{"id":525226,"date":"2010-04-12T18:36:55","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T22:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/notsalmon.com\/?p=303"},"modified":"2010-04-12T18:36:55","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T22:36:55","slug":"how-to-relax-dammit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/525226","title":{"rendered":"HOW TO RELAX, DAMMIT!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SLOW<\/p>\n

True story: <\/strong>Lately I have been finding myself cutting down on the massive amounts of coffee I love to drink, not for health reasons, but for time management reasons. These days, I often go from one conference call to another, then head from one meeting to another, to writing one thing or another — and so I literally barely have time to hit the restroom — let alone rest.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It seems every morning I wake up to face a list of 20 things to do, with time only to do 10, and somehow I always wind up squooshing in 30.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying<\/strong><\/em>, author Sogyal Rinpoc<\/strong>he describes a Western tendency he calls “active laziness”: the need to compulsively cram your life with a myriad of unimportant activities, leaving little time to confront what really matters. He jokingly renames the petty projects called\u00a0“responsibilities” <\/strong>as\u00a0“irresponsiblities.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

What Rinpoche describes is reminiscent of what author Milan Kundera<\/strong> philosophized about in his book\u00a0Slowness<\/strong><\/em>, a slender volume I ironically sped through in a night. Kundera explains how we live in a highly sped-up culture, and that our need for speed promotes forgetting. For example: If you want to forget something, you will pick up speed walking down the street. If you want to remember something, you’ll slow down your steps.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, Kundera warns how speeding up your life not only keeps you from remembering daily details like “Oops! Forgot to pick up more milk,”<\/strong><\/em> <\/em>but also keeps you forgetful about your overall life values and how to live your most passion-filled, love-filled, growth-filled, fun-filled life.<\/p>\n

Meaning?<\/strong> The next time you find yourself racing quickly down the street, know that you’re not only running to your next appointment, you are literally running from contact with your truest feelings, deepest needs and most valuable insights.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, I would love to encourage everyone to take\u00a0DAILY BREATHERS, <\/strong>where you literally take time to focus on your breathing, which is a form of healthful meditation that can clear your mind and create more clarity.<\/p>\n

DAILY BREATHER ASSIGNMENT<\/strong>: Set aside anywhere from\u00a05 to 20 minutes <\/strong>to sit in a quiet place, and focus on breathing out negativity, breathing in positivity, breathing out fear, breathing in courage, breathing out anger, breathing in love.\u00a0 Repeat until you feel calm, relaxed, centered.\u00a0When you’ve finished your\u00a0DAILY BREATHER<\/strong>, look at your\u00a0TO DO LIST<\/strong>, then figure out how you can re-write it so it becomes a\u00a0TO DO WHAT MATTERS MOST LIST! <\/strong>Make sure you have a balanced list of activities relating to a variety of categories including work, love, family, friendship, health, growth, community, entertainment, fitness, self-growth.<\/p>\n

WANT MORE DAILY HAPPINESS? Check out THIS daily blog at my site!<\/strong><\/p>\n

ADDED BONUS FOR OVER-WORKED, OVER-STRESSED NEW YORKERS<\/strong>!<\/strong> (Hmmm, is that redundant?) How’d you love to enjoy a nice, relaxing massage? (Hmmm, is that a DUH?) DailyFlock.com is practically giving away massages – with a 50% discount at Azure day spa + laser center. You get $100 worth of massage services on any massage from their menu\u00a0for 50 buckeroos! Plus any Dailyflock members who sign up get $5 added to their account! And just for signing up on Dailyflock.com from me telling you about this fab deal, YOU get an added $5 to your account! Just CLICK on this LINE RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW <\/strong><\/a>– and maybe I’ll see you at Azure in a nice plush robe feeling happy, dammit!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/h3>\n

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True story: Lately I have been finding myself cutting down on the massive amounts of coffee I love to drink, not for health reasons, but for time management reasons. These days, I often go from one conference call to another, then head from one meeting to another, to writing one thing or another — and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}