![\"Beach](\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2687\/4290027967_1e3705d956_m.jpg\" "\\"Beach")
<\/a>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not going to lie to you. There are times in my life when I feel I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so busy that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ever going to end. When you work for yourself, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sometimes a good thing. The other side is that you may tend to forget that you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t keep that pace up for extended periods, especially once you hit middle age, when your body decides it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to keep up with your mind anymore. There are all sorts of studies that say Americans don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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?<\/p>\n
My wife is one of those people. She has a schedule that would drown most people. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also a clothes designer and maker, and has also done some interior decorating. In other words, this is a busy woman. I call her \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Shark\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s said that if a shark stops moving, it dies. When my wife stops moving, she falls asleep, and it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to matter where she is (except when she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s driving; I guess that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t count as stopping). She sleeps hard, but brief; I wonder all the time if she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually getting any real rest.<\/p>\n
What happens to us? We get stressed, which takes its toll on our bodies and our minds. Suddenly we have muscle aches, headaches, can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sleep, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t eat well, depression, high blood pressure, more incidences of heart attacks, irritability... on and on. It becomes obvious that we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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.<\/p>\n
What to do? Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find at least 5 minutes to do some stretching or other light exercise in the house. <\/p>\n
You may not have the time or the money to go away to a fancy health spa, but it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re busy doing things in the house, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m watching to learn something, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll admit that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find that very relaxing.<\/p>\n
First, take a deep breath every once in awhile. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not going to tell you some fancy way to breathe, which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen, heard, and read in some books. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just going to say that deep breathing is a great way to get a little bit more oxygen into the body, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something that can be done anywhere, at any time, without disrupting your day. <\/p>\n
Second, have a nice stretch. Make it a big one, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve earned it. Then have another; stretching is very calming.<\/p>\n
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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re really busy because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re trying to remember everything, yet they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find when they write it down that it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to be done right away. There are very few circumstances where everything has to be completed immediately.<\/p>\n
Four, when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re 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. <\/p>\n
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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funeral, and how depressed I was about it. I turned on the television at 6AM and there was this children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s show on called Bear In the Big Blue House. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s for very young children, but for some reason it intrigued me, and it made me laugh, and I remembered how in my dad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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. <\/p>\n
Nothing I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve given you here is permanent. Relaxation, like many other things, takes repetition. But as Zig Ziglar says, you have to eat everyday also.
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In America today, we have no concept of the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153relax\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. To some people, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the inevitable time when the weekend comes and you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to go to work. To some, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coming home and turning on the TV, while sitting at the computer eating a meal and having your spouse tell you about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[1009,1010],"class_list":["post-2971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-behavior","tag-relaxation","tag-relieving-stress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}