“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it” Sydney J Harris
For most people life goes a little like this. Look after the home and work hard for 6 months, take a week or two leave to relax and repeat again and again. Then we wonder why after being back a week we feel stressed again and that post-break relaxation has disappeared.
For the same reason that we can’t exercise for a week and be fit for the six months, we can’t expect to find tranquillity, calm and the sense of relaxation we’re looking for after a week sitting on a beach. You’ll be much better off introducing a regular relaxation activity into your life and complementing this with a regular extended break.
Normally we’d do a bit of research and provide figures of the amount of people with high levels of stress, increased feelings of pressure and decreased levels of work/life balance. We’re not going to bother because it’s plain for all to see. In fact, think about your lifestyle and those of your family and friends. It’s highly likely you’d put yourself in one of the above categories.
One way to support this is to take an extended break and disconnect from your day-to-day life. We can’t encourage this enough and in a future post will dive into the travesty that is the current employee’s average level of accrued annual leave and the importance of regular time away to leading a healthy and balanced life.
Today we’re going to focus on smaller, bite-sized relaxation activities that by introducing into your daily routine will help bring a sense of calm and relaxation into your life for more than a week or two a year.
Learning something new
You might be thinking now hold on a moment? How is learning something new going to relax me? Typically a major cause of stress is our current mindset or the thoughts we’re having about a particular issue or situation. It’s not that we don’t want to have zero thoughts at all – in fact positive thoughts would be very helpful – but want to remove the thoughts that are causing us to stress or feel under pressure.
Hence learning something new is a great to find a sense of relaxation. By forcing your mind to think about and learn different skills you’re forcing your attention from something that’s causing your negative stress to an activity that will stimulate growth and learning. We’d put a caveat around this though in that the activity needs to be interesting to you and ideally isn’t super complex. For example, if you have passion for food then learning how to cook a certain meal might be your outlet. We wouldn’t recommend learning biochemistry or financial accounting in your case.
Meditation
Distracting your mind is one thing but what if the best way to relax was to switch off your mind completely. Welcome to the world of meditation which is spreading like wildfire. A quick google search will locate a bunch of articles, reports and stories about the benefits of meditation and success stories from those who practice this.
Meditation is a form of practicing mindfulness and we’ll be devoting future articles to dive into the benefits, methods and types of meditation further. In the meantime though, there’s a couple of practical ways to start exploring this for those interested.
We started practising meditation using a method of focused attention. Sounds complex right? How about if we said set a timer for 5 minutes on your phone, sit in a comfortable position with your eyes closed and take deep breaths in and out? As you’re breathing focus your mind and thoughts on the breath filling and leaving your lungs and if your focus begins to wander elsewhere, bring your attention back to your breath. That’s it and the benefits you’ll feel after a few days of doing this consecutively will speak for themselves.
If you want something a little more guided, we’d suggest downloading an app called Calm which will provide instructional meditation lessons. A premium option exists to unlock all of the content within the app however the lessons available under the free version are more than plenty to get started – to be honest we’ve been using the free version for over 12 months.
Or whatever works for you
There are literally so many other activities out there that will be super relaxing for some and the complete opposite for others. You’ll have a fair idea of what does and doesn’t work for you although whatever your chosen activity of choice it should be enjoyable, distract you from negative or draining thoughts without being too stimulating and leave you feeling good afterwards.
Some of the relaxation activities we recommend include exercising, reading books, listening to music, watching happy movies, yoga and having a quiet drink with our favourite people in the world.
Today’s fast-paced world makes the feeling of relaxation more and more difficult to grasp and hold onto. Whilst an extended break is one way to help disconnect, unwind and relax it’s not enough alone to support feeling relaxed for a sustainable period. It’s the care and time you give yourself each day that will be the different in maintaining this despite the pressures life will throw at you. Whatever your antidote of choice, do it regularly.
Action for the week:
- Spend 15 minutes thinking about your lifestyle and relationship with stress. Do you have enough relaxation in your life?
- If not, think about the activities you currently do? Are these working and if so, are you doing them regularly enough? If not, what else could you look to introduce?
The end outcome you’re looking is to identify 2-3 relaxation activities that you can do regularly including one activity that you can every day and another at least once a week. If you’re not able to do this, reconsider your activities so that you can.
Relaxation helps to bring a sense of calm and well-being that will transcend into other parts of your life. You’ll be more resilient, have higher levels of energy, feel happier and positively affect the people around you. Short of falling asleep on a train and missing your stop, there are literally very little downsides to feeling more relaxed. It can be a huge factor in leading a happy and healthy life.
In our next post we’re going to dive deeper into the world of meditation. Where it came from, why it’s getting so much attention and the different ways you can introduce it into your life. It’s one of our secret weapons in leading a healthier life and we can’t wait to share it with you. You won’t want to miss it!
We’d love to hear your thoughts on relaxation activities, what has and hasn’t worked for you and any other comments or questions you have. Please reach out to us at any of our social media channels.