By AFH Wellbeing Ambassador and World Cup Alpine Ski Racer, Alice Merryweather

For a large portion of my athletic career, I equated grinding and suffering with working hard. I feared being complacent, and so if I didn’t feel completely exhausted at the end of the training day or if I felt relaxed or spent too much time doing something for fun, I thought it meant that I wasn’t dedicated to my sport. It took far too long to realize that this sucked the joy out of skiing for me and actually hindered my motivation. That fear of complacency also fueled an eating disorder, which in turn forced me to miss an entire competition season.

In the six years since I “graduated” from eating disorder treatment, I’ve faced a major injury, retired from sport, and started life in the working world. This journey was filled with pitfalls of that ever-dreaded complacency. What has helped me the most through this period is my personal redefinition of the word “rest.” 

Whereas “rest” once meant complacency, laziness, and lack of drive, it now means revitalization and refueling; it’s productive in its own right. For me, rest isn’t on specific thing. I can go for a hike or a jog, I can spend time with my friends, I can sit on my couch and watch TV. As long as I dedicate “rest” time to doing something that reenergizes me, then I consider it rest.

I still have days where I feel down about myself, where I get angry and frustrated and tell myself to work harder. Tell myself I’m “not doing enough.” And yet those days often arise when I have been pushing myself to the absolute limit, when I need to rest the most. Rest isn’t complacent. Rest isn’t unproductive. Rest isn’t lazy. It’s a core way we can take care of our mental and physical health, and it’s an important tool I use to show up as my best self day in and day out.