July always has a particular quality to it I think. The pace shifts slightly. The out-of-office messages start arriving in your inbox and something about the longer light makes the idea of slowing down feel almost permissible.

Almost.

Last month we talked about the mental load. About how much you are carrying, and how much of it has accumulated without anyone formally handing it to you. Some of you reached out and said it was the first time you had seen it laid out and felt something shift in your chest at the recognition of it. Thank you for that.

And this month, I want to go one layer deeper.

Because naming the load is one thing. Putting something down is another. And in between those two things lives a question I keep coming back to and is one that this month's theme of rest kept bringing me to.

What if the overwhelm and exhaustion isn't the problem? What if it's a signal?

That is what we are going to sit with this month.

Heather x

You may notice The Spark looks a little different. The Shine Brightly brand has had a quiet refresh. It’s the same values, same voice, but a cleaner and more considered look. Deep navy, warm cream, a little gold. The kind of change that feels less like a rebrand and more like finally wearing what was always mine. I hope you like it.

You’ll also find regular reflection questions in the Daily Pause I’ve been sharing on LinkedIn and Instagram. These small moments of reflection, repeated gently, can help turn insight into attention and then attention into action.

I find that there is a core belief that runs quietly through the lives of high-achieving women, and it goes something like this: I will rest when I have finished.

The problem is that the list never finishes.

There is always another thing. Another person who needs something. Another decision to take, another email to send, another conversation to prepare for. And so rest gets pushed. Deferred. Reframed as laziness, or indulgence, or a luxury you cannot currently afford.

But here is what I have noticed, after years of coaching women who are very good at keeping going.

The busyness is often doing a second job.

It is not just about the workload. It is about what stops being audible when you fill every available space with doing. The thoughts you do not have to think. The feelings you do not have to feel. The questions you do not have to answer about whether this is still what you want, whether you are okay, whether something has been sitting unattended for longer than you have admitted.

Psychologists have a term for what happens when we try to stop. Rest intolerance. A recent piece in Psychology Today describes it as the experience of rest feeling wrong rather than restorative. It’s accompanied by guilt, restlessness, and a pull to get up and do something, anything, even when nothing is actually on fire. The writer notes that for many high-achieving people, the barrier is not a packed schedule. It is the belief, usually unexamined, that their value is tied to their output. When that belief is running in the background, stopping does not feel like relief. It feels like a threat.

The research on recovery supports this from another angle. Sabine Sonnentag, a psychologist who has spent decades studying how people recover from work, finds consistently that genuine psychological detachment (actually mentally leaving work during non-work time) predicts higher wellbeing, more life satisfaction, and no reduction in effectiveness or engagement. Rest does not cost you anything. The evidence is unambiguous on this.

And yet knowing that changes very little for most people.

Because the problem is not informational. The women I work with know they need to rest. They could probably cite the research themselves. The problem is what rest asks them to be in. Stillness. Quiet. A moment without a task to perform or a role to inhabit.

And in that stillness, something is often waiting.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that it would be collape, or even a crisis. It’s something a bit quieter than that. A feeling that has been patient. A question that has been deferred. Not that the life is wrong - often it is genuinely good. But somewhere underneath the doing, a quieter version of yourself has been waiting for enough space to be heard.

This is what I have come to believe about rest. It is not just recovery. It is access. It is the conditions under which you can finally hear yourself.

Which means that rest is not a reward for finishing the list. It is how you find out what actually matters.

• Psychology Today (Jan 2026), "Why You Can't Chill (Even When You Are Exhausted)"

• Sonnentag, S., & Fritz, C. (2007). The Recovery Experience Questionnaire: Development and validation of a measure for assessing recuperation and unwinding from work. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(3), 204–221.

This has two parts. The questions come first. Then something physical.

Part one: Four questions

Find ten minutes somewhere quiet. Answer these as honestly as you can. Try not to answer as you think you should, but as it actually is.

1. When did I last genuinely rest? Not sleep from exhaustion. Not scroll on your phone. Deliberately, intentionally rest.

2. What happened in my body the last time I tried to stop? Guilt? Restlessness? A pull to find something useful to do?

3. What is the story I am running about what will happen if I rest more?

4. What would it mean about me if I chose rest before the list was finished?

You do not need to solve anything from this. The questions are not a productivity exercise. They are an invitation to notice.

Part two: Two minutes with your body

Do this immediately after the questions, while whatever came up is still present.

Sit with both feet flat on the floor. Let your hands rest open in your lap, palms up. Take three slow breaths. Not performing relaxation, just breathing.

Then ask, out loud or silently: what does my body actually need right now?

Not your diary. Not your to-do list. Your body.

Notice whatever comes. The practice is simply in the asking, and in staying with the answer for a moment before you move on. If you can do something with it, great. But if not, just noticing is really powerful.

It sounds almost too small but in my experience, it rarely feels small when you actually do it.

🌱 Daily Pause

Every weekday morning at 7:30am I post a short reflection prompt on LinkedIn and Instagram. This month, the prompts follow the same thread as this newsletter. Namely rest, permission, and what it actually takes to slow down without immediately having to justify it.

Here is a selection of what is coming this month. Bring them into your morning, or save the ones that land.

• What does rest feel like in your body…and when did you last feel it?

• What would you do with a completely free afternoon, if you actually allowed yourself to have one?

• What is the story you tell yourself about why you cannot stop yet?

• Where does the guilt live when you try to rest? What does it say?

• What would it mean to rest before the list was finished?

• Is there something you have been telling yourself you will do "when things calm down"? How long have you been waiting?

• What is the difference between resting and avoiding? Do you know which one you are doing?

• What does your body do when you try to sit still?

• Who taught you that rest had to be earned?

• What would change if you believed you were already allowed?

Come and find me there if you want somewhere quiet to start your day.

🧠 Coaching Insight

A recent client came in talking about overwhelm. Too much on, too many things competing for attention, no space to catch her breath.

We could have stayed there. There was plenty to work with on the surface. But somewhere in the first twenty minutes, she said something almost in passing.

"I feel alone in it."

So, I asked her to say more. Not about the workload but rather about the aloneness.

It turned out she had people around her. A team, a manager, colleagues who thought well of her. But she was not leaning on any of it. She was carrying the work as though it were entirely hers to carry, and doing it with a quiet efficiency that had stopped feeling like a strength.

We slowed down. I asked where she felt the overwhelm in her body. Shoulders. Jaw. A tightness in the chest she said had been there for longer than she could remember.

We sat with that for a while. And underneath it, something else was waiting.

She had outgrown her role. Probably more than a year ago. She knew it. But she had been too busy performing it well to stop and admit what that meant, or what it was going to require of her to do something about it.

The busyness, it turned out, had been useful. Not just productive but useful in a different way because it had kept the question at a distance.

By the end of the session, something had shifted. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t solved. Just named. And her closing reflection was this.

"I only think I'm alone in this."

That's it, really. That's the whole thing.

Rest is hard when you are using motion to stay ahead of something you are not ready to face. Sometimes the overwhelm is not the problem. It is what's sitting underneath it, waiting for enough stillness to be heard.

Why this matters: Most of the women I work with do not arrive saying they need to rest. They arrive saying they are overwhelmed, or stuck, or just not quite themselves at the moment.

And what we often find, when there is enough stillness to look, is that the overwhelm is doing a second job. Keeping something at a manageable distance. Whether that is a question or a feeling. It’s usually something that has been quietly waiting for long enough.

You might recognise this. The underlying sense that if you stopped long enough, something might catch up with you. Rest is not the answer to that. But it is often how you finally get to hear it.

And in my experience, what is waiting is rarely as impossible as the busyness made it feel.

💬 A Final Thought

Rest should not be a reward for finishing.

It is not earned by exhausting yourself first. It is not a treat, or an indulgence, or something that needs justifying.

It is a practice. And like most practices, it asks you to choose it before you feel ready. Before the list is done. Before the guilt settles. Before you have quite convinced yourself you are allowed.

You are already allowed.

Next month, we are still in the middle of summer. And I want to talk about what it means to actually use it. Not to catch up, not to get ahead, but to genuinely be in it. To let August be something other than July with more out-of-office replies.

See you then,

Heather x

If you know someone this might resonate for, I would love it if you passed it on. They can subscribe at shinebrightlyconsulting.co.uk.

And if something this month landed for you, my door is open. No pressure, just a conversation.

Heather x