How to Stop Thinking About Work All the Time

“A healthy muscle can contract on command, but also relax on command.”

This is what my online trainer, a blonde, 102-pound pipsqueak of a powerhouse says with a smile, as she casually bicep-curls 30 pounds. 

Relax on command, I remember thinking. That sounds… decadent. 

Can some people just do that? Just… set aside thinking and let their lives just exist without any thinking or planning or ruminating?

Turns out, it’s possible. And you don’t need to be into meditation or zen yourself out on a mountaintop to do it, either. 

I know a few people (all men, incidentally!) who can relax or fall asleep at will, drifting off within a few minutes of their head hitting the pillow. I’ve always found this unspeakably annoying, but that’s just the envy talking. The Dutchman is also one of those guys who can wholeheartedly say, “not much!” when I ask him what’s on his mind. 

(Sidenote: What’s that like?!)

I’ve been working with this idea of ‘relaxing on command for awhile now, particularly to help me learn the subtle art of not having my shoulders clenched up to my ears on a daily basis.

Relaxing, I’ve learned, can be hard work for some people.

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I’m still thinking about this idea of ‘relax on command’ at 3am the following morning, when I should be sleeping but my brain just won’t turn off. Along with nighttime overthinking, I’ve got a long history of taking “time off” and then spending the entire time thinking about work. And not just thinking. Mulling. Strategizing. Sometimes just mentally chewing on stuff for the sake of it, because for many people, thinking feels fun. 

Part of this comes with the territory of my life, and it might with yours, as well. When you do any creative work that has meaning to you, you’re basically signing up to a lifetime of giving yourself homework. Professional or personal homework. That part I wouldn’t change for the world, because working for myself is one of the greatest freedoms that I’ve always valued. 

But, with that comes the trade off. If you can’t leave work, you can’t, uh… leave work. There’s no clocking out, driving home, or leaving the job at the office, typically. Most creative people will tell you that they’re always noodling away on something, and that perpetual engine of curiosity is always running in the background.

And with that comes the guilt, too. It’s a privilege to have time off or visit beautiful places to rest. But it’s also a bit strange to feel like you need a real vacation when you’re back – not from your life, but just from the whirring of your own mind that never really stopped.

If you find relaxing and truly resting to be downright hard at times, I’ve got a few things I wanted to share that might help you.

1) Remember that the simple act of relaxing is an actual skill. 

“A healthy muscle can contract on command, but also relax on command.”

This is what my online trainer, a blonde, 102-pound pipsqueak of a powerhouse says with a smile, as she casually bicep-curls 30 pounds. 

Relax on command, I remember thinking. That sounds… decadent. 

Can some people just do that? Just… set aside thinking and let their lives just exist without any thinking or planning or ruminating?

Turns out, it’s possible. And you don’t need to be into meditation or zen yourself out on a mountaintop to do it, either. 

I know a few people (all men, incidentally!) who can relax or fall asleep at will, drifting off within a few minutes of their head hitting the pillow. I’ve always found this unspeakably annoying, but that’s just the envy talking. The Dutchman is also one of those guys who can wholeheartedly say, “not much!” when I ask him what’s on his mind. 

(Sidenote: What’s that like?!)

I’ve been working with this idea of ‘relaxing on command for awhile now, particularly to help me learn the subtle art of not having my shoulders clenched up to my ears on a daily basis.

Relaxing, I’ve learned, can be hard work for some people.

---

I’m still thinking about this idea of ‘relax on command’ at 3am the following morning, when I should be sleeping but my brain just won’t turn off. Along with nighttime overthinking, I’ve got a long history of taking “time off” and then spending the entire time thinking about work. And not just thinking. Mulling. Strategizing. Sometimes just mentally chewing on stuff for the sake of it, because for many people, thinking feels fun. 

Part of this comes with the territory of my life, and it might with yours, as well. When you do any creative work that has meaning to you, you’re basically signing up to a lifetime of giving yourself homework. Professional or personal homework. That part I wouldn’t change for the world, because working for myself is one of the greatest freedoms that I’ve always valued. 

But, with that comes the trade off. If you can’t leave work, you can’t, uh… leave work. There’s no clocking out, driving home, or leaving the job at the office, typically. Most creative people will tell you that they’re always noodling away on something, and that perpetual engine of curiosity is always running in the background.

And with that comes the guilt, too. It’s a privilege to have time off or visit beautiful places to rest. But it’s also a bit strange to feel like you need a real vacation when you’re back – not from your life, but just from the whirring of your own mind that never really stopped.

If you find relaxing and truly resting to be downright hard at times, I’ve got a few things I wanted to share that might help you.

1) Remember that the simple act of relaxing is an actual skill. 

Ever the late bloomer, it took me over 35 years to learn that resting, relaxing, and restoring is a skill. It’s not a talent. It’s not a fixed trait, either – you’re not born with the innate ability to relax like you might be born with blue eyes or curly hair. Likewise, getting to sleep is a skill. And finally, letting yourself rest and not think about work is also a skill.

They’re all just skills. 

The bad news is, skills take time to learn. 

The good news is, skills are, indeed, learnable. 

But, learning how to chill the hell out, turn off the ever-constant spin of your mind, and actually enjoy your rest time isn’t like other skills, too, because there’s a hugely emotional and psychological component to allowing yourself to rest. 

If you sat down and tried to learn the skill of watercolour painting, for example, you’d probably find it challenging. (Or possibly annoying, like I do!) The ratio of water-to-paint is a total pain, after all. But, you likely wouldn’t find learning the skill of watercolour to be destabilizing to your sense of self. 

Yet learning to rest? That can do a number on who you think you are. Changing our habits like this can often make us feel like our sense of self is crumbling, and that all the things we value about ourselves are being threatened. And when our sense of self feels threatened, our actual reality can feel like it’s collapsing, too. 

That’s some scary stuff. (And ironically, the opposite of restful.)

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If slowing down and resting feels tough, you’re in good company. Why? Because many of us - overachievers, creatives, highly sensitive whateverers - have linked our sense of self to what we do and how we see the world. We’ve bound it up to our ability to take what life has given us and to translate it into something.

Achievement. Not dropping the ball. You know, doin’ stuff. 

Sometimes just the act of being okay is the creation we’re building, depending on what life is handing us that day. 

To some people, truly resting our minds can feel like we’re going to lose hold of those pieces that are keeping life together. And when you’ve got a lifelong pattern of going, the simple process of stopping can make your brain and body feel unsafe. It’s as though Newton’s law of motion applies to our psychology here, and a mind in motion stays in motion – even if we want to stop. It’s downright hard to stop doing what we’re used to doing.

This is why so many of us go off on a vacation or take the weekend “off”, and appear to be resting, while our minds are running an absolute marathon of madness while we sit and stare at the sky. And, it’s why we can rest without ever truly resting.

But, as with our laws of motion, if we want to change direction or what we’re doing, we can just apply another force to it. And that force comes when we take the time to learn the skills of rest. One step at a time.

But why do we have such a hard time relaxing, anyway? Diving into this question can help a bit, along with our second point.

2) Recognize that your ‘overworker self’ isn’t trying to sabotage you. It’s not an ‘overworker’ at all - it’s a protector. 

I can’t overstate this.

You’re not ‘messed up’ or broken if you can’t rest easily. All parts of you – even the anxious, overworking, unable to relax parts – are there to help and protect you. And they work beautifully, adapted to what they were dealt at the time.

This sounds squishy, but I see way too many people try to banish, badmouth, or smother the ‘hustler’ inside of them, when really, we ought to be thanking them for protecting us. You’ll never hate yourself into healing.

The only thing that’s happening when you want to relax and can’t is that the strategies that used to support you no longer do. That’s it. Zero judgment. If anything, throw in some extra compassion. 

The clenched shoulder example is a good metaphor here. Are your shoulders tight up against your ears because they’re trying to hurt you? Of course not. Your shoulders are up by your ears because you’re protecting your neck. You know, that vital, soft part of you that could be at the mercy of outside attack. Our inability to truly rest falls into that same category, and this reminder alone helps me have compassion for myself when I’m being annoyingly on when I’d rather be resting. 

Speaking for myself, it was hard for me to rest because my inner protector believed that rest could be dangerous. Both dangerous for the sense of self and identity that I’d created throughout my lifetime of working, but also dangerous physiologically – because my body had grown used to the neurological chemicals of go go go. Your body will always resist change – even good change – because it’s unpredictable. In the language of your body, change will always be scary as hell, so it will make a point to help you avoid that change.

In other words, if you’re reading this right now and realizing that your regular, day to day state is a constant, activated sense of busyness and not relaxing, it makes sense if not doing that is tough for you. The solution to this isn’t telling yourself “just relax”. Instead, it’s more important to open yourself up to the possibility that relaxation could maybe, possibly, be safe. Start there.

You can also starting diving into the question of “How much of my identity is built on my ability to Get Shit Done At All Costs?” Or even, “What feeling am I avoiding by never really giving myself a chance to restore myself?” (Both of these questions cast a wide net, so obviously use your discretion and/or a qualified therapist/buddy/emotional support iguana, if you need them.)

Once I got my head around the reality that resting is a skill and that it was okay for me to stumble like a drunk, newborn giraffe as I learned it, and that slowing down could be safe, I came to the next conundrum. Namely, what feels like rest to me doesn’t often look restful. Which brings us to number three on our list today. 

3) Rest gets to be as uniquely you as your creativity does. 

As creative people, we’ve got no problems embracing our differences when it comes to our work, but when it comes to relaxation, suddenly we’re supposed to all colour between the lines of what feels peaceful and restorative. Meditate! Mindfulness! Om, damnit! (Meditation, for interests’ sake, is well documented to help many people, but has also been shown to worsen symptoms of anxiety in others. Whoopsie!)  

Beyond the bedrock of a good nights’ sleep, many stereotypically ‘restorative’ activities don’t feel restful to me. Instead, they piss me off. I used to think this was because I was less advanced of a relaxer. You know, I was just getting a Bachelors in Rest, while others were working on their third PhD in it. But rest and restoration are beautifully, intricately personal. Indeed, they’re as deeply personal as your own creativity is, and here’s the cool part:

You can look to your creativity and inner child to help give you cues on what will help you truly rest and restore.

If the traditional forms of rest don’t appeal to you, ask yourself what you did as a kid to rest. Small things will pay dividends here, so don’t feel like you need to reinvent your life. Anything you can provide for yourself that makes you feel tended and cared for can help you rest, and our childhoods often hold the best clues for that. 

In my case, one serene detail I remembered was that I loved making pillow forts. I’d disappear inside for hours, quietly reading or drawing or just snuggling some pillows, surrounded by the protective cocoon of flowery, ‘80s couch cushions. That simple cue got me curious: Maybe a body pillow could be a restful treat. Turns out, that shift did wonders, and cozying up with a ridiculously big pillow just feels a touch more restfully decadent than before. It’s not everything, but it’s something.

A friend of mine who is also learning the skill of rest remembered how much she loved being read aloud to before she went to bed. Lucky for her, the Calm app has an entire catalog of sleep stories, and she’s found that the ones designed for kids are her favourites. The sillier and more juvenile, the better. We could all use a quiet story about a napping unicorn, after all. 

That’s the secret, I’ve realized. Learning the skill of rest isn’t actually about learning how to ‘turn off’ your mind or body. It’s about learning how to turn on the part of yourself that feels allowed to be safe and cared for, in any way that feels cozy, quiet, and fun for you. The rest is just details.

This isn’t me saying a body pillow or sleep stories will help you learn to relax instantly and stop thinking of work. (Though, they might not hurt!) Instead, dig back into what made you feel safe and tended for as a kid in any small way, and see if there are microcosm moments you could play with today.

Being an adult often means putting our needs to the side, and it’s so easy to assume that rest is something we need to earn, trading in our work and productivity points to get it. This is why rest is so tough: It goes against our societally learned habits to deprive ourselves, and ask that we lovingly supply ourselves with not only what we need, but what we want. 

Even if it’s one unicorn sleep story at a time.