In America today, we have no concept of the word “relax”. To some people, it’s the inevitable time when the weekend comes and you don’t have to go to work. To some, it’s coming home and turning on the TV, while sitting at the computer eating a meal and having your spouse tell you about little Timmy and all the trouble he got into during the day. To some, it’s waiting until Friday so they can booze it up, forget everything that happened during the week and also that particular night, waking up to the porcelain goddess and her cooling, healing presence, hoping they can make it to bed for a few hours so they can do it all again Saturday night; after all, who wants to stay home on a Saturday night?

Beach Hammock
Royce Bair via Compfight

I’m not going to lie to you. There are times in my life when I feel I’m so busy that I’m not sure it’s ever going to end. When you work for yourself, that’s sometimes a good thing. The other side is that you may tend to forget that you can’t keep that pace up for extended periods, especially once you hit middle age, when your body decides it doesn’t want to keep up with your mind anymore. There are all sorts of studies that say Americans don’t get enough sleep; hard to get any sleep when your mind is always working on the next thing. Does anyone else have dreams about projects and work more often than, well, anything else?

My wife is one of those people. She has a schedule that would drown most people. She’s always on the go, and this is even with a full time job. She also has home businesses as well as projects she creates for organizations she belongs to. She’s also a clothes designer and maker, and has also done some interior decorating. In other words, this is a busy woman. I call her “The Shark”, because it’s said that if a shark stops moving, it dies. When my wife stops moving, she falls asleep, and it doesn’t seem to matter where she is (except when she’s driving; I guess that doesn’t count as stopping). She sleeps hard, but brief; I wonder all the time if she’s actually getting any real rest.

What happens to us? We get stressed, which takes its toll on our bodies and our minds. Suddenly we have muscle aches, headaches, can’t sleep, don’t eat well, depression, high blood pressure, more incidences of heart attacks, irritability... on and on. It becomes obvious that we can’t sustain such a pace for too long a period of time. We need to find ways to break up the day, at least, as well as find other periods of time where we can just sit down, rest our weary minds and tend to ourselves a little bit; we deserve it.

What to do? Here’s where I come in. All of these things I do; some of these things I should do more often. There is a reality which states that we don’t always have the time to do everything, and that includes certain things for relaxation. With a very tight schedule, you may not have the time to go to a gym for a full workout. But it doesn’t mean you can’t find at least 5 minutes to do some stretching or other light exercise in the house.

You may not have the time or the money to go away to a fancy health spa, but it doesn’t mean you can’t find maybe 30 minutes here and there to drive to a park or small lake and just sit and look at it. Or even if you’re busy doing things in the house, it doesn’t mean you can’t turn on some of your favorite music in the background every once in awhile, instead of having the TV on. I love television, but most of the time I’m watching to learn something, and I’ll admit that I don’t find that very relaxing.

First, take a deep breath every once in awhile. I’m not going to tell you some fancy way to breathe, which I’ve seen, heard, and read in some books. I’m just going to say that deep breathing is a great way to get a little bit more oxygen into the body, and it’s something that can be done anywhere, at any time, without disrupting your day.

Second, have a nice stretch. Make it a big one, you’ve earned it. Then have another; stretching is very calming.

Third, take some time to write out everything you believe you have to do, both work related and personal. Doing this will allow you to determine just how busy you might be. Sometimes people think they’re really busy because they’re trying to remember everything, yet they’ll find when they write it down that it doesn’t look as daunting as they thought, and that immediately gives a little bit of stress relief. If your list is large, try to prioritize things that are immediate, and things that don’t have to be done right away. There are very few circumstances where everything has to be completed immediately.

Four, when you’re at home, find 5 minutes to sit in, or lay down in, the most comfortable place you have in your house. Though I love to lay in my bed, we have a big, comfortable, plush brown chair in the living room, and sometimes I just go in there and sit and stare at the entertainment center with the TV off.

And five, which may involve television, find something that amuses you and have a great laugh. Laughter really is the best medicine when you can find it. I remember the day of my father’s funeral, and how depressed I was about it. I turned on the television at 6AM and there was this children’s show on called Bear In the Big Blue House. It’s for very young children, but for some reason it intrigued me, and it made me laugh, and I remembered how in my dad’s last year he had discovered the Teletubbies and started watching it because it made him laugh. My wife loves old Warner Brothers cartoons, as do I, and we make each other laugh by repeating the lines to each other.

Nothing I’ve given you here is permanent. Relaxation, like many other things, takes repetition. But as Zig Ziglar says, you have to eat everyday also.