Day 88 - Resting the Mind

January 06, 2026

In this episode, Guy Reams explores the concept of mental rest, emphasizing that true rest is not merely the absence of activity but rather the release of effort and self-monitoring. He discusses the importance of engaging in activities that allow for immersion without self-reference, as well as the need to reduce decision-making to achieve cognitive flow. Reams also touches on the challenges of meditation and the necessity of allowing the mind to rest without the pressure of achieving specific outcomes.

Episode Transcript

Guy Reams (00:00.238)
This is day 88, resting the mind.

It's a pretty interesting thought that most of us think of rest means just stopping activity like taking a nap or laying on the couch or sitting by the beach or whatever. But the mind doesn't work that way. You can lie on the couch for hours and still feel exhausted. You can stream your Netflix show for all night long and feel exhausted in the morning.

Real mental rest is less about doing nothing and more about releasing effort. The first step in doing this is to stop trying to manage yourself. A tired mind is often constantly monitoring, optimizing, judging, or correcting yourself. You're asking yourself questions like, am I doing enough? Could I be doing more? What do need to do tomorrow?

What's next? True rest begins when you give yourself permission to not improve anything for a while. No fixing, no reframing things, no looking at it through a productivity lens. Even working on yourself can be exhausting if you never let your brain stop. Give this a shot. For 10 or 15 minutes, set a timer.

and let yourself be exactly as you are right now without any internal dialogue and narration. No internal commentary. Just sit there. Can you do that? This is a test. If you can't set that timer for 10 minutes and you can't shut your brain off to judge yourself or commentary or whatever, then that means you are not resting the brain.

Guy Reams (01:55.958)
So how do you do this? Well, I think the first thing you have to learn to do is to allow the mind to without self-reference. So oftentimes, sometimes when I play a game, like a chess game, because I play chess a lot,

I'll feel more rested than other activities. Because in some activities like watching a movie, I'll be reframing what I'm experiencing in the movie and judging myself. This actually is more self exhausting. But when I'm absorbed in a puzzle or a problem or a chess game, then I'm fully engaged that mentally and I'm not judging myself. Like today, I went outside and I chopped a bunch of wood for a fire I made today.

And out there while I was chopping wood, I was fully engaged in the activity, but I was not having any reference to myself whatsoever. I wasn't thinking about what I was doing wrong or right. None of that. And I felt rested because of that. So when you walk in nature without any music or headphones, when you play a game or do a craft, like put a puzzle together, or just read something that pulls you in,

or any gentle physical movement like I like long distance running. These help get you out of your head space and not thinking about yourself in just the present. So another thing to contemplate is to get true mental rest you have to reduce decision making. You're not really resting if you're constantly making decisions.

Mental feed comes less from effort and more from having constant choices. If you always have choices in front of you, then it can be physically exhausting. I've noticed a lot of athletes or even people that practice like a ritualistic religion, like a monk, they have well-defined routines and repetitive things that they do.

Guy Reams (04:05.055)
And these are actually designed to reduce the number of decisions that they make. Athletes go through routines because when they're in a game, they are constantly making decisions. So when you're doing a routine, you're not making that many decisions. You're just doing the routine. So when you reduce decision making, you open up the flow so you get a more cognitive...

relaxation. so reducing decisions is a great way to improve cognitive flow. So it's very hard though. mean, being unproductive, that's a really hard thing for me to do. I always want to be productive. I've been I've lived a life of drive, like I'm always driving myself. So I really struggled with meditation for a long time.

And the reason why is because I was always expecting to achieve something with the meditation. And that's the problem. You cannot set this stage of trying to achieve anything. True meditation, what I've learned, is nothing special. It's really just having stillness without an outcome. No applications. The worst thing I ever did was download an app for meditation.

like Calm or one of these apps. The app made this a performance routine for me and that was the worst thing that I could have done. The best thing is to have no goal, no insight, no objective, no timer, just stillness with no outcome, just sitting and noticing what comes, letting it pass without engaging. This is extremely uncomfortable because the mind

is probably going to be under detox from stimulation. Earlier I talked about having you take a test for 10 minutes. If you've never done this, you will probably fail that test. So you might want to start with just a minute. Set the timer for one minute and see if you can have the mind just sit there and not do anything. rest can, letting the mind truly take a break.

Guy Reams (06:25.665)
when it's no longer trying to be elsewhere to be better or to be more or to improve, that is what mental rest really is. And this is, I think, the first step in understanding how to reconnect with who you are and where you want to be and what you want to do in life. You have to truly let your brain rest and it's one of the hardest things to learn to do.