How to Relax: Stop Being Busy, Take a Break and Get Better Results While Doing Less

by Martin Meadows

The state in which you start your day shapes your state of mind for the entire day.

The key to implementing meditation in your life is to start small. Even if you meditate for just five minutes a day, the mere practice will reduce your stress – even if your thoughts are jumping from one thing to another the entire time.

The key in meditation is to focus on the present moment and the sensations traveling through your body while you sit still.

YOUR RITUALS CREATE YOUR LIFE: QUICK RECAP 1. How you start your day affects how you’re going to feel later on. If you start your day in a rush, your entire day will feel rushed. If you start it more slowly, you’ll feel less overwhelmed and busy. 2. Start waking up at least 20 minutes earlier to start your day the right way. You shouldn’t rush your morning ritual. 3. Meditation is one of the keys to enter the positive state of mind and prepare yourself for the day ahead. Start with three to five minutes of sitting still and focusing on your breath. Relax your muscles, refocus each time you lose your concentration, and enjoy the process. 4. Gratitude is crucial to a happy life. If you start your day expressing appreciation and gratitude for what you already have, you’ll uplift yourself and be better prepared for the day awaiting you. 5. Each morning, re-read your personal vision and review your short-term goals. Read Tony Robbins’ book Unlimited Power if you don’t know how to do it. 6. Reviewing your plans and reading inspirational books will get you in a more resourceful and confident state of mind.

Chances are your entire body is rigid and tense, causing you pain every single day. It’s not only physical pain we’re talking about – inflexibility and decreased range of motion will also affect your mental health. Your physiology reflects your state of mind. A single massage therapy session can almost instantly change your state from overstressed and exhausted to refreshed and happy. Studies on military veterans show that massage reduces anxiety, worry, depression, physical pain, irritability and tension25. Another study, conducted on nurses during work hours, shows that even simple 15-minute chair massage reduces stress-related symptoms26. Massage can also significantly reduce chronic low-back pain, reducing the use of anti-inflammatory drugs for pain27. Regular massage therapy is also beneficial for older adults. It produces a relaxation effect for the entire body, lowers blood pressure, decreases stress, and improves balance28. Massage is also effective at controlling blood pressure, lowering it for up to 72 hours after massage29. Massage is one of the most effective ways to reduce your stress and improve your well-being.

Massage isn’t the cheapest therapy. If you want to have a massage once or twice a month, the costs add up quickly.

If you want quality work, it is often worth the price tag! Find a self-employed Massage Therapist - they are most often worth every dollar and are passionate about what they do.

Massaging your back is more tricky and can’t be performed properly without some equipment. You can take a ball of any size (from a tennis ball to a basketball), put it against a wall and move your body against it, relieving the tension from your lower to upper back.

From a Licensed Massage Therapist - the tennis ball is the safest and most effective option.

Regular massage therapy is one of the keys to maintain your body and mind in a healthy state. Find a way to benefit from it regularly.

LET YOUR BODY RECHARGE: A QUICK RECAP 1. If you don’t get enough sleep, you behave like a drunk person. Get more sleep – either by making the time to sleep longer during the night or taking a nap during the day. 2. The most time-efficient way to get more sleep and recharge yourself is to take a 15 to 20 minute power nap. If you have the time, take a 90-minute nap – it’s the most powerful way to re-energize yourself during the day. 3. There are seven main factors influencing your sleep quality. To improve it, maintain a consistent sleep schedule, make your bedroom relatively cool, and make your sleep area as dark and quiet as possible. Get a new mattress if you've been sleeping on the same mattress for more than 10 years. Avoid blue light before sleep. If you can’t stop your racing mind, get out of bed and write down all your thoughts. Avoid caffeine 7 to 8 hours before going to sleep. Don’t eat heavy meals two to three hours before going to sleep. 4. Fasting rebuilds dysfunctional components of your body. It has a positive effect on your cardiovascular health and your brain. It can help lose weight, decrease bad cholesterol levels and triglyceride levels. 5. Three most common approaches to fasting are: fasting for 16 to 20 hours every day and eating in a shorter window, abstaining from food for 24 hours once or twice a week, and having a 36-hour fast by skipping an entire day of eating. 6. Massage therapy is one of the most effective ways to battle stress and recharge your...

GET AWAY FROM IT ALL TO REGAIN ENERGY: QUICK RECAP 1. Noise pollution leads to increased stress. If you live in a city, it’s even more important to soundproof your home as much as possible. 2. Some of the most effective ways to reduce the noise in your house include: investing in thick carpets, covering walls with canvas paintings or hangings, and using blinds and curtains. Old appliances can also generate a lot of noise. You can either insulate the rooms in which these appliances operate or buy new, quieter, and more energy-efficient appliances. A consultation with an insulation specialist can help you find other sources of noise in your house. Proper insulation will reduce the noise levels and your energy bills. 3. If you live in a single-family house, consider installing a fence, and planting trees and hedges to block the noise and increase your privacy. 4. Wearing noise-canceling headphones, ear plugs, or using sound machines are also effective at battling noise pollution. Sound machines are particularly useful for houses in which you can’t block the external noise any further. It’s better to listen to the sound of the ocean or white noise than the sounds of traffic. 5. Being in nature is immensely beneficial for your mental health, especially if you suffer from high levels of stress. Escaping noise and the highly-stimulating urban surroundings can help you decrease your stress and prevent future stress-related disorders. 6. Physical activity and social interactions in...

It’s never the image in your head that makes you stressed out – it’s your perception of it.

LET IT GO: QUICK RECAP 1. Negative thoughts, such as replaying in your head how your boss yelled at you a week ago, can instantly make you feel stressed out – even when you’re supposed to be relaxing. Unless you learn how to deal with these thoughts, you’ll never fully recharge your batteries. 2. One of the most effective ways to stop letting negative thoughts affect your state of mind is to reduce their intensity. By turning the negative image into a ridiculous, absurd situation, you’ll change your emotional association with the situation. When you break your behavioral pattern this way, you won’t reinforce the thought in your head, thus making it easier to throw it away. 3. Use the same technique during a stressful situation. It will reduce its intensity and help you remain in a resourceful, positive state instead of stressing out (and replaying the situation in your head many times later on). 4. Prevent future negative thoughts by taking a 7-day “Change Your Thoughts” challenge. Become more aware of your negative thoughts and deal with them instead of brooding over them. It will help you change your default responses and go from a person who stresses out over a past situation to a person who forgets about it seconds after it happened.

In the last chapter of this book, I’d like to share with you seven less obvious ideas to reduce stress we haven’t discussed yet. These habits aren’t so complicated that they need a separate chapter, but implementing them in your life can still provide you with many benefits.

I’m a huge fan of the Pomodoro technique46, a time management method that suggests breaking down work into 25-minute sessions separated by short 5-minute breaks. If I have a job to do, I use pomodoros to make the task much less overwhelming. It also helps deal with distractions, because each 25 minutes you’re allowed to indulge for 5 minutes. Short sprints work much better than long marathons.

SEVEN HABITS TO REDUCE STRESS: QUICK RECAP 1. Manage your stressors. Identify what makes you most stressed and find a way to eliminate it from your life (or at least reduce its impact). According to the 80/20 principle, just 20% of the stressors bring 80% of the stress. Discover your top stressors and make a list of solutions to get rid of them. 2. Procrastination gets more stressful the more things you put off. If you can’t motivate yourself to do something, don’t do it. If you have to do it, delegate it. It’s usually not procrastination you’re dealing with – it’s just that you’re trying to do things you don’t need to do in the first place. 3. Show up early. Develop a habit to always be at least five minutes early. Being in a rush is a sure-fire way to get stressed out. Don’t be afraid that you’ll lose five minutes by being early for each appointment. If you don’t want to take a break during this time, you can always pull out your phone and reply to emails or do other small tasks. 4. Single-task. Multi-tasking doesn’t work, and the more things you’re trying to juggle at the same time, the lower the quality of your actions. Multi-tasking affects your productivity, causes stress, and can hurt the people closest to you when your lack of attention shows lack of care. 5. Have an open schedule. If you pile obligations on top of obligations, you’ll feel like a prisoner. Unless you thrive under pressure and love having every single hour of your day planned, loosen up your calenda...

To reiterate the most crucial advice, here are five key things to remember: 1. If you start your day on the right note, it will unfold in the same exact way. If you start it by rushing and stressing out, you’ll be in a reactive state of mind during the entire day. Guess what your chances of feeling good and slowing down during the day are if you can’t even control your first waking hour. 2. Your body needs to recharge if you want to reduce your stress and feel better. In addition to the obvious advice of eating healthy and exercising regularly, remember about: - getting enough sleep (or improving your sleep quality if you feel tired despite getting enough sleep), - giving your digestive system a break by fasting (not necessary, but worth experimentation), - letting your muscles relax by massage or foam rolling. 3. Noise is a major source of stress for many people, particularly those living in large cities. If it’s a factor in your daily life, come up with ways to make your surroundings quieter. Escaping to nature is one of the ways to recharge your body away from noise and other people. 4. Don’t let negative thoughts harass you every single waking hour. Reduce the intensity of past stressful situations in your head and filter negativity in your life. The more positive your surroundings are, the less negative stress you’ll feel on a daily basis. 5. Manage your stressors. If you aren’t sure what exactly makes stresses you, what are your chances of fixing it? Assign scores to...