Why Doing Nothing Can Be Highly Beneficial For Your Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual Health
April 6, 2024 | Miriam Slozberg
Do you constantly need to be busy even when you don’t have too many responsibilities hanging over your head? In this hustle and bustle society, many people feel guilty if they take the time to recharge, relax, and do nothing! Sure, you want to be productive, but at the same time, how can you be productive if you are always on the go and don’t have much rest time? On your days off of work, you may find those are the perfect days to clean your home, but does that take the entire weekend? In honor of No Housework Day on April 7th, let’s talk about why it is essential to incorporate days or even hours of doing nothing for your mental, emotional, and spiritual health.
Why You Should Never Feel Guilty for Doing Nothing
If you imagine yourself doing nothing when you have a lot of responsibilities hanging over your head, you feel guilty. It does not help that society deems anyone “lazy” when they do nothing. However, imagine being on the go from the moment you wake up until you get ready for bed. And during that timeframe, imagine not taking breaks except for a quick lunch or dinner break.
Think about how you would feel if you immediately got up and rushed to get ready for work, headed to work, and then, once you finished work, went home to get ready for dinner, did housework, or if you have a family, took care of your kids and helped them with their homework. Then you help them get ready for bed if they are young, and then you are getting ready for bed. Doesn’t that sound exhausting? Where is your downtime? If you relate to this, then you need to start spending time doing nothing, even if it is ten minutes a day! You need it for your mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Let’s begin to discuss the benefits of doing nothing.
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Doing Nothing Helps You Reduce Stress
Taking time for stillness can help reduce stress and promote a sense of calmness and relaxation, even if you can only spare ten minutes a day (though attempt to take one day of the week to rest as much as you can if you can do so). It forces you to slow down, which your body needs after so much on the go. When you are always busy, you become overwhelmed with stress, which is why when you do nothing, it helps you take the time to slow down and break free from the constant demands of any pressure.
It also helps you restore your lost energy, which means you will have the mental, emotional, and physical energy to handle the stress thrown at you again. However, if you have very little energy to handle any more stress, you are at risk of burnout. You will be so stressed at that point that you become depressed and apathetic, and you will end up susceptible to various ailments. Carving out time to do nothing will help reduce that risk from happening.
Practicing stillness allows you to connect with your emotions and thoughts, leading to a better understanding of yourself. Firstly, you can observe your thoughts and emotions without getting caught up. That observation helps you become more aware of how you think and respond emotionally to your reactions. Observing those aspects of your emotions gives you insight into your patterns and behavior, giving you a better understanding of yourself.
You also connect with your inner wisdom as being still lets you tap into your inner wisdom and intuition. When you quiet your mind and create space for silence by doing nothing, you can gain a deeper level of self-awareness as you become aware of what you truly want, your values, and your needs. That can help you guide you in making decisions and choices that align with your true self.
You also get to know the sensations of your body when you do nothing because you can observe your physical sensations and realize how tense, uncomfortable, or relaxed you are, providing you with the insight you need for your overall well-being. You can also identify the triggers that activate an emotion. You will have an easier time observing the circumstances, people, or situations that bring out specific reactions. That awareness allows you to identify patterns and help you understand why you respond the way you do. Then, you will cultivate the knowledge to respond to triggers consciously instead of subconsciously.
Doing Nothing Can Improve Your Emotional Well-being
You may think that having nothing to do for a few minutes can lead you to overthink. But that depends on how you use your time away from the chaos. If you do nothing and think about the beautiful things in your life, you can get to know your joy and appreciation and express gratitude for it. And if you are overstressed from the chaos, you will have the time to slow down and process those thoughts so you can feel better and look at things from a different perspective when you slow down and be in the moment.
Another thing that doing nothing can do is help you become more emotionally resilient if you regularly take the time to do nothing. When you practice stillness regularly, you will recharge yourself enough to cope better when facing challenging situations. And when you can do that, you are emotionally in a better place to handle stress.
When you can make it a habit to be still every day without any distractions, you are creating a mental space for your thoughts, and you can settle your mind. That will help you relax and clear away mental chatter and clutter to create that mental space you need to gain clarity. And that clarity can also help you look at situations from different perspectives. You can gain more perspectives on your life, goals, and priorities. You can see the bigger picture of anything you face and be better positioned to make more informed and well-thought-out decisions.
As mentioned, you can also learn to trust and decipher your intuition from emotions. When you are busy and occupied, you don’t listen to your inner voice and allow emotions to guide you instead, leading you to poor decisions. When you do nothing, you are free from being busy, and you can tap into your intuition and access your true wisdom, which will lead to much better clarity when making big decisions.
You will also be clear on what you need to prioritize in your life, and when you take a step back and reflect on your values and goals, you can gain clarity on what deserves your time and attention. You will also know what tasks you must tackle and what tasks you can leave for another time or delegate to someone else. That can help reduce your stress levels when you do that, too. That also enhances your productivity.
Doing Nothing Can Enhance Your Creativity
Another wonderful thing that comes out of doing nothing is that since you gain mental clarity as described above, you can also allow your mind to wander, which means it can enter a playground of new ideas that your imagination conjures up that can incite creative insights, and make you think innovatively.
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When that happens, you will begin to find the best solutions to problems that you are facing because when you do nothing, your mind has a chance to process the information unconsciously, and that is how you can come up with innovative ideas. Therefore, you need to be creative to become a good problem-solver, and doing nothing can help you become more creative, which means your problem-solving abilities improve.
Doing Nothing Helps You Connect to Your Spiritual Side
If you are busy all of the time and rarely take breaks, it would not be a surprise if you did not know your spiritual values or your spirituality all that well. But if you incorporate doing nothing in your schedule, you will reap all of the rewards mentioned above, in addition to getting to know your spiritual self. Firstly, when you do nothing, you create a silent and tranquil environment that lets you become in tune with your true self and connect with your spiritual side.
You also can become reflective and introspective, as it can allow you to explore your beliefs, purpose, and values, and you will gain a profound understanding of your spiritual life. You can also find a way to surrender to anything you cannot control, as being upset only causes more stress and unrest. You will develop spiritual insights on why unpleasant situations may happen and find the inner guidance to go with the flow.
If you get to know your spiritual self by doing nothing, you also cultivate inner peace as you intentionally create moments of stillness. That stillness allows you to connect with your Higher Self to tap into a greater sense of purpose and meaning. If you habitually do this daily, even for ten minutes, you will have a more zen approach to handling stressful situations.
April 7th is No Housework Day, and can you challenge yourself not to do any housework during that day so you can make the most of doing nothing? You already know the benefits for your emotional, mental, and spiritual health if you take the time and do nothing, which will also benefit your physical health. When you are under constant stress, you jeopardize your entire well-being, which you do not want to do. If you can carve out even ten minutes daily to do nothing, it will tremendously help you. Don’t let society make you think you are “lazy” if you sometimes do nothing. Your emotional, mental, and spiritual health depends on it, which also affects you physically.
