At the Banksy museum in Austin, there’s a piece that’s just text on the wall, no image, no stencil trick. It reads: “If you get tired, learn to rest, not quit.”
Last week, at the National Speakers Association’s annual conference, Influence, over a thousand speakers packed a room to talk about what actually makes a career last. Michael Arnot, founder of Encore Speaker Bureau and co-founder of Mainstage Speaker Business Academy, put it simply: from a bureau’s perspective, the speakers who make it aren’t just the most talented ones in the room. They’re the most resilient. The ones constantly auditing, tweaking, upgrading. It’s a grind, and for the right person, that grind is fuel instead of a drain.
Here’s the part worth sitting with, whatever seat you’re in. Corporate, entrepreneur, student, doesn’t matter. Resilience gets confused with grit all the time, like it’s just about gritting your teeth and pushing through no matter the cost. But the people who actually last aren’t burning themselves down to stay in the game. They pay attention to themselves the same way they pay attention to their work. They know when to push and when to pull back, and pulling back isn’t a failure. It’s maintenance.
So ask yourself where you actually are right now. Where is your energy leaking out through tasks that don’t move anything forward, meetings that keep multiplying while the meaning doesn’t, or a new season that isn’t sparking the excitement it used to? There’s probably a place right now where energy is draining faster than you’re replacing it. And the real question isn’t whether you should quit. It’s whether you need rest.
Two things help you tell the difference.
- Curiosity first: when something feels exhausting, get curious about why before you decide to walk away from it. Sometimes the thing itself is wrong for you. More often, it’s how you’re approaching it.
- Presence second: you can’t tell “I need to rest” apart from “I need to quit” if you’re not actually paying attention to yourself in the moment. Slow down enough to notice what’s true.
Timing matters here too. Q3 is closing out. Companies are heading into budget season, which means decisions are getting made right now about where energy and resources go next year. School is starting back up. Summer is winding down whether anyone is ready or not. This is the exact season to get intentional about where your energy goes, instead of reacting to whatever’s loudest.
A graffiti artist and a speaker agent may never sit in the same room, but they landed on the same truth. Rest is not retreat. It’s not giving up. It’s how the people who go the distance stay in it long enough to matter.
So where is your energy going right now, and where does it actually need to be?