We all know that relaxation and balance are vital to mental and physical health. When we’ve been too busy for too long, we begin to feel worn-out and run-down. It isn’t always easy to get away from it all in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. However, the beauty is that you can find balance without getting away by incorporating relaxation into your daily life.
Work Out
Working out may not seem “relaxing” from the outside. But exercise helps to reduce the stress hormones in your body, replacing them with feel-good endorphins. It also helps manage the effects of stress, such as tight muscles or an inability to sleep. If you can incorporate even a thirty-minute workout into your routine, it can do wonders for your stress levels.
But for some people, even a thirty-minute workout is hard to manage. In this case, adding micro-workouts may be the best option. Micro-workouts are brief spurts of high activity—as short as ten minutes. They offer many of the same benefits of longer workouts and slip more easily into your routine. These can happen throughout the day, interrupting periods of inactivity.
Let Go of What You Don’t Need
There are only so many hours in a day, and we often don’t use them as effectively as we could. That’s not to say that we should become machines that efficiently crank out work without allowing time for pleasure. But there is something to be said about activities that take up time that we don’t enjoy as much as other things.
The obvious example is the time we spend scrolling through social media, but this may also include other things. Sleeping too much (beyond the standard eight hours) or watching TV also fall under this category. Not that these things are bad, especially in moderation, but taking the time to set some things aside frees up our schedule, making us feel more relaxed.
Bring It Into Your Surroundings
Chaotic surroundings often make us feel stressed even when we are trying to relax. Conversely, creating peaceful surroundings can help us feel relaxed even when we’re working. Finding ways to make your home more relaxing can be as simple as cleaning and organizing your space or as complex as redesigning your room with more relaxing colors and lights.
Schedule Relaxation
There is a myriad of things vying for your attention in your day-to-day life. We schedule meetings, appointments, and events, and because we write them down in our planners, we rarely miss them. But we rarely think about trying to schedule relaxation time. Penciling in your relaxation not only gives you time to kick back, but it reminds you that rest is as important as the other things in your schedule.
Relaxation doesn’t have to look like an island getaway. By learning how to incorporate relaxation into your daily life, you can find peace even on your busiest days.
