Letting Go of "I Can’t Relax Until It’s Done":
A Stress Relief Meditation

By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to loosen your grip on the need to finish the job before taking rest.

Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People, a podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. I’m your host Todd Smith, a facilitator of the work of Byron Katie, a way to question and reduce stressful thoughts. And you guessed it, I’m a highly sensitive person myself.

In this episode, you’ll discover why the desire for completion and the need for rest conflict with one another. How to loosen your grip on the need to finish to maintain balance. And a new way of looking for work life balance for highly sensitive people. This is an edition of Guided Meditation Mondays, where I’ll be guiding you to do the work of Byron Katie as you listen.

Let’s start by looking at what’s going on in your life right now. What is it that’s preventing you from relaxing, from resting, from taking care of yourself?

In my situation, I’m going through a transition in my business where I’m moving my website, I’m designing some new courses, and I’m trying to get everything in my business organized. So what’s going on for you? What’s keeping you from relaxing? See if you can find something specific.

So when you find something, then let’s begin this transition. Self inquiry. And if you need more time to find a situation, just hit the pause button and you can do that anytime during this recording.

So the question, the thought we’re going to question is, I can’t relax until it’s done. So is that true? In your situation, is that true?

Just a yes or a no. It may take some time to find that.

Is it true that you can’t relax until it’s done?

And I like to answer from the honest place in me, coming from kind of deeper inside, not just my mental space, but my whole experiential space. That’s what makes this a meditation, rather than a mental exercise. So, is it true I can’t relax until it’s done?

When I listen to myself, I’m hearing, yes, it’s true. Yes, it’s true. So, I’m gonna land there on the yes.

So, if you answered yes to question one, then, let’s keep going. The second question is, can you absolutely know it’s true? You can’t relax until it’s done. Look at your situation. Are you sure you can’t relax until it’s done?

And now I’m starting to see a little bit of space there, and I’m thinking, no, that’s not absolutely true. And that’s coming from an honest.

But if you don’t see that, then continue to answer in a way that makes sense to you, that’s honest. You can’t fool yourself when you’re doing this work. You have to find your answers that are true for you. And either answer is fine, a yes or a no. So can you absolutely know it’s true that you can’t relax until it’s done?

Okay, so whatever your answer is, let’s go on to the next question, which is, how do you react? What happens when you believe this, when you think this? That you can’t relax until it’s done. What happens to you?

For me, it’s very simple. I keep on going. I don’t stop. I ignore my need to rest, I ignore the sensations in my body, keep pushing forward.

I don’t take opportunities that are there to slow down, to take a break. I push.

How about you? How do you react when you think you can’t relax until it’s done?

And part of my reaction is a kind of tug of war going on inside of me. I want to relax. I even know the value of relaxing. But I can’t do it. No, not while I’m believing this thought. So there’s this fight inside of me. I can even kind of almost get mad at myself for that.

So what images do you see in the future when you think that you can’t relax until it’s done?

To me, the images are of this thing that I need to finish, like my website, my courses, my business organized. Like I see, I see that done in some future. Like a few months from now, and I imagine even kind of a happy, like, I’ll be so happy as it be done, and that image is very alluring, very sticky for me, and so I keep holding it, and holding it, and ignoring my body today, my needs right now.

I’m stuck in that image in the future. Looks like a pretty image, but it’s actually stressful because I’m not there.

How about images from the past? Do you notice any of those, when you think you can’t relax until it’s done?

I see images of me as a kid and my dad saying, you know, do your homework first, then you can go out and play. And I took it seriously. I always did that. So, it’s like a well-worn groove in my mind. Can’t relax till it’s done.

And I notice how I’m also attached to this thought because it gives me this sense of, like, responsibility. I’m a responsible person. I get things done. I keep my word.

These could be other underlying beliefs that could be questioned as well.

Do you notice anything in your body or your emotions? When you think you can’t relax until it’s done?

I feel tired, I feel stressed, I feel overwhelmed.

I feel a little disheartened, and I’m relying on grit to help me somehow push through. And it’s very one-dimensional, I can only just go forward, there’s no other options to the side or backwards, there’s nothing, it’s just keep going, keep going, keep going.

So who would you be without this thought? Look at your situation, whatever it is that you are working on or wanting to. Look at your situation, and who would you be with that same project or same thing that you’re wanting to complete, who would you be without the thought that you can’t relax until it’s done?

I almost feel like the breath coming back into myself. I’m like, wow, I didn’t have the thought, I can’t relax until it’s done. I start looking at, how could I relax? There must be some ways, like I really start looking around, like, hmm, this weekend could be nice, or, hmm, you know, like I’m already thinking creatively how I could pace myself better.

I see that I actually have a scheduled week off in a couple weeks, and I’m thinking, oh, that’s going to be great. I can just do some reading, some extra meditation. And even before that, I’m seeing how right now there’s an easiness in me. There’s an easiness. Like, okay, it’s Friday, gonna relax. Even right now, at work, in the middle of the day, there’s this breathing room in me when I think, when I don’t have the thought that I can’t relax until it’s done.

That there’s a certain tension, there’s a certain drive that falls away without this thought. How about you? What happens? Who would you be without it, without the thought? You can’t relax till it’s done.

I see my projects in perspective. I see there’s no actual deadline.

I trust the process. It’ll happen as best. Best it can, in its own time.

I’m easy.

So let’s turn the thought around. I can’t relax until it’s done. Turnaround would be, I can relax even before it’s done. So how could that be true for you? See if you can find some specific examples in your situation where it’s actually possible, very possible, doable, to relax, even when your project isn’t done.

For me, I know I don’t work 24/7, so that means my evening is free, my night is free, even my early morning is free, and those times are filled with relaxing activities. Meditating, walking, hanging out with family, sleeping, doing my morning routine, which I love, exercising. So that’s already built into my day.

And look at me, I’ve been even going through the paces of that. There’s a part of me that hasn’t been relaxed. Oh no, I have to be on guard. I have to keep focused on these month or two month long projects that are taking up my attention. So the turnaround is I can relax even when it’s not done. I just have to just step into it.

Basically, I just need to switch off. I can relax. Nobody’s making me keep thinking about it.

In fact, it comes to mind the idea of end of day shutdown. Have you ever heard of that? Like I got reminded of that recently. End of the day, end of the workday. Just like, okay, here’s where everything is. Here’s what I’ll start off again in the morning. And we’re done. Like kind of a little shutdown routine.

And so I could do that and just relax after work. Or maybe more importantly, I could relax during work. Look at my work. What is that work? They’re all fun projects. They’re all interesting. They’re all doable. What if I just relaxed in the process of doing it? It’s possible. So I can relax, even if it’s not done.

But they say life is a process, and so it’s never done, in a way, till you die. So why not just relax as I take each step?

Maybe it’ll look like celebrating each little win that I do. I just completed this podcast episode. Cool. Okay. Or relax even in the process of speaking.

Okay, so I’m getting some ideas and you may have more, so keep thinking about how it’s possible that you could relax even if your job is not.

Maybe another turnaround might be, I can’t get it done until I relax, to really push it to the extreme. Well, yeah, what do you see there? How’s it that you maybe can’t even get it done until you relax? Like relaxing could be the prerequisite.

For me, if I burn myself out, I will not get it done. I’ll just crash and burn, and then I’ll be picking up pieces. So, better slow and steady.

So, I can’t get it done until I relax. My creativity is much better when I’m relaxed. My energy is much better when I’m relaxed. You can just blow through projects when you’re enthusiastic.

So I can’t get it done until I relax. It almost tells me, let me put my relaxing in front of my doing. Do that first. Make sure that’s taken care of first. Maybe that means taking a sick day if I need to. Not sick, but just taking a day and saying, I need to take care of myself, find the balance again, and then find the energy to go back in.

Or maybe it’s just taking time and really relaxing in the evenings. So I can’t get it done until I relax.

In this episode, we looked at why the desire for completion and the need for rest conflict with one another. And it’s basically because they’re opposites. One is activity, and one is rest. The good news is, those two complement each other.

And so, if there’s too much activity, rest will bring in the balance. We also looked at how to loosen your grip on the need to finish something, in order to maintain balance. A lot of times, the attachment to completing something can make us put off taking care of ourselves. And we saw that by questioning the thought that I can’t relax until it’s done gave us a little more option to think about it differently.

And this is possibly a new kind of work life balance for highly sensitive people that we can play with. I know I’m going to be playing with it in terms of, let’s see if relaxing first might be the best approach, even strategically, to get things done.

Thank you. So, thanks for being here, thanks for doing the work with me, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.