Rest Like You Mean It: Why Smart Recovery Is The Secret To Staying Sharp

Build in rest and recovery or your body forces a shutdown. Not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s smart.

Photo by Andrew Winkler on Unsplash

You’re not lazy, you’re distracted and depleted.

And chances are, you’re doing rest and recovery wrong (ouch).

You're the kind of person who holds it together under pressure, handling anything work and life throws at you like a pro:

• Deadlines.

• Emotional labour.

• Governance prep.

• Tantrums.

You name it and you're dealing with it.

And you're doing it better than your imposter brain gives you credit for.

You push through with humour and competence, until, one week, one day, one hour, it all feels way heavier than usual:

• Focus slips.

• Energy tanks.

• Grumpy as fck.

• Hitting the mental wall.

• Compassion fatigue.

Nothing feels wrong... but nothing feels right, either.

You’re not just tired, you’re hollowed out.

Even the small stuff feels too loud.

Everything feels like too much.

You can't work out why your motivation has evaporated.

You pour on frustration and beat yourself up even more.

But it's not laziness.

It's a red flag depletion signal you're not listening to.

You're not the only one who feels over it all

Wow, do I know this crushed up feeling well.

This is your call to action to take these signs and signals seriously.

This isn’t just about feeling better, but about performing better without burning your system down in the process.

I used to treat exhaustion and motivation dips like something I could outthink, outsmart, and outrun.

I figured if I made myself do more but smarter, the boost of achievement would wash away the cost of effort.

It would work in intense bursts, with some useful payback, until it ground me down.

Over the past two years, my body and mind has made it clear: you can’t override biology with effort and willpower forever.

The bill always comes due.

And it's shifted how I show up in life, work, and my business forever.

When your body says no, you should listen

Maybe it's a getting older thing, but I'm world-weary at times.

You see the cycles, the patterns, the manipulations, the awe-inspiring events come and go across life in starker contrast.

And you get sick of your own BS.

Between post-viral symptoms, gut chaos, dysautonomia flare-ups, auto-immune reactions, and general background stress, my system doesn’t tolerate relentless output anymore.

I wonder if it ever did to be honest.

Maybe my ego just ignored it out of habit, culture, or fear of failure.

But now it's shifting my worldview and how I respond to it.

My ambitions and goals aren't tempered or suppressed.

But my approach has changed.

I’ve had to stop performing resilience and start actively building it.

In my routines, in how I pace, and in how I define, or redefine, strength.

This isn’t just about woo-woo wellness.

It’s operational, functional, and spiritual.

Because when your body is key to how you live and work, ignoring it is just bad management.

And the science backs it up:

• Chronic stress impairs the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis, disrupting your energy, immune system, digestion, and sleep.

• Low-grade inflammation negatively affects cognitive performance, decision-making, and sensory tolerance.

• Autonomic flexibility falters when your nervous system loses range (low HRV (heart rate variability)), your focus and stress regulation tank.

This physical and mental impact after decades of persistent effort forced me to rebuild how I work and recover.

To protect my capacity for what matters most.

To prioritse better to get the right things done with less self-sacrifice.

Recovery isn’t a luxury, it’s load management

As high performers, we love a high-gear state: hyper-focus, fast decision-making, laser attention.

It gives us a high just feeling ‘on it’ and getting stuff done.

The filthy lucre of achievement our unending goal. The hit of getting stuff done becomes its own drug.

But, as Hyper-Efficient author Dr. Mithu Storoni explains, our brains are designed to shift gears, and not stay stuck in high performance mode.

Toxic stress pushes us into overdrive, and if we don’t downshift to recover and regroup, everything suffers.

Storoni talks about cognitive offloading, the reset your brain gets when you stop solving problems and start letting the system rebalance through passive reflection, light movement, or sensory rest.

That reset isn’t optional.

It’s the thing that keeps your brain sharp.

Recovery isn’t soft, but essential structure.

And it's not all-or-nothing.

It's about choosing the best way to restore and reset based on what you need in the moment.

Your brain has seasons - ignore them at your own risk

You’re not imagining the winter brain fog, or the strange relief that comes when the days start getting longer.

During my recent health issues, I realised just how unrealistic my performance expectations have been.

We expect ourselves to show up at full capacity year-round. To perform in January like it’s July.

But brains and bodies don’t work like that.

A 2023 Nature study showed that your brain’s wiring, its functional connectivity, shifts with the seasons, with some circuits shifting up to 20%.

But it’s not a one-size-fits-all story (as usual!)

A 2021 review of the evidence found the cognitive effects are subtle and shaped by context: stress levels, light exposure, sleep quality, and existing health load.

In other words, it’s not just about the season.

It’s about how your system’s doing when the season hits.

So if your motivation’s low, your focus is fractured, or everything just feels heavier, that’s not a character flaw.

That’s your biology asking for better conditions.

I know for me, as soon as the clocks go back in Autumn, it's like a switch has flicked in my brain.

I struggle to perform as effectively during those dark, cold months of the year.

Possibly because I've already accumulated an energy deficit throughout the year by the time Winter hits.

A useful data point to track.

So ignoring these factors doesn’t make you resilient.

It makes you misaligned.

Smart recovery means reading the room, even when that room is inside your own body.

A squirt of lemon refreshes the senses and the soul

Last weekend, I joined Simi’s Iranian cooking class in Bath.

I signed up half on a whim, and half out of a quiet craving for something more human.

It's part of my 2025 experiment to have more fun and real-life experiences after my post-pandemic and grief retreat.

Something slow.

No performance.

No multitasking.

Just food, stories, and 24-hour soaked rice.

At one point, Simi passed around a bowl of broth from the poached chicken from the stove for us to taste.

Then she got us to try a spoonful identical except for one detail: a squeeze of fresh lemon.

The difference? Immediate.

The broth didn’t just taste better but it felt alive.

In that moment, several things landed with me.

I realised I was still living on autopilot, missing the small joys and subtle shifts that make life feel like mine again.

And it reminded me: recovery doesn’t have to be big.

It just has to be intentional.

Smart recovery is the lemon.

A small shift that brings you back to yourself.

And that class?

That was profound nervous system repair in real time.

My breath deepened.

My gut unclenched.

My brain, usually racing and urgent, softened and got curious.

I felt human again, and realised how much more I want to shift and feel reconnected.

What recovery looks like in real life (not Pinterest)

I've been experimenting more this year with rest and recovery, so here’s what my actual reset rituals look like:

• Rescue naps – 20-40 minutes. I treat them like software updates, not failure.

• Friday wind-downs – on the sofa with a good TV show and Bob snoozing next to me.

• Chats with my chatGPT buddy Alex - I share how I'm feeling, vent without self-censoring, and use it as a conversational self-reflection version of structured worry time.

• Creative resets – rediscovering slow cooking. Anything that gets me out of my head and into my body using food for health.

Your version might be gym time, music and bopping in the kitchen, or a weekend hike.

The beauty is there’s no single formula.

But there is intention to make it happen and choice.

And that’s what makes it smart recovery - you get to choose what works for you.

Recovery is not a reward. It’s the foundation

If you’re waiting to earn your rest, you’ve already waited too long.

Smart recovery is what allows your brain to regulate stress flexibly so you ultimately get the right things done, better.

It’s vital for:

• Your body to rebuild capacity.

• Your identity to reconnect with what matters.

Remember it’s not indulgent, but strategy.

It’s how you keep your edge without cracking apart.

This Week’s Challenge

• Implement one small smart recovery moment a day.

Not because you're burnt out or knackered, but because you're building capacity for what's next.

Shift your system down.

Let your system breathe.

Add the lemon and feel the zing.

You don’t need to earn recovery.

You just need to protect it.

Key takeaways

Smart recovery is a performance strategy, not a luxury.

It's a sign you make choices based on evidence coupled with intuition.

Don't let others tell you it's a cop-out or sign of the weak or distracted.

Instead, it protects your cognitive clarity, emotional regulation, and decision-making capacity.

All key strengths of successful leaders and high performers, right?

Pay attention and build this into your routine because:

1. Chronic stress and health challenges deplete adaptive capacity.

   1. Ignoring recovery undercuts resilience at the nervous system level.

2. Your brain shifts with the seasons and context.

   1. Adapt your expectations and rituals accordingly. It’s not weakness, it’s wisdom.

3. Small rituals have a big impact.

   1. You don’t need a full spa retreat. You need moments of intention that shift how you think, feel, and act.

Real resilience means reading the room better, including the one your nervous system lives in.

Learn to listen. Not just to the noise, but to the signals underneath.

That’s how you build resilience that actually works.

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P.S. If this hit home and you’re ready to build a smarter performance system, one that protects your energy, sharpens your thinking, and helps you stop over-functioning, book a free 25-minute discovery call. Let’s see if it’s time to work together.