Q&A: Embracing a Collective Model of Rest with Jordan Maney

"The whole model of resting requires community." - Jordan Maney, Radical Joy Coach™ and creator of the RestLab

Rest. It’s a simple four letter word that I’ve historically had a very complex relationship with. And I know that I’m not alone.

Like many caretakers might attest, before my daughter was born, I also took rest for granted. But once she was earth side, I longed for it. I reveled in it. And I learned how to ask for it.

Now, there are plenty of days where I don’t get enough rest, but as you’ll hear about in this interview with Jordan Maney, that’s OK. In fact, we’ll likely be jumping on and off the dance floor of rest for our entire lives. There’s something we can do about this dilemma, but I won’t give it all away.

In our final interview of this series on healing, Jordan Maney, the Radical Joy Coach and the creator of RestLab, will share her approach to rest from an equity lens.

You’ll learn about

• Redefining rest

• The value of creating a rest ethic

• Strategies to protect rest

• A simple exercise for identifying and honoring your capacity

I hope you enjoy it.

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NOTE

This is a different format than this newsletter usually takes. That’s because I’m hosting a series on healing this month. We’ve already spoken with Beatriz Victoria Albina about self-censorship and Bianca Gabrielle Wilson about healing the nervous system through EFT tapping. Now we’re speaking with Jordan Maney about what we need to know to protect our rest while living in oppressive systems.

AUDIO RECORDING

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ABOUT JORDAN MANEY

Jordan is the Radical Joy Coach™ and creator of the RestLab.

Through her coaching she helps bleeding hearts, aka progressive leaders, service providers, and changemakers, learn the radical skill of rest to reclaim their joy and sustain their advocacy. She’s been featured in New York Magazine, Yahoo, Attn, Oprah Magazine, and Martha Stewart Living.

For more from Jordan and to learn more about rest coaching with an equity lens, head to jordanmaney.com

IMPORTANT LINKS

• Website: https://www.jordanmaney.com/

• RestLab: https://www.jordanmaney.com/restlab

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TRANSCRIPT

Cher (she/her): Jordan, it is such a pleasure to have you here. Welcome to Doing It for the Attention.

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: I'm so honored to be here. I mean that, like, completely. This is gonna’ be so much fun.

Cher (she/her): Now, I brought you on because when I was thinking about the resources that someone needs on their journey to routinely and comfortably asking for attention, Rest, just, like, continued to knock on my door. It's an act of resistance. Right. That we need if we want to build the skill set of asking for attention. And it might seem like rest, something that we all just, like, intuitively get. But you disagree with that. Which is why you have a really great acronym that I'd love for you to share with people about, like, what rest really is.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN REST AND NOURISHMENT

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: Yeah. So you know how, like, you have to sleep train babies, Right? You have to, like, rest train babies. And do you remember when you were. Probably don't remember, but you used to fight it. Right. I don't want to go to bed. I want to stay up. I want to hang out, like, I want to like, do other things. Right. It can be really hard for us as adults. We want to create those systems for kids, but can be really hard for adults to do that. Right. So our version of that is really helping people reframe the relationship to rest with this definition. And I want you to think of it like nourishment. So like E A T. Right.

Rest is the energy, attention and time that you return to yourself. Energy, attention and time.

And when we frame it that way, this is why like anytime anybody interacts with me, this is if there's anything that you take from the work that I do. This definition is what I hope it’s this. It's because it takes away this idea that rest is somehow just sleeping. Rest is this really like inactive, negative, idle thing. But energy, attention and time are precious resources that you need to sustain anything. But especially like the good that you want to put into the world. And so reframing it that way, I think starts to kind of turn some wheels in people's heads about like, oh, I'm really probably not as practiced at giving myself energy, attention and time. When was the last time that I did something like that? So I love that. I think that reframe really helps set people up to see rest as something bigger than just bigger than just sleeping.

Cher (she/her): Yeah, I have a three, almost four year old, so I completely hear you on the needing to establish a behavior of rest.

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: Yeah, yeah.

Cher (she/her): And then also for parents or caregivers too, Right. We want to like revenge stay up after our children go to sleep, which is obviously not sustainable or healthy in the long term.

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: Yeah. And I love that that term too. I found that caregivers, parents, like adult children to parents who are caregivers, parents, particularly to small children, people who are caregivers in their work, people who are neurodivergent. It's kind of… it plays into that definition of like, no, like my body wants to have time for itself, right? So like, it's not necessarily a bad, it's not necessarily revenge. I think of it more as kind of like my body is telling me something I need to be paying attention to. Oh, it's that I don't have… there's not time built out in the day or like there's something that I need that I'm not getting. So I think that that plays into that definition as well. It's just like this is your body asking for attention. Right. Like, hey, so glad we got to do all those things today. But yeah…

CREATING A REST ETHIC

Cher (she/her): Well, you talk about we fail to rest. We think it's annoying primarily because we live in a culture that has an exploitative mindset towards labor, which means that we don't have structural support for rest, all of these things. And because it hasn’t been modeled to us, we don't have the behavior for it. So you recommend creating a rest ethic. What is a rest ethic? And what are some strategies that we can do to create our own?

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: I love this. So when you have a work ethic, right, it is taught to you about being diligent, being consistent, going the extra mile, oftentimes in relation to one, your labor, but also to your community and to other people, right?

The rest ethic, it's still that same setup, is how can you be consistently good to yourself? How can you return that energy, attention, and time in such a way where you're doing it despite whatever guilt you might feel, despite whatever shame you might feel for even needing to rest? Because like you said, we do live in a culture that tells us, oh, you don't need that. But, like, we know that we do. Our bodies do, right? We have. You have all of these narratives and understandings from indigenous cultures that have shown us that, like Russ is. Is a huge part of the ethos of being in community with people starting to take care of one another and take care of ourselves. And so I think when it comes to building a rest ethic, it's understanding what type of rest that is actually restful and enjoyable to you.

And then the harder part, and where I say, like, my work is kind of a Trojan horse, right? It's not just like, oh, this is what rest is, is making space for it, making room for it. And that requires some radical prioritization. That requires some really hard conversations sometimes just with yourself about the way that you might be working, about the work that it is that you're doing. These are not necessarily always small things, right?

But if you want to have a restful life, if you want to have a life where your rest feels supported, you're going to have to ask some hard questions about, like:

• Am I in relationship with people who support my rest?

• Does the work that I do right now support my rest needs?

A huge part of figuring out what rest is restful is really giving yourself the permission to know to say what rest you need.

I have it on my whiteboard, the skill of rest and all these skills that fall underneath it. But learning how to ask for help, right? Learning how to ask yourself questions where they're going to be answers that feel uncomfortable to you is really a part of that greater umbrella of building a rest ethic, because it's really just building a life with the room to rest as much as you can.

Look, I'm not going to play. I'm not going to pretend like, you know, I am a billionaire that lives on a mountain and I can just do whatever. We all have things living under these systems. But where you can create space for rest, where you can claim and reclaim room in your life for rest, that's the work of building a rest ethic.

Find what your rest needs are, be bold enough to, like, claim where you can, and then build room in your life through boundaries, through prioritization, and through difficult conversations that often require you asking for help or asking for what you need to support that. And then the ethic part of it is then to continue to demonstrate that right, to do all of that work, and then to be like, oh, no, I don't really have to. No, keep doing that. Show that to other people. Show that to people who don't even believe that it's an option for them, that you can build a life where you have, like, your boundaries. You can build a life where you're like, hey, no, I actually am going to have to say no to that because I need to…whatever. You can have a life where you experience rest. You don't have to, like, wait till you die to rest in peace. Do you know what I mean? As dark as that is, you know what I mean?

That's all part of that rest ethic building is just knowing, claiming what those rest needs are, knowing what is restful for you, being able to sit in the harder part of making room for your rest with those conversations, with those new priorities, with those boundaries, communicating those things. And then of course, like, continuing to demonstrate and practice it not just for yourself, but like, for community to see it as well. And then the final part of that, that I will add, that is often the most difficult, I think, for people is the asking for help and then the receiving it, right? You don't rest in a vacuum. You do not rest simply by yourself. The whole model of resting requires community. It requires you to be like, oh, I can't do it all. I don't have the capacity to do everything. It requires you to really look at this rugged individualism, that thing that we have mainly because of capitalism, and realize it's a scam. It's a scam and we need people. And like you know those, those days, like for young parents when you have community, it's like, hey, we're watching the kids. You just go lay down or go do something fun. Like those little opportunities come when we decide we want to rest, not just individually, but communally. The ethic is really about building that room and then just practicing it.

HOW TO PROTECT OUR REST

Cher (she/her): I'm hearing introspection, honesty, community and the need to take action. Even in small doses, I think. Especially in small doses, actually. You talk about rest from an equity standpoint primarily. So you understand that everyone comes to needing rest but from vastly different circumstances, often at the intersection of being a part of under recognized communities. So when we're primary caregivers, we're also earning the income for our families when, the space is in short supply and let's say we're working toward leaving a relationship that isn't supportive, or we're working toward changing a job so that we have more space. In the interim, how do we protect our rest? What's enough?

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: That is a central question. What's enough? And what my job is, is helping you define that for your now. Right. And I like to think of it as stepping stones. Right. Because it's easy to be like, I want to have a day where I start at 2pm and I blah, blah, blah, blah. But you have a small child to take care of or have aging parents that you're helping or whatever those circumstances may be. We still want it to be based in those stepping stones, to be based in what is available now. Right. We call this honoring your capacity.

Oftentimes where I get annoyed with a lot of personal development or coaching is transformative change or radical change is really like trauma, sudden, abrupt, huge, sweeping changes which our body and our nervous systems do not respond well to at all. What we help people recognize is what's sustainable, what's sustainable right now. So if you're in a situation where you're feeling really overwhelmed and like, yeah, you need a lot of rest. And we have different like kind of like rest modalities that we help people through. But you know that you're at a stage of like, for example, I need to find another job that might require me doing some type of re education, going back to school, like that type of thing. Right. If I were to say like, hey girl, you just need to take a quarterly vacation and then make sure that you take every Tuesday…that's not, that's not sustainable for them. So we want to meet them at the crossroads of how can we honor your capacity? How can we make sure that this is sustainable? So these are small shifts and then what is enough for your now? And we can build on that versus being like, oh, that's cute. Throw away everything that you're doing and go to Europe. That's not realistic. Right?

So for instance, if you, if you were going, you know, back to school, school, and you're going back to school full time so that you can, I don't know, be done in three years, be on the job hunt, this is going to add like so much for the, the financial wealth of your family, that type of thing. Maybe we start super small and we figure out like

• Who is in your community to support you while you do this?

• What are the things that you find enjoyable and how can we give you those micro doses of that?

Because we're just trying to get you through this time and then where are the pockets in these next three years for you to have a little bit longer time? Maybe this isn't a full vacation, maybe this is a staycation. But we figure out what the frequency of that is going to be like for you. We figure out what your capacity is going to be based off of how much labor and how much work you're going to be doing. We keep coming back to that question of what is enough for my now. And not making rest this thing that you do when all the conditions are aligned and perfect, because that's never going to happen. Right. But you still need to rest. So trying to base it in reality versus trying to shove people into a sweeping set of new circumstances that they can't honor, they can't sustain, and just makes them feel even more overwhelmed.

Cher (she/her): I'm also just add to my list of keywords here. I'm hearing strategic, right. As a way to be in relationship with rest. And then I'm also beginning to understand, like, okay, there's, there's this embodiment piece that a lot of us are missing being severed from the systems we live under where we have to be in conversation with our body to say, like, hey, yeah, what do you need right now? Is this enough? How can we make some space for you? I think for my personal situation, little things that I can do with my daughter, like saying, okay, I'm no longer going to like, help you put your clothes on in the morning. Like, I know you can do it by yourself and letting her take these tasks over so that I do have some time to like honestly sit around or take a quick read in a book, like read a page of a book. Where I can like fill that cup for myself in the mornings where before I was just like constantly ticking off tasks.

A SIMPLE EXERCISE FOR IDENTIFYING AND HONORING YOUR CAPACITY

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: And there's an exercise that I do with clients and it's, it's super simple, but I think it's very powerful to like close your eyes for a moment and imagine like the most lush garden that you've ever seen in your life. Right. And how peaceful and beautiful it is to see all of these things blooming and growing. And then take a moment and consider if all of those plants, each individual plant, was a demand that you had in your life. Right. And then like in your mind's eye, close your eyes again, open them and imagine if each of those plants were demands you specifically had in your life. And be realistic about what those plants would look like. They're probably not lush. Right. And our capacity, the way that we honor our capacity is like the water required to nourish those plants. If you're pouring from a two ounce cup, there's no way you're going to be able to spread it across like acres and acres of plants. Right. So how do we focus on again, what is enough for now? What are the, what are the plants or demands that I have to be paying attention to? And then that embodiment piece of like, how am I still giving myself even if it's a tight fit? Right. But how am I still giving myself just enough room to like be in my body and listen to my body and give it the space that it needs to just reset?

ADOPTING A NEW VOCABULARY FOR REST

Cher (she/her): Yeah, I'm hearing you. And I also think that I live with a couple of chronic conditions and I'm also a very goal oriented, ambitious, curious person. And I've realized in this pursuit of rest that I've had to give up a lot of those goals so that I can be in deeper relationship with my body. And that's been really painful. It's been painful to have to like, let go of the things that I'm curious about or interested in to achieve the capacity that I want to so that I can be here with my body. And I know it's good for now, but it's all that unhooking from the socialization that I've learned growing up. Right. There's just so much work to be done under the surface here.

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: It's one of the reasons why when people come to me, like I, I know work wise, like marketing and sales pipeline for one to one work is a lot longer because most people, when they say, like, oh, I need to rest, they say it as if, like, they've been defeated. Like, they just got to the shore, the ship is wrecked, and it's like, oh, yeah, like, I'm giving in, I'm giving up. I'm forfeiting something. And you're not forfeiting anything. Right? It's this thing where we start with…and this is the uncomfortable part of it, right? We have to start with embracing your limitations, right? And that doesn't make anybody feel good, right? That doesn't make any. Let's just be honest, right? Nobody's like, oh, my capacity right now is. Is zero or, oh, I have a lot of demands in my life that require a lot of my attention and time. It's taken a lot of my energy. So there are other things outside of that I can't say yes to right now. Again, getting present to our now, there's nothing about rest that is defeatist. You're not forfeiting anything. You're just recognizing what was already true. It's just uncomfortable to say, like, well, damn, okay, this is where I am.

The piece I want people to get is on the other side of recognizing your limitations is recognizing. Can you recognize that in a communal sense? Because then something really beautiful happens on the other side of that when you come to rest, as if like, okay, plug me in so that I can be restored, and then I'm going to go on my merry way doing the exact same thing I was doing before and maybe I'll come back or whatever. It's not. It's, oh, okay, here are my limitations, that didn't feel good. But when I am connected to other people, and this doesn't have to be a huge community, but when I'm connected to other people, those places where I may have limitations. That's out of bounds of my capacity, there's someone else that I can work with and synergize with who can help, right? And getting people to that piece is like, I think the hardest part of my job. Is getting people to see the other side of that. Of just like, this is not like the ending. This is the beginning of something. Of recognizing, like, when you do things in community, in collaboration with other people, those limitations really kind of fall away.

Cher (she/her): Yeah, I hear you also saying that you're not just reframing the relationship with the rest, but you're giving people new vocabulary to play with. Because the ones the words that we have now are like burnout, right? We speak in language of burnout, and that's just not helpful if we're trying to create a rest ethic.

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: It's not helpful. And it's, it's a. I won't lie, it's a bit of a hurdle marketing wise, because people respond to burnout, right? And most of the people that I have some type of social responsibility, social justice, equity component to the work that they're doing. And so they're trying to do a lot of hard work, but oftentimes they put so much on their shoulders, they don't know how to ask for help. They can advocate for anybody but themselves. And it's like getting them to understand. It's not just about building community, it's about being in community. Right. It's not just about, like creating justice for your individual body, but learning how to be in your body. Right. Like, there's, there's all these little micro skills that fall under rest that I could talk about forever, honestly, but those are the pieces that I really hope people can walk away with is you start this, this piece of rest, not with just kind of like, oh, you know, I might take a walk on a Friday or whatever. That's great. But like, eventually, at some point you're going to have to have those hard conversations. And the hardest ones are the ones with yourself about what is actually sustainable for me now.

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: And I think once you can answer that honestly with yourself, it opens you up to a lot more possibilities in connection with other people, a lot more possibilities in connection to like, you know, what you want to get done. But I do get that it's painful to be like, to compare your current capacity with maybe what you were able to do when you were younger or what have you. But remember when you were younger, your parents were usually the ones like managing the things that you're also managing right now. So of course you had more capacity. Like, there's a lot of. It's one of the values that we have. There's a lot of grace you have to give yourself lots and lots and lots and lots and lots.

Cher (she/her): The more that I have these conversations, the more that I see the intersection of how building these micro skills is generative for all of the skills we want to build, for all of the outcomes for liberation that we're all hoping to create. It's not just like these skills are good for rest. These skills are good for a life, like a life well lived. Right. For love, for seeing someone else's situation and lending a hand or stepping in. Right. Like, these are all skills we need for liberation as a movement and not just rest.

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: And also just like, again, because of the people that I'm usually specifically talking about, they're the ones who want to run in and help other people, but want a skill of rest is learning how to receive. Can you receive help? Can you receive someone wanting to support you? Like, those are. Those are. They're little micro skills, but they have big. They yield big things.

Cher (she/her): I'm so curious before we close, when you began your business and asking for attention became a prerequisite for being in business, how do you think your relationship with making that ask has evolved since… was it 2015?

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: Yeah. So I started my first business in August 2015, and I really thought it was going to be like, I don't want to answer to anybody. I want to do what I want. I have a specific skill set. And at the time, it was wedding planning. And it's just so funny coming kind of not full circle, but coming forward 10 years. The way that that has evolved is 1) If you decide to have a business, I just. You're a little. I don't want to say crazy. You're a little. You know, you're different. Right. Because this is a lot of work. But also the idea that, like, I'm gonna pull myself up on my bootstraps, I'm gonna do this all on my own. The way that that gets immediately, like, huh, that's funny. Asking for attention is also asking for help. And I feel like I spent a good amount of time, and a lot of people do, in the entrepreneurial space, pretending that they don't need that. Right. Like, everything's good, but if you were to look a little bit closer, you would see that it's not. And so I feel like if you're listening to this and you're either possibly thinking about, like, thought leadership, small business ownership, what have you, I would say the relationship between asking for attention, asking for help, and being able to receive help is critical.

I'm really proud of myself for the way that it's evolved from, like, I got it. I can do this all by myself. It's fine. I don't need anybody to. Now being at a place where I relish the opportunity to collaborate with people, but I also really… it can still feel a little uncomfortable, but I'm able to move past it where I'm like, actually, I don't know about this. I would love to learn more. Actually, I need help with this. Do you think you know anybody or something? You have to learn very quickly how to allow yourself to ask for help and how to receive help. And that evolution is actually really, really beautiful if you let yourself have it.

Cher (she/her): I 100% agree with you on the letting people co-create with you. Right? Letting people participate in this project. You're creating a business and a life. Honestly, there's no better way to do it. It's the most nourishing way to move forward.

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: Yes, 100%.

HOW JORDAN IS ASKING FOR ATTENTION

Cher (she/her): Now, this newsletter is called Doing it for the Attention. So what do you want to put. What do you. What attention do you want to ask for within your business? What are you going to put the spotlight on right now?

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: Ooh, okay my services are all under the umbrella of the REST Lab because I really want. It's where we gonna. We're gonna come together and work on your rest and like figure it out and tinker with it and play with it. The intro to this is Rest Lab 101. It is a like two hour class. Not a master class. A class we're actually going to come in, learn, you're going to leave with a rest method. I would really like to point people in that direction because I think when we talk about building this vocabulary, when we talk about like learning rest, that's. That is the cornerstone of all of it. And I think it's the easiest way for people to. To get to know the work a little bit. It's the most financially accessible version. And it's a live. A live class that I offer once per month. So if you would like to sign up, please do. I would love to have you.

Cher (she/her): Wonderful, it was such a joy to speak with you today, Jordan and I will send people in your direction for as long as I'm on the Internet.

Jordan Maney | The RestLab: I appreciate it. Same. Thank you so much. Thank you for the space, thank you for the conversation and just thank you for always, just authentically you wherever you show up.