3 Relaxing and Uplifting Pastimes to Try

March 05, 2020

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These days, if you happen to have a free moment to yourself, there’s a good chance that you will revert to passive, on-demand forms of entertainment such as watching TV shows or movies, as opposed to engaging with more active and demanding pastimes.


Of course, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with the occasional passive pastime or relaxation session, but these passive pastimes are often insidious because it’s easy to follow the path of least resistance, and to sacrifice almost all your free time to them.


Here are a few relaxing and uplifting pastimes to try, instead, that may have a greater overall positive impact on your life.


1. Scrapbook or journal

When you create a scrapbook page, or a journal entry, you are simultaneously exploring your own thoughts and feelings, processing and interpreting your experiences, creating a log for the future, and exploring and expressing your own creativity.


In other words, these pastimes can be deeply rewarding both in terms of helping you to get to know yourself better, and also in terms of helping you to “digest” experiences you have in everyday life, and to give some greater sense of structure and direction to the overall story of your life.


There are many different approaches you can take to scrapbooking and journalling, and it’s certainly likely to be a good idea to do your own research, and to come up with approaches that seem like they would best gel with your own temperament and preferences.


It might be that a particular daily chairman journalling prompt could work wonders, or it might be that there’s a predetermined structure that you would like to use, in order to keep everything neat and organised.

2.Reading for pleasure, instead of watching TV

There are various benefits to reading books, rather than watching TV.


For one thing, reading books helps you to engage more deeply with a particular topic, or a more prolonged period of time, and a TV show series will typically entail.


For another thing, when you read a book, you are training both your imagination and your ability to focus in depth, on one thing at a time.


Finally, reading for pleasure is something of a meditative exercise, in and of itself. It can help you to calm your thoughts, slow down, and enter a more reflective state of mind.


Making time for some daily reading, therefore, can do a lot of good, in a variety of different ways.

3. Trying your hand at some arts and crafts 

If you consider yourself a natural “artist,” or an innately gifted DIY enthusiast, there’s a good chance you might feel nervous about trying out some arts and crafts.


The point, though, isn’t to be a virtuoso from the beginning. It’s to experience the satisfaction of actually creating things, as opposed to merely existing in a consumer bubble.


So, try your hand at arts and crafts, whether that means using a detailed specification to try and build a shelf out of wood, or else honing your ability to draw well.


As time goes on, with the right kind of practice, you will naturally become more skilled at these pastimes. and in the meantime, you may grow significantly through the practices themselves.

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