I hope you are feeling fine and dandy. I’d love for you to think on this today in an out-of-the-box kind of way:
Do you keep deferring relaxing?
And if so (this is the important bit) what do you defer it about?
We are jolly good as humans at pushing ourselves further, faster, longer in ways I am increasingly convinced humans were never designed to do.
We seem to have become programmed to defer any kind of relaxation until the work is done, which our cavewomen forbears would never have entertained as they told stories around the nightly campfire.
We defer relaxation – WHICH HUMANS ARE PROGRAMMED TO REQUIRE! – for so many things:
We defer leaving work on time so we can finish that report.
We defer feeling good about our body til we have lost those pesky last 5 kilo’s
We defer feeling relaxed about money until we are debt free
We defer rest until we are on annual leave
We defer laughter and connection until the washing up is done
We defer reading that book til the work is done
We defer going for that walk til the house is tidy
We defer defer defer in all sorts of ways…
We treat rest and relaxation as if they are optional extras
Treats we have to earn like a dog for good behaviour
That relaxation needs to be earned and it comes at the end of a very long To Do list.
Thing is, this is a lie that keeps us trapped in a mode of “perpetual productivity”, which has been a boon for large organisations for sure as it’s become adopted as a cultural norm. However, it sure makes for a lot of perpetually anxious people overdelivering both at work and at home!
“Always On” and endless deferral of rest and relaxation have been good for the bottom line but not been good for our mental or physical health. We are designed, programmed, built as human beings who need and require mental and physical REST and RELAXATION as much as we need food or sleep. The cultural downgrading and deferment of relaxation has been so pervasive, and we have internalised it so much we quite willingly DO IT TO OURSELVES!
My mini-challenge for you today is to have a think about where you might be treating rest and relaxation (either physical or mental) as an optional extra, and where you could make a different choice on that today.
We live in a world of ‘jam tomorrow… jam tomorrow”.
Deferring rest. Deferring relaxation.
I think we should all be having a little more “jam today” 
I’d love for you to find one way to do that for yourself this week.
