3 Reasons Why You Can’t Relax

You may not be able to relax, but the cause of this disability may also be far from being the effort you invest in it. Perhaps some factors are operating that you have not stopped to think about; They may get in the way of what you want and make you feel like you can’t relax. In this sense, there are blocks that operate below the minimum level of consciousness, blocking us from the possibility of warding off anxiety.

Perhaps one of the main reasons you cannot relax is the difficulty in getting around social mandates. Although no one orders it directly, there are many external pressures that condition and hinder this process.

Maybe another reason why you fail to relax to do with your way of oversizing to one ‘s self. Giving too much prominence to individuality generates strong tensions: it ends up turning that ego into a rigid shell that protects and separates from the world. Why so much stress? What prevents relaxation?

1. Cult of productivity

Many times you cannot relax because to do so you need stillness  and silence. However, we live in a world that requires the opposite: to be moving at all times and exchanging information without stopping. Today’s prevailing lifestyle is hectic. Companies want people who are agile, fast, capable of producing all the time.

Such is the conditioning in this sense, that calm makes many people feel guilty, lazy or irresponsible. Doing nothing is what a part of society sees as “wasting time. ” On the other hand, taking advantage of it is taking action, if possible by doing more than one activity at the same time. This is the idea that sustains the cult of productivity.

There is talk of productivity in economic terms, although from the human point of view they suppose total unproductiveness. However, the mandate over time is so strong that even the idea of ​​stopping for a moment to stop acting is rejected. In these conditions relaxation is a utopia.

2. Conditioning to appearances

Another major obstacle to relaxation is the weight of appearances. In recent decades, another cult has been imposed: the cult of the body. Their care has become an imperative to fulfill in our little free time.

The body has become an object of maximum care. Exercise, food, sun, water and a long etcetera are means to “shine” in the camera of “Big Brother.” Although it is obvious that all this is positive for health, in many cases it plays a secondary role. People want to look slim and beautiful because that is how they fit the prototype of beauty and intelligence.

However, do we really take care of our well-being like this? Can we relax where we have to meet such demanding goals?

3. Attachments, one of the reasons why you can’t relax

Attachment is also a form of conditioning, but a deeper one. We can develop attachment to ideas, customs, emotions, and mistakes. There is, so to speak, a force that pushes us to visualize, have and keep everything as it is, as it is. Also, a need to stay the same to avoid a confrontation with uncertainty.

Attachments often prevent the mind from flowing freely and going where it really wants to go, even though we think it does. They put into play that tension between the desire to maintain habits, affections, possessions, in the face of the constant change of reality. Changes make us tense and are happening all the time; so we remain in a state of useless resistance.

Fighting the natural flow of reality is not only a losing fight, it also prevents the mind from flexing. And that’s one of the reasons you can’t relax: resistance to change, attachment to an idea of ​​reality that you want to work forever.

Staying tense or captive to stress is not a good idea. Not only does it make the handling of all emotions more difficult, but it can also make us physically ill. Finding ways to relax, and working towards it, is an essential part of mental hygiene. For the same reason, it is worth thinking about and trying.