Relaxation is important because it allows you to stop and breathe. A relaxation break makes it possible to recharge your energies by staying focused, taking action, and having more time. This pause will allow you to have more time to enjoy with your family.

Relaxation can help you live longer for 3 simple reasons.

1. Focus

Why is focus important? Lets look at a typical example for illustration purposes. If you are planning an event like going on a holiday, it would first be important to know where you want to go. What is the objective of your trip? Do you want to ski or sit in the sun and enjoy your favorite drink? What type of activities do you want to enjoy? How long do you want to be on holiday?

These are some of the questions you will need to answer in order to enjoy your holiday. On the other hand you may not know what you want and a good efficient travel agent can help you clarify your needs.

In life, its easy to lose focus. The daily stresses of living can take over and cloud your feelings causing you to lose focus on life. In our vacation example, losing focus can result in your spinning out of control and maybe going on a more expensive holiday than is necessary at the moment. Losing focus could also result in you going on a spending binge. Remaining relaxed helps you stay focused on the task at hand so you can enjoy yourself and your family.

2. Action vs. Non-action

Action would be calling the travel agent and booking your holiday, while non-action would be putting off calling your travel agent until the last minute.

Now this is very important because there are certain things in your life that you can easily take action on and there are other things that create all kinds of stress and conflict because you procrastinate. You may be surprised at how many things you habitually put off.

Exercise

Heres a simple exercise. Take a piece of paper and make a list of all the things that you take action on. Then make a list of the things you tend to put off.

Notice what you say to yourself when you look at your responses. Look at the things you tend to put off. How do you feel when you look at your list? Relaxation can give you more time to breathe so that you can take positive action and have more time to enjoy with your family.

3. More time

A friend asked me, "Where has time gone? I used to have more time, but now it seems to disappear." A good example would be children. Children used to have extra curricular activities at school. Now because of the workload of the teachers, some of these programs are no longer available. The responsibility has now been put on the parents. Some parents now have their children enrolled in every possible program, and with all the constant activity, consequently some children are no longer having fun.

There seems to be some unwritten new rule or law which suggests that you can collapse the time period in which you want to achieve your goals, and we are passing this philosophy on to our children. The problem with this idea is the consequence of stress. You are now creating more stress because you are working harder to achieve what you want in less time. This is a good example of how staying focused can help us stay relaxed.

Having a focus is a good thing, but being focused in an extreme context (wanting a drive through solution) because you want what you want so quickly, causes you to become confused, not knowing what action to take. You may also respond inappropriately and create stress. This behavior could result in all kinds of health challenges like diabetes, high blood pressure, tightness in the chest, headaches and sleepless nights. Relaxation helps you deal more effectively with your health challenges so that you can have more time to enjoy with your family.

In Conclusion

You can continue to allow your daily challenges of stress to knock you out over and over again or you may decide to fight back by enjoying relaxation. Relaxation allows you to notice that you are focused. Relaxation also provides an opportunity for you to experience action rather than complacency. This positive feeling can make you more aware of the sounds of nature so that you have more time to enjoy with your family.