Rest Is Not Laziness: Breaking the Hustle Mentality We Grew Up With

There’s a particular kind of guilt that creeps in when you’re doing... nothing.
The kind where you’re lying in bed on a Sunday afternoon, phone in hand, sunlight pouring in — and instead of feeling peace, your chest tightens. You start thinking about your to-do list. You wonder if you’re wasting time. You feel like you should be doing something.

Anything.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
Especially if you grew up in a brown household, where rest was often reserved for the elderly or the ill — not for healthy young people with “so much potential.”

The Hustle Was the Standard

From a young age, many of us were taught that success equals sacrifice. That rest is indulgent. That “productivity” is the ultimate goal. Our parents worked tirelessly — sometimes two jobs, sometimes seven days a week — and they carried that same expectation into how they raised us. Not because they wanted to burn us out, but because they genuinely believed it was the only way forward.

I remember coming home from school and hearing:
“Go study, no need to nap,”
or
“Rest after you’re successful,”
or worse,
“You’re tired? What did you even do today?”

And over time, those phrases stuck. Not just as words, but as internal rules:


→ Don’t rest unless you’ve earned it.


→ Only lazy people take breaks.


→ Be useful. All the time.

You’re Not Lazy — You’re Tired

What we don’t realise is how this mindset follows us into adulthood like an invisible weight. You might be in your early 20s, juggling classes, side hustles, maybe even caregiving, and still feel like you’re “not doing enough.” You might look around and see peers thriving, and instead of being happy for them, you panic. Should I be doing more? Did I waste too much time?

We glamorise the grind, wear burnout like a badge of honour, and low-key shame anyone who chooses softness or stillness.

But here’s the truth:
Rest is not the enemy of progress. It’s the fuel for it.

You’re not meant to be “on” 24/7.


You’re not a machine.


And more importantly, you are still worthy, even when you’re doing nothing.

Learning to Rest (Without Guilt)

It’s not easy to unlearn a lifetime of hustle culture. Even now, when I take a day off, I sometimes feel like I need to “justify” it. Like I need to prove that I’ve worked hard enough to deserve it. But slowly, I’m realising that rest doesn’t need a reason.

Here are a few things I’m practising — maybe they’ll help you too:

• Replace “earned rest” with “regular rest.”
You don’t need to hit a milestone to be allowed to pause. Rest is part of the process, not the reward.
• Detach your worth from productivity.
You are not only as valuable as what you produce. You matter even when you're offline, off-task, and off-schedule.
• Redefine success.
What if success isn’t doing the most, but doing what aligns with your values, with room to breathe?
• Treat rest as maintenance, not luxury.
You rest not because you're lazy, but because you're human. You don’t wait for your phone to die to charge it — so why do that to yourself?

A New Way Forward

It’s taken me time to realise that doing less doesn’t mean I’m falling behind — it means I’m finally learning to take care of myself. Rest isn’t something I need to justify or explain. It’s part of how I stay grounded, creative, and well.

We don’t need to be in constant motion to prove our value.
We don’t need to earn our worth through exhaustion.

What we do need is space — to pause, to breathe, to feel okay doing nothing sometimes.
And maybe that’s not laziness. Maybe that’s just balance.

So here’s to unlearning the hustle:
To choosing rest even when it feels unfamiliar.
To believe in who we are — not just what we do — is enough.