Stress, stress and more stress.
Seems to be a common pattern in a lot of people’s lives.
Stressful deadlines.
Stressful tasks.
Stressful schedules.
Stacks with tasks – say that 5 times quickly
– that all need to be completed in a very short timeframe.
I used to not like my job and blame it for being too stressful, but I stuck with it and changed my own behaviors instead.
I still work at that same place and it’s still “stressful”.
It’s just that I manage to not feel the stress in the same way and can remain calm.
The simple solution was to let my brain catch back up.
The constant influx of information makes our brains work on overload and have trouble keeping up with everything.
Which also means that any task, or stack of them, coming your way, increases the strain and computing power.
What I found that helped me insanely well was to be more mindful.
Now, what does being mindful actually mean?
Because you probably shift towards thinking of meditation and instantly say that it’s not for you.
But being mindful is rather about being aware of your mind – meditation is just a method of doing so.
So, why should we care about it?
Because by constantly being distracted and having a new thing to do at every moment, our time will move faster and faster.
We become less and less capable of focusing and build up the expectation that things have to go fast.
We tend to lose patience and our ability to remember things decrease.
Our dopamine system gets manipulated and regular “fun” activities may not be satisfying any longer.
It’s a loop that gets worse every time it restarts.
The approach I used and still do is sooo underrated and quite boring to be honest, but it is sooo good.
It makes wonders.
It’s being bored…
And funnily enough, being bored is not something people recommend today.
Quite the opposite in fact, people do anything to not be bored and we’re provided with everything necessary to succeed with this.
But that’s the solution.
3 times every single day I lay myself down in the couch or wherever I can and just stare up for 10 minutes.
Stare into the roof or the sky and let my brain think.
Let my brain catch up.
It does mean you have to clear your schedule for 10 minutes, but you don’t necessarily have to do it 3 times if you absolutely can’t or don’t want to.
It will probably still work anyway.
Those 10 minutes can easily be found and taken from your phone and/or screen usage.
After having done it for a long time now, I sometimes want to continue just laying down and think.
In fact, taking a longer session every once in a while can help even more.
I’m talking a couple of hours, but it could be difficult to find that time.
There’s no denying it would be valuable though.
Combined with journaling and other mindfulness activities, the feeling is just something else.
I mean 30 minutes total every day and in turn life starts making sense and feel good for once, yes please.
30 minutes and you’ll probably still not be near enough to what your screen time is = you’re not losing anything here.
Time is a tough obstacle but so is your phone and computer that you decide to spend your time on.
Make better decisions and your life will simply become better.
It’s that simple.