Resting and relaxing after a hard day of work may involve sitting in front of the TV and just unwinding, however, this is not always the best way to relax. When you’re regularly exercising or you’re working in a high stress environment you will need more relaxation than you could expect.
How much relaxation do you need per day? You need to regularly take a proper rest once every week in short bursts or longer relaxation trips every few weeks. Having a proper relaxation session will mean you can easily take care of yourself and avoid some of the negative issues associated with not resting and relaxing enough.
However, you may find yourself asking what the negative effects are of not resting enough, how you can easily just relax without having to lose time to other things or why the things you usually do to relax is not effective.
The answer to these questions can be difficult to answer and relaxing properly can be a larger challenge than you expect. So, follow along and find out how to relax properly, and why your usually routine needs to be shaken up.
The Negative Effects of Not Relaxing
There are a lot of dangers of not relaxing or resting enough, even if you are constantly working out you can be in danger of overworking your mind and body and the negative effects quickly start piling up.
Getting your routine to include moments of silence from the rest of the world is an important and vital step to staying healthy and continually improving yourself.
Some of the most common pitfalls people fall into that causes permanent or short-term damage to their health can range from not sleeping to not taking care of their bodies.
Not Enough Sleep
When you are working full time, taking care of someone you love, exercising daily, and trying to hang out with your friends it can be quite easy to decide sleep is not the most important.
However, this usually causes irreversible damage to the mind and body, being awake all the time means that nothing in your body gets to reset.
Damage from being awake too long can involve decreased brain function, moodiness because your mind can’t reset and even getting physically sick.
These are things that will happen if you decide that sleep is less important than everything else, having the right amount of sleep for your body type and age will mean that you can more easily relax and shut off when it is important.
You will also have the added benefit of being able to create a full routine if you sleep an exact amount each night. However, sleep is not the catch all, end all danger of not resting and relaxing, nor can it fix every problem on its own, there are other dangers that need to be watched out for.
Your Brain is Overworked and Overtaxed
Not a lot of people realize when they’re constantly thinking of something, nor do they realize when stress becomes a real problem. Whether we like it or not it takes conscious effort to shut our brains down, letting us think of other less important things that does not make us stressed.
Overworking your brain, constantly focusing on a challenge or problem that lies ahead can and will cause your head to become heavily overworked.
This combined with other bad habits causes a lack of clear thinking, made worse by the fact your head refuses to focus on a single thing, the constant feeling of stress because you know there is a problem that lays ahead.
Your head will become overworked by doing this, meaning you can no longer focus on one thing when you really need to. This cause a domino effect, letting you quickly lose focus on what you’re doing and making mistakes.
Causing more stress and quickly you’ll find yourself losing track and becoming lost entirely in what you’re supposed to be doing.
The Body Begins to Fail
This is something that a lot of people never think will happen, because they’re eating healthy food, regularly exercising, and doing everything else that they’ve been told to do.
However, if you’re not resting and relaxing enough your body will quickly start giving in, in many ways doing things you though would never happen.
Your body, just like your mind, needs to do things out of the ordinary quite regularly, if you run every day it just means there has to be a day or two every week where you just walk.
If you’re lifting weights every day, it means you need to have a day where you only do light exercises like running or even just swimming.
A body that’s never allowed to rest, allowed to experience something different than its every day routine will fail. This can cause permanent damage to the point where you may even lose the function or efficiency you’ve always enjoyed.
These Are Steps to Getting More Properly Relaxed
There’s a big difference between being lazy and relaxing or resting, and many people fail to realize this in time. Being lazy means, you never stop relaxing, it means that when you know you should be walking or running you choose to stay at home and eat something unhealthy.
Relaxing means that you’re taking a break from your regular routine to let your mind and body not be stressed out. Whether it’s for an hour before getting back to work every evening or when taking a two- or three-day mini vacation every few weeks.
Different Routine
This is the most obvious and important thing you can do to relax both your mind and body. Many people like to do this once a day, just not doing anything with work, exercise, or anything else.
Some more active people may just take a walk without their phones around the block or go to visit their best friend for a few hours to do nothing but talk about, well, nothing important.
Finding a new routine
This may seem counterintuitive to those that are just now starting to exercise regularly but changing and adjusting your routine every few months will enable you to be more relaxed.
Changing your exercise routine, your food routine and even your social routine will mean that you can easily and comfortably relax in new ways. An early morning walk is a lot different than a late afternoon walk.
Adding new things
Having your routine the same way every day is not something that breeds excitement, and similarly your body will become stressed if you do the exact same thing every day.
Adding something new to your routine will prevent routine fatigue, if you’ve never made your own food then it may be a good addition to try that, or even just sitting outside reading a book for an hour each day. As long as it’s new it can stop unnecessary stress.
Break the work
This is the easiest one to do and also the one that most people fail at doing. Stop working, get away from your phone, your computer or anything else that connects you to the outside world.
Many people make the mistake of never doing this, constantly taking their work with them, causing stress even when there’s nothing they can do about it.
Getting away
Sometimes the easiest answer really is the most effective one, leaving all your stress, your routine and everything else behind will give you the best relaxation in the world.
The need to get away is not just something made up by ad agencies and movies, it is a vital way of reaching a blissful state of rest and relaxation.
Final Thoughts on How Much Relaxation Do You Need Per Day
Getting enough rest and relaxation is one of the most important parts of keeping yourself healthy, in our modern lives it may be easy to never stop.
But this is the most dangerous thing you can do, getting away from everything and resting will mean you have less problems and can continue working for a lot longer.
So, go and take the moment to stop, break the routine and rest your tired self in a way that heals you.
