Book Week: On Our Best Behavior

This week on the podcast, Coach Kelly has a discussion with Ellen Mailhot about the book  "On Our Best Behavior" by Elise Lonan. Much of what we believe about productivity and “laziness” goes unchallenged.

Our thoughts about “sins” like sloth are actually holding us back from rest, joy, and meaningful work.

Here are my top 3 takeaways:

• Rest is Essential, Not Earned: The belief that you have to "earn" your rest is outdated and counterproductive. Stepping away from this mindset can bring more energy and clarity to your work and life.
• The Myth of Perpetual Productivity: Culturally, we've been conditioned to see constant busyness as a badge of honor, but research (and lived experience) shows this leads to burnout, not progress.
• Redefining Worthy Work: Rest allows us to show up more fully for our purpose—at home, at work, or wherever our “worthiest work” lies. It’s not about doing less, but doing what matters most from a place of joy and alignment.

If you're struggling to build rest into your routine, you’re not alone—and you’re already worthy of it. For support on your journey, check out our group coaching. Let’s give ourselves permission to rest, recharge, and thrive!

Links 

• Join Kelly's Group Coaching Program
•  On Our Best Behavior by Elise Loehn 

Let's connect.

I am cheering for you!

Transcript

0:09

Welcome to the Live A Vibrant Life podcast. I'm life coach Kelly Kibbitz, and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self-awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self-awareness changes everything. Let's get started. Welcome to the Live A Vibrant Life Podcast. This week I am sharing a book I'm reading with a few friends called On Our Best Behavior. It's written by Elise Lowen, and the subtitle is The Seven Deadly Sins, and the price women pay to be good. I'm so excited Ellen Mailhot is back to talk to with me about this book because I think we've both really connected with some of the ideas that she has to share. Ellen, thank you for being here today. Hello. Great to be here. Now, obviously we can't get through the whole book in a short podcast, so we decided to focus on chapter two, which is about sloth. The premise of her book is these seven deadly sins put oppressive ideas upon us. Chapter two's Point is, when we believe that sloth is sinful, we deny ourselves rest. Sloth, the sin that sort of hung over my head for most of my life was sinful. Don't rest, don't sit still, don't waste time. Be productive. Before we started recording, you pointed out three ideas that stood out to you from the chapter. What was the first idea you wanted to talk about? The first one, it's a quote from the book that jumped out to me. It's just so relevant for so many of us. This push into perpetual action, this coached fear of sloth or the idea that we don't deserve rest has made us frantic, exhausted, depleted, and depressed. I think that's really important for people to pay attention to because it's in our culture, right? Being able to work 24 7, don't ever rest. And the myth that you're gonna be more productive if you do that. But there's so much scientific evidence that the opposite is true. You are actually less productive. It's not just about sleep, it's about periods of downtime, periods of non-activity, for your brain health, for psychological mental health, and also to make you more productive when you are working. I think it's such a myth that downtime hurts productivity and people still believe it and live that way. It's tough to stop that'cause it's kind of a well worn neural pathway, especially in, our culture. Especially for women. I know that when I found coaching, that was one of the first ideas that I put on the table and looked at, is it okay for me to rest? You and I have talked about this before. When I was young, my mom really liked Saturday mornings to be productive in my house. There was no sleeping in on Saturday morning. It was get up, change your sheets, get moving, get going. And without anyone ever saying sloth is sinful I grew up with enough indicators around me that being still and being lazy would be bad. Don't rest, be protective. Go do something. So did you find that in your life as well? Yeah. Yeah. We, I didn't have the Saturday morning get up early and clean the house thing, but I definitely got unconscious messages like my, my parents didn't really have fun. Like it wasn't really kind of on their radar. I mean, they did some things but not. It wasn't balanced. It was kind of all about, you know, being productive and getting things done, and being good. And we're from New England. There is a Puritan work ethic. Yes, yes. That has bled into when that was invented. I'm pretty sure there was no internet. Right. I'm pretty sure people observed the Sabbath. And I'm pretty sure people stopped work at 4 30, 5 o'clock every day. And during the winter they were farmers. And now we've evolved to, we still have this work ethic, but it needs to be. 10, 12, 14 hours a day, whatever, you know, depending on the profession you're in. We wanted to have a podcast today because the coaching company that you and I have created together, really the foundational idea is that first you rest and when you're no longer tired, you go and find something that brings you joy. And then from that place of aligned energy, you go and do your purpose-filled work. It's not that we're against work, I think work is really important. I think purpose matters. It's not, but also rest really matters and joy really matters. So anything else jump out to you that you noticed? There was a lot that jumped out to me from this chapter, but another quote that, um. Kind of rose to the top was this one. It's a common worldview. The belief that being kind to ourselves is the gateway drug to induce that will become lazy or self-indulgent unless we propel ourselves forward through hate and judgment. Mm-hmm. That's so sad to me. And again, I'm so thankful for the coaches in my life that have helped me create new thoughts and see things like hating yourself as not a good thing. Yeah. Coaching particularly around my body of getting to a neutral energy, if not hating the stomach that bore three children, but to say, oh, I have a body. And the energy and joy that comes from not constantly being hard on myself. Whether it's for sitting still and reading a book, because it gives me joy or not going to the gym because I'm physically unwell and needing to heal. What came to your mind as you saw that quote. I think the fact that it's so ingrained in our worldview. When it is ingrained it feels like a fact, right? It's not just a belief or an opinion. It feels like a fact. And to undo that takes a lot of work. And your concept of rest first probably confuses people, right? It's like, wait a minute, am I supposed to work until I collapse? And then I rest? I can't. I don't deserve rest until I earn it. Right. Well, I think to our summer series, the big idea that launched that was, what if you didn't need a vacation after your vacation? What if you learned to rest along the way? One of the things that struck me, because I'm the mom of three adult daughters, a lot of what she writes about is how patriarchy has affected women, right? This book is mostly geared towards women and just pulling apart some of the patriarchal ideas. And so titled this section my mother's work, my father's rest. She talked a little bit about how her dad did not bear the equal responsibility. He had a job and he went to that job. Before I created my coaching company, I was really inspired by a male pastor. I was a pastor at the time, and he wrote a book on how to manage your time and energy. But all he was responsible for was about 10 hours of his day. And the other things that are required for life- grocery shopping, cleaning his home, all these different things... someone else, his wife, was taking care of. He was a little bit better than she was, or I was,at creating rest and enjoying his life. Have you noticed that in any area of your life where. It's a new thought that rest is okay as a woman or is that something you felt comfortable with? Well, since I've been working with you, I feel comfortable with it. But, when my kids were little, I was at home. I wasn't working therefore I had to make up for it by over volunteering and now trying to do all the amazing mom things, which I don't think I really succeeded at and it was relentless. And I did burn myself out.And I did sign up for things not out of a servant's heart, you know, it was more I felt like I had to, or it was an obligation. I don't know about guilt driven, but, it definitely felt like I had to make up for something. And, and I think women are in a no-win situation, right? If you stay home with your kids, you're, you know. Not contributing to society, you're not working. And if you're working, then well wait a minute. Don't you love your kids? It's like, well, no, both are wrong. Well, and it's really unfair, and that's, we want, we're actually mean to each other. I think women mm-hmm. Are, are not, it's not just about men versus women and, and I don't think there any, should be any us versus anyone. We're all in this together and there's a million different ways this looks and there isn't one right way. I think we're really, really mean to each other and ourselves about this, this whole topic. And that's why we wanted to bring this book to light so people could see maybe the idea we have about rest isn't serving us and isn't best. If we rest and then fill our lives with whatever brings us joy, aligns our energy and go and do our purpose-filled work, whether it's raising our children work that we do to keep our homes going, or work outside the home, whether you get paid or not. Work is work. Sloth somehow became the ultimate sin, especially I think in this New England puritanical idea. Like, mm-hmm. There's all these things that are bad, but definitely don't be lazy. It leads to these other, if you're lazy, then it will open up all those other sins and bad behaviors because you have all this time on your hands. She was pointing out that the Industrial Revolution, people started being paid for a task. Before whether it was a farm or other things, you had natural times of rest. We talk about that in our coaching program all the time, that you're not supposed to be running at the same pace in the middle of December, as you might have the energy for in June. But the Industrial Revolution kind of changed that. Now you have lights, and as you pointed out, you have phones that just ding 24 hours a day and people feeling, you know, responsible to answer emails the second they come through. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, but before the industrial Revolution, that's not how human beings lived. So maybe it's not best for us. Right. Yeah, it's unnatural and yet we, we, you know, it is part of progress, but we lost something along the way. Oh, absolutely. She was talking about a lawyer friend of hers who in her brain kept always saying, time is money, because every minute of her day as a lawyer had a very big fee attached to it. And so the question was, was going to the bathroom worth$125? Oh my gosh. Well, and she accidentally really injured herself not going to the bathroom when she should have. So it's just really interesting. And then on the other side, she's hearing things like, can't you just relax? Well, how do you learn to relax when you're constantly anxious and overworking and not resting? So if it's not modeled for you by your parents, anxiety, your culture. Yeah. Yeah. And then on top of that, of course, she talks about just the anxiousness of being a mom. And I look at my daughter's friends who are moms today, and there is evidence out there that even working moms today spend significantly more time with their children than my mom And your mom did. So when I was a younger kid, my mom would tell us to get outside. Come back at dark. Not that we want to go back to that, but it is different. I think we're using the wrong measuring stick to judge ourselves, or judging ourselves wrongly on many levels. But to say we want to go back to that doesn't make sense, right? It is a different time. We would never do that with our children. The evolvement of this structured nonstop you start playing soccer when you're four and play all year long. You know, and ruin your knees It's shocking how normalized we've made it. Because we're doing a lot of damage at the expense of these mothers in particular. The, 2020 crisis showed us a lot of women had to step out of the workforce because the burden of taking care of the kids who now came home, often fell onto them. We are trying to share with this idea that maybe sloth isn't real. As a human being, you are created to rest. There should be no expectation that you can go 24 hours a day, seven days a week with one little vacation in the summer to offset all of the overworking and that as you're noticing, resentment, frustration, constantly being sick, maybe those are signs. That you're overworking and it would be nice to pull back and find some tools that help. Part of our coaching program is that we wanted to make it equitable. We wanted to make it so that people could afford to jump in if you had 30 minutes a week, and the price point would cover that too. Why we wanted to create a group coaching program is our human brains tend to find one thing that we think is a fact, and then we no longer look for evidence that we might be wrong. Right. We like having that on repeat. This podcast might be surprising to some women, just like it was surprising for me to learn these seven deadly sins aren't even in the Bible. This was created by somebody. Then a pope decided to affirm it, and it's been used to manipulate people, and so sloth is the opposite of truth in the Bible. If you want to use that to live your life, God gives the example of work six days and take a day of rest. Yet for almost my entire life, I did not see any examples of people who actually took a day of rest. And learning how to do that was really hard for me, learning how to not work seven days a week. I found so much my identity and, and being busy. It also didn't say work. 12 to 16, 18 hours those six days that you work. Work's not defined in terms of how much time and that you shouldn't rest until that seventh day. I liked that you said that earlier, that many of us accidentally thought you have to earn your rest. Yeah, you have to work until you're so tired that you deserve that rest. And rest is not just sleep. Rest is really nuanced and part of what our coaching does for people is help them notice that nuance. Like, yes, maybe you're emotionally tired and not just physically tired. Well, somewhere in the book, I can't remember where it was in this chapter though. It talked about how when you have periods. Of non-activity, your brain actually is, is more awakened and more functioning. When you tap into your creativity and you, and you stop and slow down, it's, it's not only good for your brain and mental health, but it actually can make you more productive'cause it can open up your mind to new ideas for when you are back at work. I think she does reference Einstein and his ability to do just this menial non brain work mm-hmm. That gave him these amazing ideas. Mm-hmm. He wasn't, you know, forced to be exhausted. He could do, when some of those ideas came when he was not working. Right. She talked about busyness will never deliver me into the power and stillness of just being. I think I spent a lot of my life thinking if I just could figure out how to schedule everything perfectly and find the perfect calendar system and just go from activity to activity. We've even talked about this, the coaching program encourages people to make a budget for their energy. Part of that budget is what we call white space. It's"not doing" time. It's time where you could pivot if something came up. I think I spent a lot of my life kind of proud of the fact that there was no white space. It was activity. Activity. You know how busy we are. We, it's a, it's a. Conversation starter. Right, right. And those would probably be the two things I said the most. I'm too busy and I'm so tired. And I didn't notice how those were connected, or red flags. If you open with that when someone says, how are you? So busy that the red flag. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the things she says at the end is, there's a lot at stake for us not recognizing the power of rest. There's the problem that we're not finding peace within ourselves, which of course ripples out to everything else by working all the time. We're trying to keep ourselves less anxious, but the reality is you're probably picking up the phone'cause you're so exhausted. And then you're more anxious. So she suggests this idea, accepting sloth is essential. We can demand support. Embrace rest. And reserve our strength for the Worthiest work. Somebody I follow on threads and Instagram, has her title, the NAP Ministry. And she's constantly talking about,"I don't do these things. I don't go on social media. I don't watch the news all the time. My work is to be so well rested. I'm bringing peace into this world". Embracing sloth is essential. Wow. That's. I feel that as like, Ooh, is that okay to say? Well, part of me is like, oh, we gotta change the word. It has to be a different thing to make it feel better, which is semantics, right? Because it's so ingrained that sloth is the opposite of what you want to be. Yeah. And yet, I mean, maybe we can just picture the adorable little sloth and say essential, but when we accept it as essential, then we can demand support. Mm-hmm. Instead of waiting till you're so past capacity, you're physically sick or hiding it, feeling guilty about it, like Right. And. I love when I see things like somebody says, would somebody be willing to help me? It happens on Facebook every now and then, and then so many people show up and they feel so great about being able to support each other. A win-win. Yeah. Accepting sloth is essential, means we can embrace rest, not just physically, not just go take that nap, figuring out what gives you mental energy, emotional energy, spiritual energy, and then reserve your strength for your worthiest work, which I think you need time and energy to even figure out what that is. It is. Yeah. Yeah.'cause it doesn't have to be something that's paid for. Right. There's, there's lots of work is so many different things. And now that our kids are adults, and if we could jump in a time machine and go back and sit with younger selves, taking care of our children was an important part of our work, but it wasn't all of our work. Right. Right. And I am so thankful, even though I pushed so hard against it, that I discovered what Sabbath rest was. What taking time to not work was while my children still lived in my house. It was incredibly hard to stop doing what I was doing, which was work seven days a week, constantly run and have these little moments. I didn't start with the whole day. I started with a half day How old were your kids when you started that? I'm guessing around 2008, so maybe 8, 9, 11. What a great example for them too. It was a great example. They're women. And they got to see in their developmental years, a mother who said, it's okay for me to go take a nap. Before any of this even happened on Mother's Day, I used to work at a church, so I'd have to work in the morning, but then the rest of the day I would sit in my bed. They didn't make that mean I didn't love them, but I would close the door, watch a show I wanted, just have some alone time, and maybe I had in the back of my mind back then it was selfish. But looking back now, I can tell that what I did was rest, so that I could do a better job in the things that were important to me. So accepting sloth is essential. We can demand support. Embrace rest and reserve our strength for the Worthiest work. Don't start with all three. Maybe just decide you're worthy of a 30 minute artist date this week of you. Go do something that brings you joy. Or you're worth five minutes alone to journal if that serves you, or go for a walk. I think you, you always give the example of would you ever demand of a little child what you ask of yourself. You would never say stop being lazy. Like get, you know, keep working. And to think of yourself with that level of kindness is, is a brain shift, right? It's like sloth isn't bad all the time. It doesn't mean be a sloth and now be a different person. It's be sloth like here and there. Well, and that it's just not a bad thing to rest. Yes. Is a new idea for many people. You don't have to earn it. Yeah. You don't have to earn it. It is an important part of rest until you're, you'll know you're not tired when you want to do the thing that brings you joy. And when you start practicing this and you notice, I don't even want to do this thing that I love doing, instead of feeling guilty and instead of forcing yourself rest longer. Yeah. It's part of the rhythm of life. So for some people resting means go to bed earlier. For some people, rest means go away by yourself for a little bit. It, it's gonna look different for everybody. So one of the reasons we wanted to have this conversation today is we've been able to take a lot of these tools that we've created and bring them in a really orderly way with a scope and sequence and workbooks and, you know, programs that give everybody a bite-sized bit of information at a time and. The other benefit is we do it collectively in a group. So it's not just, here's a book, which is great, it's, here's an opportunity to talk about what's working, what's not working, and maybe what you would do differently. Our next series is going to be about the holidays and the fact that sometimes being around the people you love can be a little bit hard. Anything come to mind about our program. Since we started this a few years ago, the parts that are a little overwhelming for me are a lot less overwhelming. There's some people that love the holidays and they look forward to, and others that dread it. And of course there's everything in between. Not only do I look forward to them more, but I'm more present within them. And the freedom to let go of other people's,"oh, we didn't do it the same as last year". Or, whatever. Like if they're having a political argument over there. All those things that kind of stir up everybody. This concept, which is one of many of your tools of everyone can have their own thoughts, feelings, right? Like you are not in control of them. You can't change other people's, you don't have to react to them. Is so freeing. I'm free of that. I don't need to go there. I don't need to get on that train. I like the train images. That train stopped it, tried to get me on it and I said, no thank you. And it's not all the time, right, because my brain does go back to some of that stuff. This is of course is relevant all year, but for the holiday season, these things really come to a head and I love that. I feel like it, the, it allows the joy to override the busyness or the guilt. I think for people to get a glimpse of that, or even to take one or two new things to try this year is huge. I love how you say, take the fish, leave the bones. There's a lot, we have a lot of material, right? You might feel overwhelmed by that, but don't be, because we all started somewhere, right? We're not in a race. We're not, you know, there's no competition You get one bit and that's gonna help you. And then you add another little bit after that and, and another little bit after that. And then you look back, like you and I look back we're different people, right? Right. We're much better versions of ourselves and it came on gradually. It wasn't this thing we couldn't fit into our lives, right? It just came on really gradually, one piece at a time. That's why we created the group coaching program so that you could take small action steps in the right direction. Whether it's putting a book into your hands or having a conversation. We know that these tools can serve all of us. As we close for today, I hope that our conversation has helped you believe that you are already worthy of rest. Find whatever it is that serves you. Some people rest is a walk and some people rest is going to be that well deserved nap on a rainy day. Ellen, thank you for being here today. I look forward to our next conversation. Thank you for having me. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I look forward to talking again next week. Thank you for joining the Live A Vibrant Life podcast. I hope our time together encourage you and will equip you with the tools you need to move into the vibrant life you desire. I'm here to help you live a brave, creative, purpose-filled life. And if you'd like to learn more. You can follow me on Instagram or Facebook, Kelly tibbits life coach, or visit my website kelly tibbits.com. I look forward to connecting again soon.