Rest is a priority
We know that rest is important and we usually take it when we’re already down the burnout road. In this episode I share my experience of being intentional about rest and restoration.
In celebration of National Caribbean American Heritage Month CITE (Caribbean’s in Tech and Entrepreneurship) is hosting their 3rd annual celebration. This year we will be hosting a one-day immersive experience called CITE Summit in NYC on June 8th.
Purchase your ticket on Eventbrite and use coupon code “Kerry” to get 20% off your ticket.
Visit citesummit.com for more details.
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Transcript
Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of Carry On Friends, the Caribbean American Podcast. I am excited that you are joining me. I hope you had a great holiday weekend and you were able to have fun, or you were able to rest and restore, which is going to be the topic I wanted to talk to you about today.
But before we get into that topic, and more like share my story, I wanted to share some important information or updates about an upcoming event called CITE summit. And I’m really excited because Caribbeans In Tech and Entrepreneurship which is what CITE mean CITE for the past couple years we’ve had CITE week and this year will be having CITE summit. So in celebration of national Caribbean American Heritage month, which is in June CITE, Caribbean’s in tech and entrepreneurship is hosting their third annual celebration. And this year site will be hosting a one day immersive experience called CITE summit in New York City on June 8, it will be at galvanize, which is at 303 Spring Street in the city in New York, New York.
And I’m very excited because I’ll be a speaker, I’ll be doing a panel. And it’s going to be an A great event site summit is a gathering of innovators, creators, techies and thinkers of Caribbean descent and their allies to talk about build with and celebrate the future of technology entrepreneurship for Caribbeans throughout the Diaspora or diaspora however you pronounce it. And I am looking forward to seeing you there we’re looking forward for people to come out and celebrate Caribbean American Heritage Month with us.
And in doing so we’ll be having tickets sold at CITE summit.com. And if you go to CITE summit .com and you put in the code Kerry, I believe you get a 20% discount, I’ll put all that details in the notes. But tell your friend, tell your auntie your mother, whoever your cousin, your cousin, cousin friend, or somebody to come out and support CITE summit June 8, and I have a discount code that I will give you so you can get your tickets, and you and your friend can get your tickets on your friend, friend them on your friend cousin and everybody can get a ticket on pass through, right? So I’m really looking forward for you to come out and support CITE on June 8, Saturday, June 8, for an amazing and amazing event.
All right, so the focus of this episode is being intentional about rest and restoration, right. So rest and restoration can also be the same. But, you know, restoration is more of the activity that I’m thinking that you’re doing well, you know, rest is like a literally this ah rest and restoration or, you know, activities that can restore energy or, you know, let me tell you the story.
So anyway, for the past few weeks, I’ve been held accountable to get some arrest, you know, like to take it easy. And I had a medical procedure. So in a way, I had no choice but to take it easy. And in the process of doing that, you know, when your brain overworked sometimes, okay, you deh home, and it’s not something that is hindering you from going on the computer, you still can go pon di computer and sneak ah thing. But I was very intentional that I wanted to take this time to really sleep, get a lot of sleep, because I’ve been reading a lot how, you know, whether you want to eat healthy or exercise, none of that really will have the full impact it can have, if you’re not getting a lot of sleep at least seven hours of sleep. And so I’ve been really intentional about getting as much sleep as possible, which means going to bed a little earlier. Because no matter how much I want to sleep late in the mornings, it’s you know, it gets hard. And you know, I’m at the age where, when I was younger, I used to say, you know, used to talk about my grandmother and say, My God look how she come in late from church, and she still get up four or five, six o’clock ah, mawning she can’t sleep late. And as I’m getting older, I find that I am getting up early, even though I went to bed late and you know, because it’s your body’s, you know, sleep, you know, sleep patterns, you still are going to get up at that time. So if so taking that into consideration, if I’m going to bed at 12 o’clock, at night and my body still going to try to wake me up at 5:30 5:45 I really need to go to bed a bit earlier to make sure I’m getting as much sleep and so I can be at my very best. So we can always say yeah, man we ah go a bed early. So I had to be very intentional set alarms. So if I know that I want to be in bed by 10 o’clock, right? Mi affi set the alarm from nine o’clock because as you and I know the wrap up to get to bed can take a long time you want make sure that you know before you spin around, spin around on before I know it is 10 o’clock. So I had to set a timer to remind me, okay, start getting ready for bed and make sure that I do this. And you know, in doing that I really felt a huge difference in my mood in my energy level. And, you know, it made me realize that I really need to be more intentional about deciding to get more rest, right. And the other thing that I noticed, when I got rest, I was able to think through things much clearly. And I’m not saying less stress. But if you’re stressed out, and yuh nah sleep, it’s not really the best thing.
So what I was able to do was think clearly like I had to make decisions about whether I was over committing my time that I already didn’t have much of an end and make some very hard decisions to cut back. So it helped with thinking clearly. So that’s what I mean about being intentional about rest, right, you want to rest, you want to make sure that you’re going to bed early or getting enough sleep, and you’re doing things that aren’t going to make your overdraft on time. Right. So when we think you have more things to do than time in the day, you mean you’re over drafting on the 24 hours, and you can’t get more than the 24 hours of something is not going to get done.
So I realized in the last two weeks being very intentional about how I rest is it makes a huge difference in how I function from a physical level and also a mental and emotional level. Restoration is the other thing I want to talk about. So restoration is like what do I do to restore my sense of self my relationships. And I had a really great opportunity to go on a marriage retreat I was with my in laws. And it was such a good time. It wasn’t too hectic it was it was just time away from the kids for a little bit for like a about two days and maybe two and a half days, you know in not including the trip to and the trip back. And being intentional about this is a time that I can then restore my relationship or put work or be mindful of the things that you do when you’re not on autopilot. Because, you know, when you’re home and you’re getting kids ready for school and everybody’s going on back and forth. It’s easy to be on autopilot. So restoration this weekend was intentionally slowing down and realizing like, okay, mommy and daddy don’t have the kids. And now we’re at a marriage retreat. And you know, my husband and I are coming up on our ninth year wedding anniversary. And, you know, you know, what does that look like? So really healthy check in as to where we are. And I’m really glad we were able to make the retreat this year and be intentional about making time for us to do work. I remember specifically on the retreat, someone said, you know, when you’re in your career, you know, you have professional development, I should know that because that’s what I do for my job and you have continuing education, and we do all of that. But the retreat itself is an opportunity. It’s the annual conference that you do for your job. Well, this this annual conference, in addition to the annual conference I do I facilitate the marriage ministry at my church. So I also have opportunities throughout the year, maybe once a month to kind of check in with other married couples and just talk about stuff. And those little things that make it intentional made me realize that when we scheduled time to do the things that are important, they get done. And we feel much more
We get a sense of, because the relationship or whatever, in this case, my marriage is important. When I commit to it, or I schedule it. It’s the sense of; I’m really committed to doing what I need to do. And I feel I don’t I don’t ever want to say complete, I feel accomplished, I feel like I’ve been really doing work. And it made me realize that if I want to rest if I want to go on vacation, if I want to do this, it requires intention. And that intention can only happen when we’re only doing that for things that are super important. Right? And I don’t I can’t see if I could do this with no more than two or three things. Three things. I think it’s hard. So I would I wanted to share because it just it felt so apropos for this moment, especially as we’re going into the summer months. And dem seh the lazy days of summer. And I think it’s really an opportunity to be intentional about…okay, the sun is out we’re island people we like sun and to take that time to connect with friends and family, you know, but also to find time to rest and restore, restore the things that are important to us. Is that a family reunion? Is it a marriage retreat, it’s an annual honeymoon is it you know, time with friends, whatever it is that you want to restore? It has. And it’s important to you and it has value yesterday today and will continue to have value, then be intentional about it schedule that time. And keep that time keep that time commitment, right? Because it’s easy for us to say oh, I’m busy and you can push things back. It’s it also has to be something you can’t push back or you shouldn’t push back because it’s too important.
And so I just wanted to share that. And also just talk to you one on one because we’ve been doing a lot of interviews and also share what’s happening with CITE. So I hope you enjoyed my quick little storytelling about my weekend and my rest and restoration activities. And hope it inspires you to also recommit to resting your body and seeing what that does for you physically, mentally, emotionally, and also finding that thing or that one or two things in your life that you want to be intentional about restoring. All right. And so that’s it for this episode, I will put the code to CITE summit I want to see yuh nuh, I want if you live in New York City, and jersey or the tri state area, I want to see you at CITE summit on June 8. So I’m gonna put the code in the show notes. And I want to see you there. But until then, walk good.
