Week of Relaxation

You go girl.

Is it possible to be too relaxed?  Because, if it is possible, then I think I'm in trouble: the Week of Relaxation was a success!  I'm kidding, of course.  In today's pressure-packed world, chronic stress and a go-go-go mentality seems like the standard mode for most of us, myself included.  That being said, taking time to "reboot" is even more critical as being chronically stressed out can lead to some nasty brain stuff.  But, thankfully the relaxation response can be triggered with some simple meditation-inspired techniques.

During the week, we took some time for ourselves and completed six meditation-oriented Daily Mind Games to try to shift our brains into a more relaxed and calm state. Guided by strategies summarized in The Relaxation Response, we adopted a passive mindset and cleared our minds of anxiety-producing clutter.  Hopefully, this approach helped you become more relaxed.  I really enjoyed these challenges, and am going to try to incorporate this type of meditation into a daily routine.

Did you miss the Week of Relaxation?  No problemo: get caught up!

Week of Relaxation

Day 1: Peace and Quiet - Find a meditation spot.

Day 2: Passive - Do nothing. Seriously.

Day 3: Mantra - The secret weapon of the uber-relaxed.

Day 4: Heavy - Get loose.

Day 5: Down - Get down.

Day 6: Timeless - Escape the clock.

Now that we're all relaxed and happy, I think it's time to get back to some heavy cognitive lifting.  A basic definition of metacognition is awareness of our own thinking and understanding.  Next week, we're going to extend that definition a bit and include our behavior as a part of our metacognitive domain.  In other words, we can observe our own thoughts as part of an applied metacognitive strategy but we can also observe our own behavior.  This would be a behaviorist approach to metacognition.

What's the point you may ask?  I would argue that, for most of us, our biggest "problems" are problems in behavior: we eat too much, we don't work enough, we spend too much, etc.  Unfortunately, most of us (myself included) often don't realize what's going on until the negative consequences are born out.  Next week, we're going to work on self-awareness in order to combat bad behaviors that result from a "mindless" approach to life.  Specifically, we're going to consciously track our own behavior across a series of critical domains in order to generate a more accurate assessment of our own behavior.  Time to get serious!   

Links: Check out other Weeks of Metacognition