What’s this? Already episode 6 of The Ultimate Creative podcast? My word I didn’t know I had it in me!
If it wasn’t for a global pandemic, I wouldn’t be giving myself this much down time right now.
As soon as the pandemic shutdown started I felt like I was about to embark on an incredibly productive journey. My body and brain had much different plans for me.
I can remember walking down to the liquor store for my weekend vino, casually giving my family in B.C. a call to see how they were doing, wondering whether they’d also be staying in this week. I talked about all of my plans to rebrand, start my podcast, launch a course, you name it. Well, you can actually see the output on my website so it wasn’t totally far-fetched.
Normally, I would have had all of this done within about two weeks. It took me five.
Yes, I know that sounds totally insane and I’m totally well aware that I need to slow the fuck down all the time, but actually going through this gave me a skill I absolutely did not have before this – to relax.
In this episode I want to give you some tactics to help you relax. I know, scary word right? Especially for those of us that are just constantly working (I say this having just “finished” an 8 hour day and I’m jumping into more work!).
Look, it’s really not easy to relax when you’re ambitious and you have so many ideas. There’s just no way that you can justify not working hard on everything! But in order to really move forward, you have to. I know this, I’m learning this, I’m still struggling with this.
I wish it was easier to relax.
If you’re in the same boat as me, here are a few ideas you can use to try to consciously relax so that you don’t totally burn out on all of your amazing projects and businesses:
- Schedule in time to do physical activity – even if it’s just jogging in place while you stare out the window wishing you were outside.
- Spend dedicated time away from screens. If you’re not in a mentally awesome position to read, do some very light housework for an hour. You’ll feel accomplished with the benefit of time away. My favourite chore is supervising my Roomba whilst it deals with my messy floors.
- Call someone! Randomly! And talk about anything! Don’t make a big deal about it, just do it!
- Stretch every morning and every evening. It’s also great for your physical health.
- Practice meditation, even for 5 minutes a day and hold yourself accountable to it. You’ll be amazed at how much more present you can be with just 5 minutes a day.
What do you do to relax? Drop some ideas in the comments! Let’s support each other together while we do amazing things!
