What If Rest Is Part Of Success

Your best progress can be invisible for a long time and that does not mean you’re failing. We’re the English Sisters, therapists and hypnotherapists, and we’re sharing a simple story from our book Stress Free in Three Minutes that turns personal growth into something you can actually feel: the humble potato. It grows quietly underground, then shows a clear signal when it’s ready, and that timing lesson matters for anxiety relief, self-trust, and real confidence.

We talk about intuition as a skill, not a mystery. When you’re overwhelmed by advice, pressure, and mental chatter, your gut can feel far away. We explore how to “look for the flower,” notice the subtle signs you tend to ignore, and use a quick yes/no instinct check to cut through overthinking. Along the way we unpack why forcing constant productivity can backfire, leaving you stressed, burned out, and chasing results that feel thin instead of nourishing.

We also connect mind health to nature and seasons. Sometimes you’re not “doing nothing,” you’re resting, integrating, and storing energy for the next phase. We touch on inherited wisdom, memories, and even the challenge of keeping meaningful things without turning life into a shrine. The takeaway is simple: respect your cycle, nourish yourself, and you’ll be amazed by what you can produce when the time is right.

Subscribe, share with a friend who’s feeling stuck, and leave a review if our work helps you. What’s one part of your life that might be growing quietly right now?

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Idea

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Following your gut instinct, I think, and realizing that you have more than what you know you have on consciously. I think that's what we're gonna be talking about in this week's episode of Get Real with the English system. We are therapists, hypnotherapists, to be precise. And we are here to help you. And our podcast is all about mind health and anxiety relief. So welcome and thank you for joining us.

The Potato Story Metaphor

SPEAKER_02 0:33

This week we're going to be reading a little story from our book, Stress Free in Three Minutes. And this story is called The Potato, and it's a metaphor for your life, really, and everybody's life. Okay, here goes. The humble potato grows deep underground, safe and warm, patiently growing day after day. And as the weeks pass, you will know when the potato has fully matured. As the potato plant will produce a flower to let you know that it's the right time for harvest. When the moment arrives, you can rest assured that your potato will be at its best because by now you have understood the growth cycle of the potato. You can look forward to sampling your delicious products and take great delight in what you see because deep inside your root structure, you have eyes like the potato's eyes that can see what you feel. Yes. It's funny to think that you have eyes that can actually see what you feel deep down inside. I think that's something that we forget about, that we can, if we tune in and we look for

Intuition And The Signs We Miss

SPEAKER_02 2:03

that flower, like the potato flower, we will know what we feel, we will know it. We will know when to flower. We will know what our feelings are. We get signs that we often ignore, I think. And when we're not in tune with them, we're not in tune with them, we're not looking out for the flower, the potato flower, we're not in tune knowing when it's the right time for us to fully flower and to fully harvest our skills, as to say. Yeah, I think it's easy to forget that we have this like intuition, yes, and ignore it as well, ignore like the the like the signs that can help us in life because we always very often we talk about red flags and what you know what not to do, but it's not as often we talk about what to do and when to tune in with our real feelings and how to how to yes, how to harvest them in a sense, how to harvest the real feelings that will be productive for us. Exactly. Yes, yes, I do. I think that's why the metaphor of the potato, because it grows silently underground, and you can't see. There's not much to be seen. No, there's very little, it just it's patient and it grows warm under the ground. I planted potatoes once, and it was quite frustrating to tell you the truth. Yeah, my son planted potatoes ages ago, and now every now and again we pull one out and we think, oh my god, that's a potato, and it's massive. So, this is what happens, I think, in life with the skills and with the knowledge that we acquire. We might at times just think, oh, there's nothing, there's nothing to be seen for this. But please let's remember, let's remind ourselves that whatever we do in life, we are taking massive steps. We are learning, and our knowledge will produce one day. It'll come sometimes. You think, what's this useful for? I don't know. What's the point? And sometimes you can feel very um like bogged down or frustrated that you're not getting where you want to go, exactly, and you're not doing what you want to be doing, you don't realise that you're still growing down there, inside of going down there.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

That sounds terrible. That sounds hilarious. Actually, I'm sure that many a listener would say, Yes, I wish indeed. But however, you know what we mean, yeah. You're you're you're growing inside, you're maturing, you're getting ready to harvest. Have you finished having a laugh with that? Not really, no, no, no, the giggles are going on. Okay. The fact is that you can look forward to sampling your produce, and I think that's a lot it's getting worse. You can get used to sampling your produce, and I think that um we often don't realise that, do you? You left me speechless.

Patience Under Pressure And Nourishment

SPEAKER_02 5:28

What I think is that, but even if you're thinking about that, now you've gone down that road. I'm just thinking about how you did, because you mentioned it. No, I did not mention it in the room anyway. Yeah, if you think about it as as uh emotional and sexual beings, yes, we can harvest uh what what's going on down there as well by by just being patient and not like anticipating too much. Yeah, absolutely. If you put too many demands on yourself, you're not going to be able to perform. Oh no. So you have to be patient and you have to be like you have to nourish yourself. You have to nourish your mind and your body. You're right, yeah, because we do, yeah, yeah. We are human sexual beings, for goodness sake, and we must nourish that aspect of our lives in order for it to be balanced. Yeah, and the potato can be, you know what they say. The potato can be a metaphor for for all for patients and all our in the things in life that we maybe put too much pressure on. Pressure on and too much of a burden, too many expectations on. We have to wait for things to happen. Yeah. Yeah, I do think we do have a root structure very much like the potato that is deep down inside us, and and we must, yeah, we have to be patient with it. We have to allow we have to allow ourselves that necessary time to to feel what we feel. Yeah, and at a subconscious or other than conscious level as well, if we if we take on that metaphor of the potato, we can in our lives, you can in the days and weeks to come, you can notice things that begin to flourish and flower, and the the the the things that you will reap from it and harvest that you may be like unexpected gifts for you that you may not have anticipated.

Unexpected Gifts From The Subconscious

SPEAKER_02 7:36

Yeah, because you didn't even consider them to be gifts. I think the thing is for you to become more aware of of all the small steps that you do take without you being aware of them. You don't know it. It's just like sometimes, you know, like when all of a sudden you're at this meeting and you you come out with these words that you think, God, well, that was good. That was clever. That was clever, and you forget, and you think, wonder where I got that from. You don't, you don't well, I mean you're satisfied because you think, God, I knew how to verbalise that rather well, or I knew how to say that. And of course, this is what's been going on inside. You've been patiently waiting, you've allowed yourself that time to grow and cultivate, and cultivate all this knowledge that you learn, and your brain processes it perhaps in different ways. And it's for you to understand, I think, for all of us to understand that we do have this structure, and that if we allow ourselves, I think, a little bit of tuning in to what we're feeling, and like the potatoes' eyes, we too have the eyes to look inside us and sometimes ask ourselves questions. Yeah, and I think if you ask yourself the right questions as well, you'll often come up with the answers. Yeah, there was this like this little game I remember when I we were younger, we used to play like you just have to say yes or no, yes or no, like really quick, quick answers. And often when you did that game, you would think you you would uh come up with these answers that you would think, oh, because you didn't allow your brain the time to fully process them, you just came out with the instinct. And I think you know, sometimes that can be helpful too in certain questions, like do you really want this? Ask yourself the question, you know, really fast. Yes. Yes, yeah, it just says she does no matter an answer. Well, it would give you a straight answer, yeah. Yeah, it does, it does. It'll give you the answer to your question when sometimes you're bogged down by too much mental confusion and too many other people's voices and words and advice and you won't allow your mind to clear in the same way. Yeah, exactly. But if you realize that you do have that deep structure down inside you, and it and it's grown from the day you were born, it grows. Yeah, because it's day by day, isn't it? It's day by day, it's a slow process. Ever since you were firstborn, you've you you you keep knowledge, some of it you forget, but some of the important feedback you remember that. Yeah, and you remember, or you'll remember it either through words that you can hear or through images, and it makes you stronger, doesn't it? It does make you stronger, yeah.

Inherited Wisdom And Letting Go

SPEAKER_02 10:34

There is some knowledge that's just passed down through generations as well. Wow, family, history, family as well, passes down many things, yeah. The knowledge that you might not realize you have. Why why are you laughing at that? No, because it's true, because I was thinking we were clearing out of the uh parents' oh yeah things that we still have. We've kept so much stuff, and I was just thinking that all this knowledge that's passed down through generations. And sometimes you don't want to get rid of things either, because it's like the material things often remind you of your loved ones, and it's hard, like our mum's things, you know, you think but that there's so much of it. There's so much. There's so much you think, what do we do with it? In the end, you have to get rid of some of it. Some of it, but not all of it. No, I know, I know. Obviously, not all of it, but in the end, you can't keep shrines either. You have to keep the memory in your mind and move on. You have to think what gives you joy, the things that give you joy or might be useful, you might think your children might enjoy in the future. Yeah. Like little keepsakes and things. Yeah, that's very, very true. It's um it's often the case that you don't realise how much stuff that you've when you look through your your house or your belongings, you realise how many things that you have that remind you of some stage in your life that you've been through, and maybe it was a stage in which you were more dormant, or maybe it was a stage in which you were more active. But you will be able to analyze it. And if you just close your eyes a minute and you think about that's that part of your life, you can think was that helpful for me? Was it useful in any way, or is it something that I can now let go of and allow myself to flower and produce fruit in a different way? Yeah, I'm too mature.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Well, very well said indeed.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Yeah, because uh with this fast pacing that we have nowadays, I don't think there's a lot of room for change, isn't there? It's like people are like a fickle, they're changing, they want change all the time, they want the new things. Ah, I see what you mean by a lot of room for change. That things go uh fast. They're fast, they're fast, so you change your quick, quick, quick, quick. And sometimes you that you let the maintenance time is frustrating. You can't see what's going on. If you add too many fertilizers, the fruit will not be good. So you know that. So if you try and force yourself to grow, to grow, to be perfect, to be perfect, to be this. You get this horrible watery potato, don't you? Yeah, yeah. Takes water potato. The produce will lack in in deliciousness, substance, and the nourishment. So if you allow yourself the right amount of time, no matter how you might think, what am I doing now? Yeah, you might be dormant now in your life. You might be going through a phase. You may be not you're dormant, but you're not dormant. Exactly. Because you're always like, like what we always say about winter. In winter, we may be have a slower pace of life, you may not want to go outside, but you're like saving all your energy for the the warmer months and the the months that you may be more active in. I

Natural Cycles Burnout And Balance

SPEAKER_02 14:12

think that's a very comforting thought as well for us to realize and not be so harsh on ourselves. So productive and always be producing because sometimes we are being productive without knowing it on the ground. We have to realize that we are nature. We're not just, we don't just like looking at nature, we are nature, we are it. So if we are nature, we follow cycles just like nature does, just like the potato does, just like the trees do. We follow natural cycles. I think we must force ourselves to remember that because if we don't follow the natural cycle, we will get burnt out, we'll feel tired all the time, we'll realize that there's something. We'll feel anxiety. Yes, exactly. Yes, yeah, we feel like we will feel anxious, and I think that happens to a lot of us nowadays because we forget that we are nature, and just like you wouldn't expect a potato to grow like in two weeks, you you don't ex don't expect yourself to all of a sudden know all that stuff that you've been told you you have to know. All of a sudden be super prepared for whatever you have to be prepared for. Hey, give yourself a break. Remember, you are the potato, you are nature as a mammal, and and accept that. Where's all this pressure coming from? From the rest of the world, who cares? You go down deep inside you, and you'll know what the right time is for you. And all of a sudden, when the time is right, you'll be amazed by what you're you can produce. You'll be amazed, you'll think, how on earth did I manage to do that at that time of my life? And listen to us because we have lived a long life now, and we have gone through many cycles, and we know that it can be like that. There are times of frustration when you think, I'm not really doing anything. But you are, but you are, and that might be called resting, but you are, there's importance to that. The same as you need to, you know, you need to play, you need to rest, and you need to work, and we need everything. We need balance. When when children are playing, you don't tell them you're wasting time. Most parents are very happy, they think, oh good, they're playing. Yeah, especially if they're playing like outdoors or something in a group, you think lovely, you know, you're happy. You're happy they're playing. So it we need balance in our lives, don't we? Yeah, and that balance helps us, it helps us grow and it helps us mature. Absolutely.

Share Your Story And Goodbye

SPEAKER_02 17:04

So let us know what you think. Please do send us a text message or message us on YouTube, send us a little message, and come and say hi to us on Instagram as well at get real with the English sisters or ex or wherever you wherever you like, because we're all and let us know if you grow any veggies and if and if you find that perhaps by doing some of this gardening or something has changed inside you as well, that you have learned something about yourself that you didn't know funny enough through the gardening. Because that can often happen, can't it? Yeah, it does. It's very it's quite spiritual. It's quite therapeutic, very therapeutic. Yeah. So do let us know. Thank you very much. Thank you for all your love and support over the years. Uh, we love you very much, and lots of love and smiles from the English sisters. Bye.