Rest, Relaxation and our mindset

So, today I posted this pic that stated the importance of rest and relaxation and then Anju and Neha came with some excellent question. While I was trying to answer the question, the text became so long that I has to write it as a blog :).

The Post I had shared said this

"  Eat when you are Hungry,
    Rest when you are Tired,
    Relax when you are stressed
    Step back when you are overwhelmed
    Listen to your body    "

So, to give you an overview, they had a point that its not always possible to rest and relax when sometimes we cannot afford it for some reason.

Here is my viewpoint on this as I can exactly relate to what they mean. I have been through it as well.


Its all about 2 things
1) Your priorities ( remember this comes from how important it is for you )
2) How you manage them

When we plan our daily tasks, we give more priorities to other tasks than our rest or relaxation. This is visible from the fact that we don't keep time for it. Do you? Everyday when you wake up or during the day, do you actually think you need to keep sometime for rest? Because we think its not important. We feel it is more important to accomplish a task and feel content than to rest and keep our bodies healthy. How about having a task to relax in between and checking at the end of day the difference it made and then feeling content?

Do you actually know that relaxation is the most important part of healing ?
Had we in today's world paid attention to it, we would not have as many diseases as we come across.
Also, do you know , when we do things mindfully , that is also part of relaxation as it helps us in not stressing?  Do it yourself and see. When you do a task mindfully as in why you are doing it, how much time will it take, what approach should I take for best results and am I enjoying it etc, you shall see it doesn't stress you and doesn't tire you.

Of course , some places you need to stretch your limits because that's when you know your limits and how to handle it.


Step 1 : Keep the rest part of your plan.
Step 2: How much time do you need for it? You need to learn to listen to your body for that
  a) During weekdays when I am in office and constantly being pulled here and there, I mindfully take a note of it and end of day look and see , how I feel end of day. If I look fine, good, then lets continue doing that. If I am tired, what is the reason of tiredness?
    i) Take short breaks of 5 minutes after a while and in that break do something that relaxes you. For me even talking to friends mindfully for 5 minutes on a topic I love also is relaxing. Have tea, talk something different from your office work.

 ii ) At times when office days are too stressful like you have something serious discussions involving your emotions/ mental stress. In this case you need to take a break and talk to someone so you get out your emotions or stress. Once that is out , you feel better.If you think you can continue working, go back and work. If you think you cannot, then go home or somewhere which will relax you. You think your work is more important and u keep working and result is body getting tired and your job not getting full justice. Emotional/mental stress also calls for sick leave, just that we don't think that way.

 iii) Too much work pressure and needs to be finished quickly. Emotionally you are fine here, but when you constantly do a work without a break stresses you. So , learn to take a break for 5 minutes every hour. Remember when you take short breaks it increases your productivity and keeps your health also better.

iv) One thing that I also love to do is to frequently check what I am doing, how much time it shall take, is there is better way to do it quicker, if not can I set expectation that this will not be finished today. Don't get overwhelmed and keep working like a donkey ( sorry I don't mean it literally here, hope you get my point). Sit back and think in such times what you should do and how.


Remember! the world is not going upside down or people are not dying if you will take a short break.

The lesson here is to listen to your body and respect it. Give it what it needs. If we don't listen to it when its giving us signals in silence, you will have to hear it scream in form of diseases later.


The bigger problem here is that we know other peoples need more than our own self which includes mental and physical.