Hey, I'm Amanda Miller Littlejohn.
Maybe you know that because you're here on my page. Or maybe I showed up in your feed miraculously, and this is your first time meeting me. If so, hello!
I'm the author of a book that came out a few months ago called The Rest Revolution. As an author and a writer, my medium is writing. I write with a pen. I type on my keyboard. I like to write.
But in order to spread the word about this book—and the other things I write—I realized I have to show up and show my face more. I've been trying to figure out what I can do to get on video. And I am a chronic overthinker. I've literally been thinking about this for months.
Today, I decided I'm just going to read y’all some of my words and hopefully figure out a rhythm for creating video authentically. I want to start with the medium I feel most comfortable with—and that’s writing. I'm going to share a little bit from my book.
Okay—this is from Chapter Six of my book: Deprogramming, Recalibrating, and Frontburnering. The reason I want to share this is because I had a talk last night—a virtual book club group—and I was sharing different ways we can integrate small moments of rest into our daily lives.
One of the things I’m really trying to make sure I share with people—because I think it's important—is that just because we embrace the idea that we need rest, just because we know we’re overworked and burned out, and we decide we want to do things differently... that doesn’t mean it’s going to come easily.
We’ve spent decades becoming people who overwork and treat ourselves like machines. And the ideas that shape us and create that impulse to overwork? They are centuries in the making.
So yes—you can have an epiphany and realize that what you’re doing isn’t working. But it's going to require daily effort and daily practice to even begin to make a dent in your old mindset and habits.
If you’ve done things one way your whole life—and you’re in your 30s, 40s, or 50s—it’s not going to change overnight. I think people get frustrated with themselves. I get frustrated with myself, honestly.
I had one of those days recently where I didn’t have any meetings. I didn’t feel anxious, but I did feel a little lost. Without a to-do list, without the hum of tasks to keep me busy, I started drifting into this sense of aimlessness—wondering, "What am I doing? Shouldn’t I be doing something?"
That’s the machine mindset that I write about in The Rest Revolution.
Sitting still and embracing a day without a packed agenda—even if that day wasn’t intentionally carved out for self-care—can feel strange. It wasn’t a spa day or a trip to the forest. It was just a light day. And in those moments, I realized:
I don’t know what to do with myself when I’m not abusing myself through overwork.
That sounds kind of sad to admit. But that’s where I am in my journey—really embracing the humanity aspect of all this.
I write in the book that the journey to rest is about claiming your humanity. Claiming the fact that you are a being in nature. You need all four seasons. You can’t keep skipping winter.
You aren’t perfect. You need hugs. You need naps. You need friendships. You’re going to make mistakes because you are human—not a machine.
So I remind myself of that daily. Even on this journey to learn how to rest better, I’m going to backslide, backtrack, and make mistakes. I won’t always get it right. I won’t always remember the new decisions I’ve made about how I treat myself.
I’m creating new pathways—new grooves in my brain, in my daily habits. And like any other path, it takes repetition before that groove becomes visible enough for me to choose it over my default programming.
Today, on a day when I didn’t have a lot on my calendar to keep me on track with my usual overworking tendencies, I stopped and reminded myself: it’s okay.
It’s okay to move at a different pace. It’s okay to get things done on a slower cadence. The world will still be there. It’ll still be burning when I return. But it’s okay—because I am human.
I am human. I am human.
I want to share this passage from The Rest Revolution. It’s about what happens when you reach a burnout breaking point and have the opportunity to recalibrate your life. It's not always easy.
“After overworking on autopilot, back-burnering what matters, and repeatedly skipping winter, many eventually reach a breaking point severe enough to inspire change. They begin correcting the misalignments that led to burnout.
This happens through deprogramming, recalibrating, and front-burnering what matters. These terms refer to waking up to the reality that the machine mindset has been driving your warped sense of ambition.
The deprogramming process is the courageous act of finally stopping the overwork and self-betrayal that led to burnout.
But when you're used to treating yourself like a machine, changing your approach is hard. Choosing rest isn't necessarily easy. Even when you decide to change your habits, reject the old programming, and prioritize happiness, many find they have to build in extra time to ease into those new, healthier habits.
It’s not something you just decide in one fed-up moment and quit cold turkey.
Just as you built up the habit of overworking, your recalibration requires muscle memory too. This is not a simple mindset shift—it’s a full system of mental and spiritual adjustments. A long-term practice of divesting from autopilot overworking that does not serve your humanity.”
That’s from Chapter Six of The Rest Revolution.
If you don’t have it yet, I hope you’ll grab a copy. And if you’ve read it, I’d love your review—it helps more people discover the book.
Most of all, I want to remind you: wherever you are on your journey to rest, don’t give up on yourself when you backslide or fall into old patterns. Those patterns are well-earned. Those grooves are well-worn.
So give yourself time. Give yourself grace. Give yourself second chances as you build a new type of muscle memory—the muscle memory to rest.
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