Relaxing
 

Here's another interesting topic (I hope.) Today I was feeling way stressed out, I'm an Apple Rep at BYU and it's our busy time of year (back to school). I work almost full time during these two weeks, even though I get paid for much less (yes, Apple employees are often Neurotic, I think it was part of the interview process...)

At any rate, I don't really have any complaints about this, I'm used to it and I very much enjoy my job. But that doesn't make it any less stressful.

So today, as I was sitting down to create a flyer for an event I'm holding, I decided to take ten minutes and do a little breathing meditation (the simplest of them all!). And after ten minutes not only were my muscles less tense, but I found myself extracting my mind from these busy two weeks and taking a more open, long term, view of the situation. It was a nice switch mentally. And it's got me curious...

I'm wondering what other people do to relax when they're stressed? And I also wonder if there's anything in particular that causes you to need to relax? Any takers?

I am laid back and relaxed by nature. I only get stressed when my co-workers get stressed and start rubbing it off on me and even then I can keep my calm. I work in a school system that has many many Apple computers. Back to school means I am working 50 to 60 hour weeks, and have been doing so since the first week of August.

How do I do it? It just comes natural man, that is all I can say. When I really need a breather or something to calm me down about 5 minutes of alone time with some good music can always change my mood.

I listen to a lot of soul when I work, it keeps me upbeat and my attitude positive. However, by nature I am a skeptic.

Here is where I would start:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRJJ-K-DNas

Plus, I live by an idiom: Cry and you cry alone, laugh and the world laughs with you.

I try to make sure I always have fun whatever it is I am doing. It takes an imagination sometimes but I never lost my childhood imagination.

I'm rarely stressed either. My son says that that's because I have an unreal ability to partition (his word); that is to concentrate on what needs to be done and ignore distractions. I've never been a multitasker (I suspect that's a great stress raiser) and have instead focused on one thing at a time advancing each if possible before moving on to the next issue in the hierarchy of things to do.

I read once that the human mind can only hold seven thoughts in mind, which means to me that you have to reduce all the things you might do to the seven you can do.

A lot of crap is talked about multitasking. It just means doing six things at once, badly.

I'm not at all good at following this, but IMHO the summit of wisdom is "Do the next thing".

I find making To-Do lists for the next day before going to bed offers a kind of relaxing closure. For complex situations, flowchart it.

I find mindless domestic tasks like hanging washing on the line to be relaxing. My programming work generally requires a lot of focused attention so it's nice to just let my mind wander off on it's own while I get some chores done.

I don't need a to do list. I don't make a grocery list before I go to the store, I never write down my plans (with the exception of work) and I can keep track of times and dates in my head with out notes or a calendar. Just been always able to do that sort of stuff. I am always doing at least 6 things at once and holding probably 4 different conversations at once.

I also don't like having lists or making up plans. I like winging it, and living by the moment and have it change all the time. That is just me though.

Well, you're a youngster :)

I can write in one language while speaking a different one on the phone. But it's most advisable to read proof after doing that. :)

Is 30 years old considered a youngster? Well I am not quite 30 just yet but it is really close

Yep. Got a good ten years left before it all starts going down hill :D.

When I consider that my kids are 41, 43, & 47 I think of 30 as a youngster. :) I do think that fazstp is a bit pessimistic though -- knowing at 72 what downhill really means, I'd have to say that you've got 20 more anyway.

Pessimistic? Me??? :D

For the record "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is totally the best of all of Elliots works. (Back to reality).

I personally hate multi-tasking, though I can do it. It cases me a lot of stress. Today in the store I was in the middle of helping about three customers at the same time a couple times, not fun. They all had funny questions (though, to their credit, they were all very polite and considerate of the fact that I was very busy.)

It's funny though, something tlarkin said up there reminded me of a comment I once heard from a zen master. I'll paraphrase, it was something like: Meditation to alleviate anger is, at best, a temporary solution. In order to reduce one's anger, one must change one's perceptions. If you perceive the situation correctly, you will not be angered by it.

I think it's a fair point (not that I would recommend just letting your anger go flying all over the place rather than trying to calm down.) I can't help but wonder though if being stressed out is a similar thing, and if perhaps the best way to avoid stress is just to re-adjust one's train of thought so that whatever is stressing you no longer does.

How to do this...I have no answer for that.

Maybe you can put that on a poster in the store. When you are serving someone and another customer is trying to get your attention you can send them over to look at the poster until you're ready.

So I can look at my forties as more of a plateau relative to the subsequent decline? I'm not sure that meets my definition of optimistic :D.

All they would do is come back to me and say the second part of my quote:

;)

Also, always remember that the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is 42!

As that's my current age does that mean I have reached enlightenment? So long and thanks for all the fish! :)

Well first you must ask yourself, if that is the answer, what is the original question?

You know the opening of the film "The Mission", where the guy is floating down the river on his cross, very peacefully, and then he goes over the edge of this immense waterfall?

Yes, that sort of plateau. :eek:

Drink heavily. That'll take your mind off it.

A confident step
 

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As the Wall Street CEO said to his staff: "We have long stood at the edge of the abyss, but today we are taking a decisive step forward."
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Sadly I don't drink alcohol at all, nor do I use any other sort of narcotic. Not even them ones the doctors be prescribing these days... I wonder if you can get medical marijuana for depression (joking joking...)

The problem I see with drinking heavily is that you wake up in the morning with a severe hang over and all of your problems still with you, I don't know if I'd want both at the same time.

Optimism has to be tempered with a touch of realism, fazstp, but I was thinking of physical decline not mental decline. I gave up hot-dog mogul bashing in my forties because I began to injure myself, injuries took longer to heal, and my reflexes weren't up to the level I liked to push them to.

But there's another component to aging; if you are a thoughtful person, you become wiser; gain wisdom. Bertrand Russell, one of the twentieth century's great mathematicians and philosophers, said that of the all factors that comprise wisdom, he put a sense of proportion first – as he put it "the capacity to take account of all the important factors in a problem and attach to each its due weight".

In the same essay he said:

In a speech to a graduating class of engineers some years ago I said:

Life has phases.

Getting laid helps you get relaxed too!

Or it would if it weren't for all the times you try and get laid only to be rebuffed... ;)

Perhaps this quote helps?

not :rolleyes:

@fazstp -- Yeah...might not be so helpful in that particular situation. But then again, there are several thousands monks who have convinced themselves that sex doesn't really matter all that much. I'm sure they would take the rebuff far better than the rest of us...

Unless, of course, monks take the cowl because they really can't stand being rebuffed...... :)

Dim the lights, lie down and listen to track one of Brian Eno's Discreet Music