The Lawyer Life Podcast

The Guilt of Stillness - When Rest Feels Indulgent

• Autumn Noble • Season 2 • Episode 60

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 This week, I’m digging into something I coach on almost daily: the guilt that shows up when we try to rest. 

If you’ve ever cut back your hours, taken a lower-stress role, or finally cleared some space in your schedule—only to find yourself unable to relax—you’re not alone. In this episode, I explore why ambitious women, especially lawyers, often struggle with stillness. We’ll talk about where this guilt comes from and how deeply ingrained productivity culture—and our internalized beliefs about worth—can steal our peace. 

So many of us tell ourselves we’ll rest once everything is done. But the truth is, rest rarely feels earned, and the goalposts just keep moving. I’ll help you start unpacking the stories behind your guilt and offer a gentle reminder: you don’t need to hustle harder to deserve rest. You are allowed to rest—right now, in the mess, with the to-do list still looming. 

💬 In this episode, I talk about: 

  • Why rest often triggers guilt and self-judgment
  • How our beliefs around worthiness and productivity get shaped
  • The cultural and professional pressures women face around overachieving and overgiving
  • How to begin disrupting the guilt cycle and reclaiming rest as a basic need


📝 Reflection Questions to Explore:
 

  • What do I believe rest says about me?
  • When do I feel the most guilt about doing nothing?
  • What stories or beliefs are behind those feelings?


📥 Want to take this work further?
If this episode resonated with you and you’re ready to create more independence in your practice, check out my Finding and Securing Legal Clients Workbook. It’s a step-by-step guide to help you start building your own client base—on your terms—so you can say no to what doesn’t serve you and yes to what does.

You can download it instantly at thelawyerlifecollective.com under the Downloads & Freebies section.

👩‍💼 Want to join my next live workshop?
We’ll go even deeper into how to build your legal brand, find aligned clients, and grow your practice with confidence. Just shoot me an email at autumn@thelawyerlifecollective.com with the subject line “Independence” and I’ll make sure you’re on the list for more details.
 
💛 As always, thank you for listening and sharing. I’m so glad you’re here.
 

Free coaching consult/coffee and more!: https://autumnnoble.as.me

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Autumn G Noble (00:00)

You are listening to the Lawyer Life Podcast, episode number 60, The Guilt of Stillness.

 

Hey my friends, welcome back to the podcast. This week we are exploring why ambitious women often struggle with rest, especially after creating space by going part time, setting boundaries, or even switching to a lower stress role.

 

We will unpack why free time can trigger guilt and the internalized belief that our value comes from our productivity. I'm so glad that you're here joining us on this episode today. It is a topic that I coach on in some way, or form on a daily basis. I always say as lawyers that one of our very favorite emotions to just wallow in is guilt. So I thought it made sense today to dig into that emotion as we're talking about taking breaks and engaging in some self care and rest during this season.

 

For many of us attorneys, it's not uncommon that at times during our lives we've told ourselves, when I have more time, I'll relax. I'll finally do that thing. I'll make more time for the gym. Or once I get these things off of my to-do list, then I'll be able to catch up on sleep. Or then I'll be able to get my life in order. But when the time comes, we finish that project, the deal closes, the case ends. When that time comes, what happens?

 

We sit, we freeze, we scroll, we stress clean,

 

you might actually take a break, but it's not without that little pit in your stomach judging you and whispering that you should be doing more.

 

This week's podcast episode is about that whisper, that guilt, and the way that it steals our rest and convinces us that we have to do more to earn peace. That simply just relaxing and doing absolutely nothing is not good enough.

 

I often tell my coaching clients that guilt is one of our absolute favorite emotions. We constantly carry some level of guilt around us and some type of judgment for what we're doing or not doing.

 

What is that guilt about and what is it trying to show us? Because it's often there in the background. It's kind of quiet, sticky, but it's always persistently telling us that whatever we're doing or not doing is not enough.

 

Particularly when we sit down to rest, that's when the guilt really sets in and says really loudly to us, you're not doing enough, you shouldn't be just resting. And that guilt is always associated with some type of judgment for taking it easy. What's underneath that message? Internalized beliefs about yourself.

 

and your worthiness. At the core of all of those feelings is this idea that I'm not worthy if I'm not producing or doing something or checking things off of my list. If I'm sitting here relaxing and reading a book for fun while my house is a little bit messier than I would like and while the laundry has backed up a bit or I need to reorganize my cupboards.

 

If I'm sitting here relaxing and reading a book while all of those things remain undone, I'm doing something wrong and I'm not doing life right. I'm not a good enough wife or mom or housekeeper or human being in general.

 

All of this goes back to messages that we've absorbed over time about our worthiness and our value and how those things only come by producing and checking things off of our to-do list.

 

It's this idea that our worth is always tied to our output and what we have done. And a lot of times I hear it in my coaching sessions and it sounds like, everyone else is working hard, everyone else is hustling, who am I to take a break and rest or say no to this project or go on vacation?

 

And we see this even when we get to that climax.

 

of burnout when our body and our emotions are kind of screaming out and saying like, hey, red flag here, like too much is too much and we need to kind of calm down and take a break. Even in those moments, what I usually hear from women is I can't rest until this is done. No one else is resting. And there's this idea that everyone else is pushing as hard as we are. And we don't even know if that's true. But in those moments, we are certain that we are the only ones contemplating taking a break and that everyone else is pushing just as

 

as we are so we don't deserve a break either.

 

So the question I want to talk about today is where does this all come from? Because without understanding the root of it, it can be really difficult to fix it and change that patterning of not resting and just pushing ourselves into burnout, rebound, and then doing it all again.

 

The harsh truth about this is that the guilt is not really innate. It doesn't just come out of nowhere. If you've ever worked with me, I really firmly believe this idea that any emotion that we're having is something that we've created by the thought pattern in our heads. And so if we've got an emotion like guilt, the only person we have to blame is ourselves and our thinking and those kind of patterns that we've picked up over our lives. And that's a beautiful thing.

 

because if that's where the guilt is coming from, then we fix it by changing the patterning, which is 100 % within our control.

 

But not to be too hard on ourselves. This patterning, it doesn't just come out of nowhere. It comes from cues and clues and input that we have picked up over the course of our lives and absorbed as true. And then they create these beliefs and ideas about our value, about our worthiness, about how hard we should be pushing. It's really baked into our culture and reinforced, especially I think, in high stress.

 

professional spaces, especially for women who are often juggling so much. We have all these cultural ideas about what we're supposed to be like as women, as mothers, as wives, and all of the expectations that go along with that.

 

I personally think as women that we are praised for our self-sacrifice, for giving so much to everybody around us, for being team players who never say no. You we often kind of want to be that utility player and that go-to person who's encouraged to do more with less.

 

who's encouraged and rewarded and pushed to do more, even though everybody else on the team may not be pushing as hard. There's something about this idea that we're sort of the team players, the glue that holds everything together, that gets indoctrinated in us and causes us to rise up and give more than we want to.

 

In short, it's cultural messaging around martyrdom, self-sacrifice, and being a team player. Growing up in school, we were rewarded for overachieving. At work, we're rewarded for being available 24-7 to responding to those emails immediately. And in society, we're rewarded for putting others first.

 

So what gets overlooked in that system of giving and giving and overachieving and being available 24-7? Rest. Boundaries. Saying, matter too and I have needs as well that are important and should be met.

 

The guilt that comes with all of those things, resting, setting boundaries, saying no, it's not a weakness. It's simply a byproduct of a system that has convinced us that rest and self-care is selfish and to be avoided in favor of constantly showing up and constantly being available and giving more.

 

So here's the message I want you to take today is that productivity won't ever save you. We sort of think if I get all these things done on my to-do list, then I'll finally feel better and I'll be able to rest and relax

 

But we can all think of instances in our lives when that just wasn't the case. You finish your to-do list and the guilt doesn't go away. It's still there telling us that we need to do more. The goalposts just move and there's always one more thing to do. That's a productivity pattern, a loop. Our brain starts to get rewarded for overdoing. It feels good to check things off of our list, absolutely.

 

But eventually the doing just drives us into burnout because we continually avoid rest. We just keep doing everything at the cost of our well-being and over time it will take a significant toll and we will have to stop for longer to recover.

 

because no matter how much we hustle, we will never hustle ourselves into deserved rest. have to claim it.

 

in the moment, in the messiness, in the unfinished tasks, with the long to-do list kind of looming, in that imperfect moment, that is when we have to take the rest. We cannot tell ourselves, I'm just going to do this one thing. I really need to get that done and then I'll rest and then I'll relax or I'll go to yoga or I'll go to the gym. Peace does not come after that kind of productivity. It comes from disrupting the pattern. Because what I'm trying to tell you is when we have that pattern of,

 

guilt and shame for resting and setting boundaries and we run away from that shame by doing more it doesn't fix the pattern. Once we've done the more the guilt comes back and we just create more things to do. And so we have to invest in breaking the brain pattern of overdoing it so that it doesn't keep reactivating and pushing us in this kind of toxic cycle.

 

Peace doesn't come after productivity. We have to create space for peace within the productivity by disrupting that pattern of guilt and not self-soothing the guilt by doing more. In my coaching work, I see guilt all of the time. I see clients cut back their hours or clear off a weekend or even go to a less demanding role.

 

and they still feel tense.

 

they don't feel any better. From a hours worked perspective, they may technically be resting and taking time off, but mentally...

 

they've got a huge fight on their hands draining their energy. They've got the guilt. They've got the shame. They spend all this time ruminating about whether or not they should be doing more. Like, is it okay to just relax? Should I be asking for more work? Should I be joining some kind of a nonprofit board or doing more with my kids schools? All of that is happening in the background.

 

so important for us to recognize in those moments is that the guilt is not coming from how much you're doing or not doing. It comes from the stories that we tell ourselves about what it means to be worthy and valuable and contribute and the stories that we tell ourselves about rest and breaks.

 

The story that we have to kind of earn our worth through doing that we can't rest until everyone else is okay, until everything on the to-do list is done. And that doing so and resting means that we're lazy or that we're a failure and we just can't hack it. Those are the stories that we have to fix in order to stop feeling guilty every time we engage in self-care.

 

Those beliefs and those stories won't just go away when your to-do list is done. They require you to rewire your brain and dismantle those constructs and those beliefs and stories that we've been carrying with ourselves.

 

So I want to invite you on kind of a reflection exploration here. I want you to ask yourself, what do I believe rest says about me? What do I believe that boundaries or saying no say about me? What do I think about myself when I take an afternoon off just to read or relax or go to a yoga class?

 

Do I think it's indulgent? Do I think it's irresponsible or selfish or lazy? Just see what comes up. Part of that exploration is asking yourself, when do I feel the most guilt?

 

about doing nothing. For me, this is when I'm sitting on the couch with my husband. I have a tremendous amount of guilt. I used to have tremendous amounts of guilt doing that. Every now and then it kind of creeps up again and starts judging me for doing so, but it's really important to know that's a trigger for me. Sitting around watching TV, there's a lot of judgment there and it goes all the way back to my childhood and things I was told about being inside, watching television instead of being outside and doing things.

 

So start paying attention to your own guilt patterns and see if you can identify what triggers you to feel that guilt and that judgment and see if you can figure out what is behind all that and write it down if you can because that awareness is your first step to freedom because it starts to show you the stories and beliefs that are creating that emotion for you so now you know what stories and beliefs you need to dismantle.

 

In our next episode next week, we're going to take this a little bit farther and explore doing less without feeling less than. And I'm going to talk about some real practical tools that you can engage in to address kind of those yucky feelings that come from taking breaks. So we'll talk a little bit more about redefining rest, not as a reward, but simply as a right and a necessary part of this marathon of life that we are on.

 

and in the next next episode after that I will guide you through a short meditation to help you reclaim that stillness and start calming those kind of prickly emotions of guilt and shame that come with pausing.

 

Until then my friends, be gentle with yourself. You are allowed to rest. You don't need to earn it. It is a natural part of running a marathon. You have to take breaks.

 

Before you go today, if today's episode got you thinking about anything that you want to be different in your legal practice,

 

I've got something for you that can help you take the next step. Check out my Finding and Securing Legal Clients workbook because when we have our own clients and our own book of business, it gives us power.

 

It gives us independence. It gives us the ability to say no to terrible clients and set boundaries and start working with people that honor and respect who you want to be as a lawyer. It really dovetails nicely with this idea of taking breaks and resting and having a little bit more balance. It's a lot easier to do that when you have clients that align with you, your needs, the type of work that you want and you have that power and control.

 

My Finding and Securing Legal Clients Workbook is a practical step-by-step guide to help you start generating business on your own terms. And it's available as an instant download, so you can dive into it right away. It's available at thelawyerelifecollective.com under my section for downloads and freebies.

 

And if you are ready to take that topic a little bit deeper, I've got a live workshop coming up where we will cover exactly how to find your own clients, how to sell yourself authentically and build your own legal brand. If you're interested and want to save your seat, shoot an email to autumn at thelawyerlifecollective.com and drop independence in the subject line and I'll make sure that you're on the list for the information on that upcoming workshop.

 

You don't have to wait for someone to hand you clients. You can build something on your own. And I would love to help you do just that so you have more independence, power, and space to create a practice that really aligns with who you want to be. I hope that you will join us on that journey and learn the tools that I use to create my own practice group and build up my own client I hope to see you all there.

 

As always, thanks for listening again this week and thanks for sharing with your friends.