I was in at the office early (for a Monday morning), which meant that there weren't many people around and I could enjoy a cup of coffee in relative silence. It was a nice way to start the day, and as people filtered in, they sat down and we discussed the weekend gone. Most people were on hobby runs, taking their kids to ice hockey, football, skating, or dancing trainings and games. They didn't seem to have found it overly relaxing.
Relaxation is something I have thought a bit about over the years, as I am not very good at just doing nothing. For me to relax, it has to be more than just sitting around and most likely, I have to get the feeling that whatever I am doing, there is more purpose to it. Even travelling on a beach holiday (not my favorite thing to do), I can't just lay in the sand or by the pool, because it stresses me out that I am just "wasting" time. I am more relaxed when I get to see something new, do something new, experience something different.
But, since I don't travel alone, I have come to accept that for many people, doing nothing is their condition for relaxing, so I try to accept this. Rather than complaining about sitting around (as I would have done when younger), I bite my tongue and find something else to entertain my mind. The complaining doesn't help anyway, it just emphasizes the discomfort, and increases my annoyance.
Not relaxing.
Finding interesting things to do when having to be in boring situations, is a skill of sorts. For me, I generally fallback onto observing people, and looking to predict their behavior. I do this in "boring" meetings also, where I end up watching people's actions, as they themselves tune out, get distracted, or roll their eyes. It is pretty telling to see how engaged people are in a meeting, just by watching their faces.
It relaxes me.
I think part of the relaxation of observing people, comes through the removal of their layers, as well as my own. It is a good way to see humans being humans, being flawed and imperfect. And seeing it played out live, takes the pressure off me to appear a certain way, or live up to a certain standard. My standards are my own and we can never meet the expectations of others fully, but lowering that bar can go a long way to not only relaxing, but also returning our attention so that it can be spent on other things that have more value.
Being bored, is a waste of time.
Being bored is a good thing because it should indicate that we have free energy to spend on something of value. But, staying bored is useless. If we take the prompt to find something to do, but don't just look to fill up the space with anything, as long as we aren't bored, we can actually draw a lot of value from it. And, at least for me, doing something valuable, is relaxing, because it doesn't have the stress of procrastination, and it brings with it the sense that there will be future benefit of some kind.
I wonder what the parents did, while their kids practiced and played over the weekend. Were they watching intently, were they scrolling through their phones, catching up on work, talking with other parents, staring into space? Did they put their time to good use, or was it time of doing nothing?
Is doing nothing, more or less stressful?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]