Tag: relax

The Art of Doing Nothing

On By MarishaIn Mindset & Well-being1 Comment

We’re very good at being busy and running around, but do we ever manage to stop and truly do nothing?

I recently came across a cool idea: the Art of Nothing by Dr. Alessandra Wall. It’s the simple suggestion to take some time every day to do nothing. Yes, yes, I thought, I know that’s important. But I don’t have time to do nothing.

Most days, we’re running around from thing to thing, rushing and not stopping until the end of the day when, finally, we plop down on the sofa, exhausted. When we do take a break in the evening, we watch TV, check the messages on our phone, scroll through social media, or read a book. We rarely take the time to really and truly do nothing.

Dr. Alessandra Wall argues that having time to do nothing allows our thoughts to wander and make connections, so eventually we can make sense of what is happening in our lives and realize where we’d like to go from here. She makes the point that without such time to gain clarity, we are mostly floating along and may end up in a situation (e.g., job, relationship, etc.) that we wouldn’t have necessarily chosen for ourselves. The feeling of, “This is not the life I wanted,” “How did it come to this?!” or “This is not who I am!” may be resolved if we sometimes let our minds wander, so we can reflect and make sense of the events in our lives.

How to practice the Art of Nothing?

Since I’ve been meditating for years, this idea immediately reminded me of meditation. The similarity is that both meditation and the Art of Nothing provide a way to observe your thoughts and reflect on them. Also, both approaches emphasize sitting down and taking a moment to be present and notice what’s going on.

The difference is that meditation is much more structured and feels goal-oriented (even though ideally it shouldn’t be). When meditating, there is a certain technique we’re using or instructions we’re following. It’s difficult to feel like we’re having a good meditation session because thoughts inevitably come up and distract us from the focus of attention or, in other techniques, the open awareness we’re maintaining. Even if our meditation teacher has told us multiple times that it’s okay and perfectly normal for the mind to wander, we still often feel that we’re supposed to avoid thoughts.

It struck me how different the Art of Nothing felt in that respect. Basically, you plop down on the sofa and let go. Many thoughts will come to mind, and that’s the whole point. You’re not telling your mind to be still or to focus on the present moment; some days it may do so, and other days it may not. That’s okay. You’re just providing space for your mind to do its thing.

Some meditators will point out that this is a type of meditation, and indeed it is. I view it as a more unstructured rest for the mind, or an opportunity to set the mind free for a little while.

Interestingly, for someone like me who is generally quite structured, some unstructured mind space really comes in handy. I practice Doing Nothing (as I call it) 2-3 times a day for 5-10 minutes, and I feel refreshed every time after I’ve done it and better able to engage in the next activity.

It’s difficult not to be goal-oriented

As much as I enjoy this being an unstructured activity, I also struggle with it. If there’s no goal to it, then why am I doing it? How do I know it’s having an effect if I’m not intentional with how I’m doing it? Am I just wasting my time?

With meditation, I used to enjoy having a meditation course or pack to complete or some technique to focus on. However, over the last couple of months, I was feeling like meditation was a burden, one more obligation I had to fulfill. It was difficult to get myself to meditate because I simply didn’t want to. I started getting strangely rebellious against the meditation instructions (“You can’t tell me to take a deep breath! I’ll take a breath if I want to! I’ll do what I want!”), which probably wasn’t a good sign.

For this reason, I’m now enjoying a less structured approach. I literally enjoy plopping down on the sofa, looking outside, and doing nothing. It’s a bit tricky because I can’t quite quiet thoughts like, “Why am I doing this? This is a waste of time,” but I lie there anyway. I put my phone and any books away and let my mind do its thing. Lying there often allows me to notice my body releasing tension, which is such a pleasant feeling. Slowly, my mind also releases a bit, and when I get up, I feel refreshed. It also makes a difference that I feel like I’m doing this because I want to and not because I have to.

I have to say I genuinely enjoy doing nothing! When Jacob tries to tell me something but I’m practicing the Art of Nothing (i.e., chilling on the couch), I simply respond with, “Mmm.” He asks, “Oh, are you doing nothing?” and I say, “Yeah,” with a wide smile on my face. Once, I caught him chuckling. It must be funny seeing me, the one who’s always running around with a to-do list in mind, lounging about and doing nothing.

Have you tried Doing Nothing? How do you like it? Let me know by commenting below or on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

Photo from Matheus Bertelli (Creative Commons license)

Why I can be annoying on vacations

On By MarishaIn Mindset & Well-being, Organization & ProductivityLeave a comment

To be honest, I can sometimes be annoying on vacations. Most people like to let loose and relax when they’re on holiday. I also like to relax, but I can do that best if I have a tentative schedule.

Schedule on vacation

I like to know what we’re going to do: when we will wake up, where we will eat breakfast, what we will do afterwards, for how long, etc. Having that type of clarity allows me to relax and also to anticipate the joy of the upcoming day with excitement. As Gretchen Rubin says, looking forward to a pleasant experience is a great way to get happiness from it.

Of course, it’s fine if things change. It’s just that I like having an idea of how things might go. It also means that I get to discuss what I’d like to do and when with the other people, and they get to share what they want to do as well. So we can all, hopefully, be happy.

Wake up!

I also like to wake up early on vacation. I prefer not to have an alarm clock, but I still wake up relatively early–usually between 7 and 8 am. That’s why I like skiing and hiking holidays: everybody implicitly agrees that you need to get up somewhat early, be active during the day, and relax in the afternoon and evening.

I can trace this back to when I was a child. One summer when I was probably 7 or 8 years old, we went to the seaside with my parents’ friends. After dinner, the adults went out to party, but I was tired and went to sleep. In the morning, I woke up earlier than my parents, so I’d just go downstairs to the cafe and order pancakes. I’d eat my pancakes and read a book until my parents woke up and came to join me an hour or two later.

How funny it must have been for the waiters at the cafe: early in the morning, a kid eating pancakes and reading a book with a serious expression on her face. And when her parents show up, probably yawning, she scolds them, “What took you so long?”

“Come on, let’s go, what are you waiting for?”
And yes, this is actually me.

Time to relax

But I also get grumpy if a vacation is too packed. I like to be active, but I also like to relax. That’s why I don’t go on organized tours: they pack the schedule so full of stuff to do that there’s no time to relax anymore. How is that a vacation?

For the same reason, I don’t like doing hikes that are too long. When I was younger, we did hikes that were 10 or 12 hours long. That’s not my thing. I like to be active for a couple of hours, and then I like to chill. For me, that’s the best combination.

Last week at our honeymoon, Jacob and I made sure to combine being active and relaxing. On one of the days, he wanted to do a longer hike, which would have meant we missed our afternoon relaxing time in the spa area. I retaliated! I knew it was just one day, but I still wanted my relaxing time. In the end, we found a compromise, so all was good.

Be warned!

Sometimes, some people may think I’m a bit annoying to go on vacation with. (Okay, maybe it happens often, and it’s most people.) Apparently, not everyone wants to have a plan for the next day, to wake up early and be active, or to relax each day. To me, these things seem perfectly reasonable for a good vacation, so all I need to do is find people who share my preferences. But if you were considering going on vacation with me, be warned! 😉

What are your peculiar vacation traits? What annoys you that other people do when you’re on vacation together? Let me know by commenting below or on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

What I did to truly relax on my honeymoon

On By MarishaIn Mindset & Well-being, Organization & ProductivityLeave a comment

Last week, Jacob and I went on our honeymoon. It was an amazing trip, truly a dream come true. A few months before we got married, we started thinking about where we’d like to go, and I had this vision of a cottage in the Austrian Alps. I pictured a cozy, wooden house with flowers on the balcony, cuddled up in a valley between two mountains. Green grass in the valley, white snow on the mountains, and blue sky above.

This is what we saw when we stepped outside of our cottage.

And this was exactly what we got. Everything was wonderful, and we managed to enjoy it thoroughly. But how did we do that?

Sometimes when we go on vacation, we have trouble letting go and relaxing. We keep thinking about work, about unfinished business in the office or at home, or about something that is stressing us out. This time, we could have also slipped into that trap. I could have thought, “Will I have enough time to finish editing my paper? When will I start my new experiment? I have so much work to do!” Jacob could have worried about how his practice is doing or about the content he needs to write for his website. There are always plenty of things to worry about.

This is what we did to get our peace of mind.

Disconnect

I didn’t check my work email or Slack. Not even once. Woohoo! I knew that if I checked them, I’d be sucked in, and I’d feel as though I urgently had to respond to a request or a question. Fortunately, my job has very few urgent things in general, so even when I did check my email the following Monday, there was absolutely nothing urgent. How nice!

Now, Jacob’s situation is different. He works with patients, and he needs to be somewhat accessible in case someone needs a timely response, so he couldn’t not open email. What he did was that he only checked his phone (email, messages, etc.) twice a day: once in the morning and once in the evening. If somebody required an immediate response, he answered briefly, giving them the information they needed but also letting them know that he would provide a thorough response as soon as he got back.

We even took a break off of social media. That was quite nice because being more disconnected from the world in general made us more connected to the present experience, to the wilderness, and to each other. We even told each other stories from our lives that had never come up before! Who knew there were any stories left untold! (Let’s check again in 20 years…)

This was one of our favorite paths, winding among the trees.

Find other engaging things to do

I know for myself that if I’m doing nothing all day, my mind wanders to some unpleasant things, and then I start worrying. If my mind is left to its own devices, it would probably drift back to what it’s used to thinking about: work and questions about the future. To avoid that, I need to give my mind something engaging to think about.

Since we were in the mountains, we went hiking every day. There were many routes we could take and many places we could visit. So, each evening we checked the weather for the following day, the available routes, the open lodges/huts, the difficulty and length of the routes, etc. We also took into account how tired we were from the day’s hike and decided on which route to do. It was a lot of fun, and we did many cool routes.

In the morning, we’d get up, have a delicious breakfast (my absolutely favorite meal of the day!!!), and head out for the day’s hike. It was exciting to do a new route each day and reach a different hut.

Also, once we arrived and wanted to have lunch, we had to figure out what the Austrian names for the different dishes actually meant. On the first few days, we had some surprising food experiences (such as ham-and-cheese salad which is not a salad at all!), but that also kept things interesting. In the end, we found some truly delicious soups, such as frittata soup and bacon-noodle soup. And, naturally, we had lots and lots of sauerkraut.

I also did quite a bit of reading. In the afternoons after we came back from hiking, we went to the spa area to relax properly. My favorite part was the relax zone, a quiet area with big, tall windows, letting the sunlight in and allowing a gorgeous view of the snowy mountains. There were these wooden swing lounging chairs (that’s my best attempt at an explanation) where you could lie, enjoy the sun and the view, and read. Also, I was reading a very exciting novel, so I didn’t want to leave at all. That was my favorite part of the day.

The gorgeous view from a peak that was very steep and slippery but so worth it!

Dive in

I think this is the key to why I managed to relax and let go on this holiday: I took steps to (1) disconnect from my everyday world and (2) actively engage with the world around me at that moment. And it worked! So much so that we didn’t want to leave… One more honeymoon, maybe? Hmm.

How do you relax when you’re on vacation? Or do you find it difficult to stop thinking about your regular life? Let me know by commenting below or on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.