Transcription
What if I told you that the richest, most successful, most respected, most powerful people in the world are not successful because of the way that they work, but because of the way that they rest. When I finally learned how to strategically rest, which isn't just like laying down on the couch and closing your eyes, by the way, but like it literally transformed my life and helped me build a multi-million dollar company. So, if you feel constantly overworked or like you can't take a break or you don't know how to relax, these are my six lessons how to strategically rest that will make you unstoppable.
The first is that stillness is your superpower. First, stillness is not weakness. It is a secret weapon. Last year was one of the hardest periods of my adult life. I had an injury and it wasn't just affecting me physically, but it was also affecting me mentally. And it was all happening while my business was exploding. There was growth, there was lawsuits, there was hiring, there was firing. I had to fire three executives. I had to bring on four new executives. It was literal chaos. The hardest part about it all was that I literally could not move without pain because I had this injury. And so, for the first time in my life, I was forced to be still. And it's funny because every coach and every doctor that I'd ever worked with had always told me the same thing. They were like, Ila, to become the most powerful version of yourself, you need to master the art of not doing. And the thing is is that when you're building something that you love, you almost become addicted to the chaos, addicted to the activity. It's like you want more of a good thing because the thing is good, right? But what I discovered is that by refusing to pause, I was actually capping my own potential. My best strategic insights, my most profitable decisions, my clearest vision for the company, all of it came in the moments that I had stillness, not motion. After that happened, the moment that I started building strategic rest into my schedule, my business grew faster than ever. Revenue increased, the team improved. I started making decisions that actually move the needle instead of just keeping myself busy and feeling like I needed to be involved in everything.
The second thing you need to know when to hit pause even when the world doesn't want to stop. How do you rest when you genuinely love working hard? People my whole life have told me to slow down. My response is always the same. I'm like, well, who the hell is going to do what I'm doing over here, right? I just hired these four people, did this over here, started this divisions doing this. They don't pause, right? And the truth is sometimes you can't completely stop. You've got kids, you've got teams, you've got responsibilities, you have a family. But I was treating rest like it was the enemy of success instead of what it actually is, which is the foundation of success. So when I started building intentional pauses into my leadership style, I could see the patterns that I'd missed before and I made connections between problems that seemed somewhat unrelated and I felt like, wow, I started really thinking much more like an investor in my own business rather than just the day-to-day of the CEO life. And so what I realized is that the most successful entrepreneurs, they don't just work in their business. They don't even always work on their work business. They work above their business. They create space to work above it. And that space only comes from strategic rest and pause. Some of the easiest things I did was instead of having my meetings crammed back to back all the time, putting breaks in between so I could reflect on what happened. Is there something I need to take care of? Did something feel off in that meeting? How am I preparing for the next one? How am I showing up? And what I found was that even by putting pauses in my day, I showed up so much better for what I was doing that I didn't have to create more meetings or more touch points or more ongoing work, I could handle everything at once.
Number three, you don't have to prove anything to anyone. Okay? Ask yourself this question. How much of your suffering is just you trying to prove something to yourself or to people that you don't even know exist? With my last company, for example, I got zero credit for anything that we' built. We built something massive, right? And so with this one, what I didn't realize for some amount of time is that I had something to prove, being really honest. I wanted to show every person who dismissed me, who wouldn't put me on their stage, who whispered, "Oh, that's just Alex's wife." I wanted to prove all them wrong. And I did it by essentially showcasing my suffering. Working 90 or 100 hours a week was like something I felt really proud of. Not taking time to pause, to rest, things like that became proof of my commitment to the company. And I essentially remember thinking to myself like I will show everybody that I am a reason this is successful by how hard I will work. And what I realized was that I was suffering for an audience that wasn't even watching. And that's what shocked me is that like the moment that I stopped trying to prove myself and prove how hard I was working and prove how hard I would work and started focusing on working smart, everything changed for me. I could tell that people respected me more. I could tell that investors took me more seriously. Why? because our results spoke louder than any 90 or 100 hour week ever could. You don't need to showcase your suffering. You showcase your results. And when you stop being the engine in your business and you start being the architect of your business, your business will build itself. But a lot of us, what happens is that we feel like we're so important, we're so special, we're so skilled that we have to be the engine. When the reality is is that it's a better use of your time to be the architect. And that builds a stronger team, a stronger business, it's more resilient. And then you feel like you don't feel guilty taking that strategic rest.
The fourth is that rest is not quitting. It is strategy. Rest is not the same as quit. Last winter, I got super sick. I had like 103°ree fever. And I said, you know what? I'm still going to stick with this schedule, go on these podcasts, do this filming, do all this work. And what happened is those two weeks I felt terrible. Like every day I woke up, I was in sweats. I was exhausted. I felt terrible. It kept getting worse. My sickness wouldn't stop. It was all because I could not separate that resting is not the same as quitting. And I really thought about it after reflecting on time and I remember like my dad raised me with this mantra like we don't quit. We don't let people down. We always hold our commitments. And I took it way too far. I conflated resting with quitting. And so I stepped back temporarily so that I could recuperate myself and get healthy again because I was like I need to rest so that I don't quit. And that's when I realized that I had the epiphany. I wasn't resting because I wanted to quit. I was resting so I would never have to quit. Most entrepreneurs quit when they just need to rest. Now the smart ones, they rest so that they can scale, so they can hit the ground running. So that they never want to quit. And that's when I realized like stepping back is not surrendering. It's not giving up. It's the most strategic business decision that you can ever make because it gives you the clarity to see what's actually driving growth versus busy work. And you feel like you are getting poured into so that you can pour into your business. Rest is not about surviving your business. It's about thriving and feeling good in it. Because when you step back strategically, you don't lose momentum. You actually gain perspective that creates exponential growth. I don't know if you've ever had this, but for me, for example, when I take a vacation, the moment I get on a plane and it's like, say I have a four or five hour flight. All of a sudden, it's like all these ideas flood my brain about my business and suddenly I feel like, wow, I've gained this perspective that I haven't had in a while. It's why I really like taking short trips, even if it's just a weekend, because I feel like I get this perspective and it creates this exponential growth because I've gotten out of the day-to-day, the fires, the reactive, getting pulled into things. I'm getting above it.
The fifth is that you make rest a non-negotiable. You don't want to make pausing or resting optional. You need to make it part of the plan. Think about it like this, right? Elite athletes, they have to rest. It is part of the plan. They're ruthless about it. Why do you not do that as a CEO or an entrepreneur? During my recovery, for example, last year, I became ruthlessly protective of my energy. Every meeting that I had that was like a nice to have, every commitment that was just people pleasing, it got deleted. Delete, delete, delete. And you know what's funny is what happened is that my business hit record numbers. My team step into leadership roles I did not even know that they were ready for. And problems got solved faster than when I was micromanaging everything. And revenue grew while I was working half the hours. Now, here's the thing. Sometimes the best thing that you can do for your company is stop being the [ __ ] bottleneck. I was so busy being busy that I was actually slowing down our growth because I wasn't stepping back to be the architect. So the moment that I gave my team space to think, to create, and to lead, they became unstoppable. My job shifted from doing everything to enabling everything. And that's when I realized where I needed to go to take my company to the next level. When you make rest a non-negotiable, you don't just protect your energy, you're also going to unlock your team's potential because now they get to step up where you've stepped back. And so the business is not going to suffer. it's actually going to grow because now there's other people stepping in. Their 100% is probably better than your 5%.
Number six, if you only take away one thing from this video, it is to understand why you are suffering. Something I learned about myself over the last year is that I prefer the responsibility over the credit. And so what I realized is I had been suffering. I had been working 100 hours a week to to do what? Why? To prove something to people that I don't even know who they are. Why? because I felt like, well, people tell me you should get credit for things. And what I realized as I took a step back and I was really thinking about it, I was like, I actually prefer the responsibility over the credit. Like, the credit isn't what I want to do every day. The credit doesn't wake me up in the morning and get me out of bed. The responsibility does. And in fact, with credit, it just keeps raising the bar higher and higher for what you find meaningful. You become immune to praise, and you almost like need bigger hits of it to like feel the same high. And so, I realized like I would prefer less of the credit and more of the responsibility. If that resonates with you right now, I would ask yourself like, who am I trying to prove something to? Is it my audience? Is it my family? Is it my team? Is it whatever ghosts of the past it is, like sometimes we are working for a reason that is not because we want to, but because we feel like we have to prove something to somebody else who isn't watching and doesn't give a [ __ ] anymore. You know, kind of what I told myself is there are no rules. You can live however you want. You just want to make sure that you're living for your own reasons and not performing for somebody else's approval. Guys, if you like this video, you can subscribe to my channel and check out my video on becoming dangerously confident.