Be really curious about what you learn, what you discover during this time, and what happens during this time.

[00:18:00] So, going into it with curiosity, with a loose grip, making sure we're treating this time as an experiment is the best advice I can give you for doing this process, alright. Again, I'm taking a silent September. That's what my pause is looking like. In this moment, I am taking a month to breathe, to focus on my creative work for building what's next with this podcast.

[00:18:45] Maybe a little bit longer, we'll see what unfolds, but I am already so excited to return with fresh energy, with new ideas. Oh, I can't wait to come back because I love doing this, and I love being in a relationship with you. So maybe if you feel like joining me in your own version of a pause for the month of September, you can send me an email and let me know.

[00:19:33] Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Deeply Rested. If you enjoyed this conversation, I would love to invite you to join the deeply Rested Weekly newsletter. You can sign up at deeply rested.com/newsletter. I hope to meet you in my inbox very soon.