Friend, relax, everything will be just fine, and you will live longer if you do.
“Relax. You’ll live longer and perform better.” — Naval Ravikant
Life is overwhelming. School, work, social life, physical health and a multitude of other things we perceive as important. Our to-do list is too much!
Stress kicks in, like a silent assassin in the night; shortening our lifespan, weakening our immune system, aging us faster and overall ruining our bodies.
This is the ‘Stress Assassin’.
Deadly but we let them in. Sneaky but we are aware of them. Detrimental but we do nothing to fix it.
Silence the ‘Stress Assassin’ and welcome in peace, calm and relaxation. The 3 following ideas will give you ideas on how to relax more.
Instead of having a to-do list, have one important task
Having a to-do list can be enormous. We may overwork ourselves, get bored of the things we are trying to do and make life more predictable and boring.
We want to progress without burning out or getting bored to the point we drop the activity or perform worse.
That’s why having one important task is important. It gives you more space to do more creative tasks plus giving you a feeling of victory when you complete that important task—putting you in a positive mood which will help you relax and pursue other secondary tasks.
Focus small, Act small, Win big
Instead of seeing the task ahead of you as daunting. How about you slice it up into bite-sized chunks? The Stress Assassin wants to overwhelm you, it wants to force a bunch of weight onto you. What do you do?
Progressive overload.
Start small, focus on that small start. Instead of 20 pushups, how about 2. Instead of 2 paragraphs, how about 1 line? Instead of an hour's worth of practice, how about 5 minutes?
As you progress through the task, you automatically begin to progressive overload and do more of what you began doing.
Why stop what you began? It’s much easier to finish it once you’ve already started.
Brain Breaks
Give your brain a break! Meditate, journal, socialise, nature walks, anything that will help you dissolve that stress. Like a muscle, we need breaks for our minds. To allow it to rewire itself and form new neural connections; improving us for when we return.
If we don’t allow ourselves time to relax and chill, we won’t return strong; quite the opposite!
“Forty hour workweeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes — train and sprint, then rest and reassess.” — Naval Ravikant
Work like an athlete. Because you are one. A ‘knowledge athlete’.
That’s what the ‘Stress Assassin’ is most afraid of… ‘Knowledge athletes’.
Using the three ideas above:
- One main daily task
- Starting Small
- Having breaks
You’ll become a ‘knowledge athlete’ and finally get rid of the ‘Stress Assassin’. Finally being able to relax! (+ you’ll live longer).
