Thoughts about the importance of Mental Rest

in #psychology6 years ago

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Life can be stressful sometimes


The daily stress of work, the punctuality to get to a meeting, the family, among others can become many factors in which we are mentally overwhelmed, trying to organize everything in our head, saturating it and filling it with information that can end up paralyzing us and causing us problems such as depression or anxiety.

What is anxiety:

Anxiety is your body’s natural response to stress. It is a feeling of fear and apprehension about what’s to come. The first day of school, going to a job interview, or giving a speech may cause most people to feel fearful and nervous. But if your feelings of anxiety are extreme, last for longer than six months, and are interfering with your life, you may have an anxiety disorder. | Source

Sometimes having stress is totally natural, the important thing is to first try to prevent it, and second, be prepared in how to manage it

What is depression:

Depression (major depressive disorder) is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Depression causes feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities once enjoyed. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and can decrease a person’s ability to function at work and at home. | Source

In order to avoid suffering from this consequences, it is important for us to take some time to recharge our energy, to enjoy a mental break, so you can keep up your productive in your daily life.

Why are mental rests so important for us?


We are always accustomed to hearing that the rest of the body is one of the fundamental pillars of a healthy life, since, if we feel constantly lacking in energy, we are prone to get sick and our performance is diminished. I believe there is not enough talk about mental rest, and it is important to don’t forget about it, because in the long term, it can really decrease the level of productivity of the individual, causing problems that we would not have imagined in the first place, since our mind is what controls our mood, our emotions as well as our body, It is very common to find cases of psychological disorders that are related to a lack of rest.

What is a psychological disorder?

Psychological Disorders are a pattern of thought or behavior that is outside the expected norms and impairs an individual’s ability function in ordinary life in some way. Such disorders are generally defined by examining how a person feels, acts, thinks or perceives. | Source

We have to think that our mind is a kind of warehouse that keeps all kinds of information. That is stacked according to the organization that we have in our brain, sometimes we can get important information placing it in a privileged place, but, however, when we have different data to remember, that warehouse that at first seemed orderly, will begin to look like more to a disorganized storage room, and this is caused by the lack of mental rest.

When having difficulties, the first thing we need to do is accept it. Only then would we be able to act upon it

The mental rest helps us to keep all the information properly distributed by itself in our mind, causing that when we return to work, we can deal much better with everything we have to face. In other words, much more technological as I like it, it is when our smartphone has many open applications and we notice a slow down or even an overheat, but when we click on the optimization button all applications are closed and the phone works much better, in this same way the mental break for us would be this same button that allow us to optimize our brain, we do not have fans in our head like computers do, so we need to manually turn us off whenever is required.

Psychologist Susan Krauss Whitbourne says that ” When you're stressed out and tired, you are more likely to become ill, your arteries take a beating, and you're more likely to have an accident. Your sleep will suffer, you won't digest your food as well, and even the genetic material in the cells of your body may start to become altered in a bad way. Mentally, not only do you become more irritable, depressed, and anxious, but your memory will become worse and you'll make poorer decisions “. | Source

Doing this not as complicated as you could imagine, since there are many methods to disconnect from daily stress, and I want to give you some tips that can be very useful

Enjoy your hobbies

Something that with time we forget and makes us feel more stressed is that we might not live life as we would like, focusing on work and all the chores. We must give ourselves some moments to do exactly what we like, whether it is writing, reading, playing football, just taking a walk, watching a movie or some good series. During this time it might be better avoid talking about work problems or any topic that may stress or create us discomfort. Maybe it's hard for you to do this the first few weeks, but when you get used to it and have educated the mind to be relaxed, everything will go much better.

Nowadays, the fact that meditation can help us become healthier is sort of an universal truth
Meditation

Meditation mixed with physical exercise is something that always comes perfectly to the well being of our mind. Although you may think that meditation is only going to be done by the elderly or the orientals, this is a mistake, since everyone who has tried it, can corroborate that they are much happier and have a much more organized mind, which of course, can help us maintain our level or productivity in our jobs. Another common activity that can help is obviously Yoga and other sports that have very low impact but also help to leave the mind free of problems.

Surround yourself with positive people

Something I'm sure of is that when a person surrounds himself with positive people, everything that comes to his/her life is good, however, when we meet and stay together with negative or very toxic people, in the end they are going to cause more damage than we could think of. For this reason, it is always preferable to get together with people who are not going to cause you problems or whose life is clean and clear, without stress, because in the long run what they will achieve is transmitting that harmful energy, making you feel more and more miserable and therefore, unable find peace in your mind.

Conclusion


Understanding the fact the we need to cool off from some time can be difficult to accept for people who are use to run through the day without being able to stop. The problem comes when this type of person one day finds him/herself suddenly with no energy left? What happened to all the energy required to comply with all duties and the responsibilities than the person needs to attend?

Being on a permanent calm state can help us a lot when having our time off

It got burnout. Our energy is not infinite, it is impossible to maintain peak productivity 100% of the time, we can see a perfect example of this in sports, where the teams usually have good and bad months, it can be seem as a cycle.

The same happens in our brain, if we don't take care of it, by switching it off from time to time, it will get one day, so tired you would not be able to function properly, among other consequences.

To avoid reaching this unhealthy state, we need to periodically give ourselves some time to take proper mental rest. If we find the time to do this occasionally, we can even find ourselves feeling better than ever before.

Do you take breaks from time to time in order to recover your energy

Have you ever felt burnout for not taking a proper time off when you needed it?

References

healthline - anxiety
psychiatry - depression
mental health matters – psychological disorders
psychologytoday

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Ever since I committed myself fully into crypto I have to take great care of my mental health...I read so much every day, have to make hard decisions - where to move funds, which project will be helpful, validation of information, seeking of information, etc. and I feel the effects of information overflow every single day.

I basically deal with that by - playing games, going to pubs with friends, sports, weed...it works perfectly for me:P Its just I wouldn’t probably be able to work 8 hours shift because i would need to "rewind" three times during one working day lol:D Crypto is then a blessing for me I guess:P

Anyway what you’re saying is 100% correct for me:)

Indeed, being involved with crypto is time consuming, but it’s totally worth it!

I also do the same things you mentioned, my gaming stopped a few months ago, but as I told you on your post recently I started again and I finally am able to try Civ VI ! I am looking for an AAA game to try too, like Dark Souls, The Witcher 3 or the division, I just hopes the 1050 4gb can handle it lol

And yes, crypto is indeed a blessing for everyone involved, especially for people in poorer countries that results in little opportunities. Thankfully, technology can come to the rescue!

Cheers mate.

I completely agree with you! :)

Mental silence is very powerful. "Doing" is based on thinking, while "Being" is based on mental silence. Many people fear inner silence, for not "Doing" anything is considered unproductive and surrendering, a thing which is almost impossible for the Ego mind to grasp because of the conditioned belief " Time is money". It is very same thinking mind which tries to solve problems by applying its "logic" without realizing that it is creating the problem in the first place, creating never-ending agony. Mental silence is THE key to break detrimental thought patterns and find new solutions, for when we have mental silence we enter the space of inner Peace, even if only for a moment. If our solution shall bring long-term Happiness and rest, it needs to stem from a place of Peace because only here we are able to channel our wisdom with clear sight free from fears, doubts and worries.

You certainly have very beautiful and wise words there. I believe if you expand those ideas a little bit more you could easily turn that into its own post.

Clearing our thoughts when feeling overwhelmed is the only way forward. It depends on each person how to clear your thoughts and how to really find some time to take proper relaxation. Doing this, is not a sign of weakness at all, it is actually a sign of honesty with oneself.

Thank you for these nice words!
I'll release my take on this soon on my profile, but I naturally feel inclined to express my resonance with this topic when I see a post like this. Great post! Yes, it is indeed about placing one's own well-being first, for only then we can give others our best version.

Being someone who's not only a writer for a living, but also have two online (eBay) businesses, I find it extremely important to take technology breaks on a regular basis. If I didn't, I'd go nuts!

Usually, I end up just walking on the beach, or in the woods-- usually with my camera. And that becomes my brand of mental rest. Now if I could only make time to have an actual vacation!

Well you are extremely lucky to have a beach near home @denmarkguy ! I speak for myself and probably for a lot of other people, that having a beach near home is like a dream come true, and can certainly help you relax tremendously when needed.

I suppose the beaches in Denmark are extremely cold right?

Really great post.

So much to consider in the course of a successful, enduring and satisfying lifetime ;-)

Thanks mate! I am glad you enjoyed the post!

Stress is normal and healthy. We have to remeber this first and foremost. When channeled correctly, stress drives us to get things done and take responsibilities that if we didn’t care, we wouldn’t be able to do.

In today’s society however, it feels to me like because we’ve put so much attention on how it is okay to feel stressed, this has translated into it is okay to see stress only as a negative.

Finding the balance between using stress in a positive way, and keeping level mental health is hard and something in my personal life that I haven’t fully been able to understand or grasp.

Having the discussion helps. Cheers.

Do you really think stress is healthy?

As far as I know, stress is related with a lot of negative things that affect our health in a bad way.

Although perhaps I am not appreciating another perspective when interpreting the concept of stress and what it involves.

Maybe you mean stress is the thing that makes us being productive? In this case, I suppose this could be defended by well put arguments, but I think there is no need to use stress as a way to be productive, I mean, we can be productive without being stressed.

I always thought that I have depression because of work. The pressures coming from numerous way is like forcing me to the corner that I have nowhere to escape. Until I came across my boyfriend which break up the wall to set me free, his encouragement and motivations are what makes who I am now. A full-time traveller that loves to explore and helping people to open up their box to see the beautiful world besides depressions!

Good for you for finding a way to overcome your obstacle. There is always a way, we just simply need to look for it and eventually we will find it.

Thank you for the informative post. Sadly, mental health is a taboo subject from where I'm from. People often use the word depression carelessly that its impact becomes fashion trend rather than an issue that demands more attention to.

I think words that are related to sickness need to be used carefully and in a responsible way. Other way people who are really sick can feel hurt, which would not help at all when recovering.

Those few minutes if clearing up your mind can mean alot. Some miditation or a walk away from people and memories. Some travelling can do it too.
Nice post brother.

Of course, traveling is certainly the best. Although not everyone can afford it when needed it

I've always noticed how much breaks help me, when I'm feeling stressed I like to go for a run, walk, and meditate. And like you said, hobbies, I like to write, cook, and read. Great reminder for people to give themselves breaks, sometimes it's hard to do in this busy life, and certain activities aren't true rest like watching tv or browsing the net

Totally right my friend! Your last phrase is spot on, especially in my case since for m, my resting time consist almost every single time in having a screen in front of me entertaining me. But the truth is, not letting your eyes rest can eventually start to affect you.

Ya, I work at a computer all day too, a daily walk in nature helps me a ton!

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