25th January – Do something you enjoy

Do something you enjoy. Just because.

De-stressing, relaxing, chilling out… it sounds like it should be so easy, doesn’t it? Just do… well, nothing, right?

But ‘just relaxing’ is not as easy as it sounds for some people. I am definitely not very good at doing nothing. And, ironically, the more stressed you are (and therefore more in need of relaxing) the harder it is to settle and turn off. This is because when we are stressed our brains are busy churning out lots of stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline for example. These stress hormones put our bodies into “fight or flight” mode so we are revved up, jittery, full of nervous energy – which means sitting still and relaxing is not an easy thing to do.

One tactic to help with relaxation is to do something, anything, to distract the busy mind from whatever it is busy-ing about and give it a task to focus on – purposely pick something that you have to concentrate on enough so that your mind is occupied away from stresses, but repetitive and calming enough that it is soothing to your mind, and also not too challenging so that whatever you are doing does not cause additional stress itself.

Lots of people like crafty-type hobbies for this kind of reason, or reading, or playing an instrument, or other similar past-times. All end up with the similar kind of mindful quality to them, as the process of doing is relaxing in itself.

I met an artist today – one of my patients that I went to visit at home – an elderly housebound gentleman in his late 80’s. He had little piles of sketches stacked up next to him in careless heaps under tea cups and stray pencils. I was admiring his drawings, but when I shared with him that I stick to colouring in because my pictures never look on paper like they do in my head, he replied “what nonsense! it doesn’t matter what they look like in the end, none of these are any good, but i don’t draw to end up with a pretty picture, I do it because I enjoy doing it, just because.”