Diana Alt [00:00:00]:
Hey there, everybody. Diana Alt here, your host of work should feel good. And today we're going to talk about kind of an interesting topic to me for this time of year, and that is the difference between rest and avoidance. I came up with this because as I record this, it is the 16th of December, 2025. I have three and a half more days in the office before I am shutting down all of my client work until the new year so that I can get some preparation for 2026 happening, as well as some rest and some time with family and things like that. As a result of this break, I have more client appointments this week than I have almost any other week in the last several months because everybody's trying to get in before the end of the year. And what I'm hearing from everybody, alongside whatever they're excited about in their job search or their career development or whatever, is that they are tired and they want to make sure that they rest some over the next couple of weeks.

Diana Alt [00:01:05]:
Most of the people are taking anywhere between from a few days to a couple of weeks off of work. And even those that aren't doing that are expecting things to be slower at the office because so many other people won't be there. It's completely valid that people need rest. But a thing that I have observed over time, both in myself, in clients, and in just other people in my life, is that we sometimes confuse rest and avoidance. And I think it's fine to rest some. We need to build that into our lives. I think a little bit of avoidance actually sometimes is warranted too. This is not a judgment on a decision that people might make that it's okay to avoid some things.

Diana Alt [00:01:50]:
But what I want people to do is understand the difference between those two things so you can note what is happening in yourself and use that information for later efforts. So first, let's talk about what rest is. Rest is the thing that you do that gives you capacity back. It restores your capacity. Hell, the word rest is and the name restored, right? The way I think of rest is that it is intentional, it is chosen, and that it leaves you feeling more like you have resources and capacity, even if it's just subtle. If you decide ahead of time what you're going to be do, doing to rest, and when you're going to do it, you're probably actually resting. If you feel clearer and calmer and more grounded after you do whatever it is that you do for your rest activity, you're also actually engaging in rest. And the other thing is, if you get through whatever you're doing to rest and you don't feel an urgent need to immediately escape, you're probably nailing rest.

Diana Alt [00:03:03]:
Unfortunately, a lot of people are not getting doing those things and getting those things out of rest. They're doing instead what I think of as avoidance, which is typically reactive. It involves default type activities which are different for everyone, and it's usually driven by a desire to avoid discomfort. Avoidance is about delaying discomfort, whether it's uncomfortable feelings, uncomfortable conversations, an activity that you don't want to do. When you are engaging in avoidance activities of the type I usually see from people that think they are resting, they end up mostly trying to avoid uncomfortable feelings or conversations, and they're trying to numb themselves. People do avoidance in a few different ways, but usually what happens is you slide into it without choosing it. It's like your day is going on, you went to work, you came home, you ate dinner, and then you don't really know what happened with the rest of your evening because you just kind of slid into a pattern. Oftentimes you feel foggier or heavier whenever you are done with your avoidance activity or period.

Diana Alt [00:04:23]:
And oftentimes you feel kind of a little bit guilty about having done it. I see this show up with people when they are very stressed with the job that's burning them out. They come home, they eat their dinner, and then they kind of numb out staring at a wall, staring at the television, and they're in the room with their friends or family members, but they're not really present with them. So they'll go to bed at night not even understanding how they spent their evening. And their kids feel like they didn't really get to see mom or dad. That's, that's how I see that sometimes show up and then the person may be kept awake at night because they feel guilty for not making the most of the time with their family. So another hallmark of avoidance is that when you think about stopping doing whatever that thing is that is your avoidance activity, you end up feeling kind of uncomfortable or panicky about it because that's been your crutch to avoid those weird feelings or those weird conversations or situations. So, yeah, rest restores, avoidance numbs.

Diana Alt [00:05:27]:
And an interesting thing about them is that the same activities that you might use for avoidance could also be used for rest, depending on the energy that you bring to the situation. Here's a quick example of that from my life. I love to read. I learned how to read whenever I was four years old. I have put myself to bed by reading A book every single night of my life since I figured out how to work a book. Reading is one of the things that I do for pleasure, but I also sometimes do it to avoid a big Way that I really noticed this in the last few months is that on Saturday mornings when I don't necessarily have anything going on, but I know I've got a to do list of adulting, I've got laundry to do and grocery shopping to do, and I'm a meal prepper, so I cook on the weekend for the whole week. I know those things are on my to do list. I will sometimes fall into this mindset of avoidance of those things.

Diana Alt [00:06:33]:
When I'm reading in the morning, I'll read for 30 minutes and then all of a sudden when I think about stopping reading, I will get very uncomfortable because I'll think, oh, I wasted this time reading and now I have to go do all this adulting. And there's so many things to do this weekend and I feel a little bit weird and uncomfortable. But when I observe that feeling, I can challenge it and say, do I really not have enough time? And most of the time I'm actually talking myself in to a panicky feeling that I'm not going to have enough time to get my adulting done, instead of saying, you know what? Number one, if I don't get that to do list done, it's probably going to be fine. I can function. But number two, I can get it done. And also, if there's any time that I deserve to sit and read a book just for fun, it's now. And the world is not going to end. If I sit here and read this book for a little while longer and once I have that little mini conversation that in my head usually takes like 10, 10 seconds tops, I calm down immediately.

Diana Alt [00:07:40]:
Then I often will find myself reading for only like 10 more minutes. And then the next thing I know, I have a feeling like, ah, I feel lighter. And then I'm able to say, oh, this thing that was intended to be an enjoyable activity veered over into the avoidance that I didn't want to engage in, but I was able to rein it back in and turn it into rest. So my story. So one question that occurred to me as I was thinking about this episode is why on earth does this avoidance thing happen so often? This confusion of avoidance happens so often right now at this time of year. There's a couple reasons for it. Number one is there's this whole comparison thing, the that we all have going on, especially this time of year. It could be comparison between the real life that you're living as you know it and what you see online with people's highlights reels.

Diana Alt [00:08:43]:
Highlight reels. It could be comparison to a list of goals that you set for yourself or that your work set for you so that you can achieve your bonus, or your good performance review and reflecting on how much of that you did or didn't get done. And there's also just general uncertainty that plays in so 2025 has been a difficult year for a lot of people for economic reasons. They're brought down by the news about the job market or about politics, or about any one of a number of other things. And all of it makes them feel, you feel uncertain about what's next. And then the last thing that really, really hits at this time of year that makes people want to numb out, not unreasonably, is family time. So I love my family, and I'm sure you probably love your family too, or whether it's your blood family or your in laws or your chosen family. But when we get together with family, especially family that we do not see or talk to very often, there's a lot of hot topics that get asked about like your job or your partner or are you going to have a baby this year or the promotion that you did or didn't get.

Diana Alt [00:09:59]:
Those types of things. Millions of questions that you're not prepared to answer to even your closest friends get asked to you by people that sometimes you don't feel comfortable enough talking with, or even if you do, you don't want to talk about it at the dinner table with 18 other people. And that makes avoidance feel really attractive at this time of year. And it's especially hard for people that are experiencing career difficulties. So if you're in between jobs, especially if you're in between jobs involuntarily due to a layoff, this stuff feels very, very, very livid because a lot of people that are in your life might not understand how difficult it can be to go and find a job when the job market feels weird. So that's why people want to avoid. And I'd say it's not a character flaw, it's a nervous system response and it can be entirely reasonable. So that's also really important if you have people in your life that are giving you shit for engaging in a little bit of avoidance.

Diana Alt [00:11:07]:
There's an entire industry devoted to helping us avoid things, and it's called the entertainment industry. And I love movies and musicals and music and all the kinds of things. I love sports, so I'm a big person that likes to watch those things, attend those things, participate in those things. But fundamentally they're a short term escape from whatever else is going on. And that's fine. The big problem becomes when you are so far engaged in those numbing avoidance activities, especially ones that are default behaviors that do not leave you feeling refreshed when you do that too much and you don't get any actual rest during what is hopefully a time of year where there is some space to do so, you end up setting yourself up to be worse off at the end of your break than you were at the beginning of your break. So when you are trying to sort out what to do or whether you're engaging in the wrong thing, I'd ask yourself whether what you're doing is helping you return to feeling like yourself or whether it is helping you get away from something. I think this is critically valuable and I think it's something that y' all ought to be thinking of because this is also the time of year, the tail end of the year and the beginning of the new year is when a lot of people want to figure out what's next for them.

Diana Alt [00:12:36]:
Some have urgent needs, like figuring out, you know, what job am I going to get in 2026 after a layoff. Some of them are less urgent, like I think I might like to start a business at some point in my life. I don't know what, and it doesn't have to be immediate and everything in between, but the holidays and the change of the year surface different needs and different interests and different energy patterns than normal work life. And if you can take the opportunity to observe how you are feeling about things in a time that is different than the rest of the year, you might help yourself when you get back into normal mode. The the observation of what restores you versus what drains you is incredibly important, and both of those things are equally useful pieces of information. When I work with clients that are trying to make their work lives better so that their regular life can be better, I ask questions both about what builds them up and makes them feel like themselves and what drains them or aggravates them for that exact reason, both sides of that coin are important to figuring out what is really going to make you happy in the long run. So that's really it. This week isn't about fixing your life.

Diana Alt [00:13:52]:
It isn't about being perfect. It's about it isn't about only resting or doing the fun holiday activities and feeling guilty. If you do anything that falls in the avoidance bucket. It's about noticing what is filling you up and what isn't filling you up so that you can take action. And that's. That's it for today, the episode that we're doing in a couple of weeks, I'm going to take a little bit of a different spin on. We're going to talk about how we can try to move forward towards making 2026 the year that you want it to be, and yourself becoming the person that you want to be in 2026 without a lot of the cliche new Year, new you nonsense. But for today, that's all I got.

Diana Alt [00:14:41]:
So I think work should feel good for you, and I think your rest the next week or two should feel good to you as well.