Be Kind, Unwind

It’s Friday! (somewhere) and time to unwind.

The concept of unwinding is something everyone is already familiar with. It’s the feeling you have when you step through the door of your house after a tough day, or a tough week … or even just the first week of the new year, and you feel the tension of work fall away.

Unwinding is what happens when you put your feet up and binge-watch your favourite TV show while having a glass of wine. It’s how you feel when you first lay down in bed at night, right there in the space where you feel your body sinking into the mattress before you fall asleep.

The dictionary defines unwinding as “relaxing after a period of work or tension,” but what do dictionaries know? Unwinding goes beyond this definition. It has a lot to do with stress, worry and overwhelm and how we react, rather than respond, to these things. Unwinding is a mindset, and some would claim, even a way of life.

Let’s look a little closer at the idea of what it means to truly ‘unwind.’

What it Means to “Unwind”

We naturally unwind when we’re tired and worn out. It is our body’s reaction to a day full of activity. This idea backs up the dictionary definition we talked about just a few moments ago. The problem with this definition is it involves an unconscious reaction to the world around us. So, while it’s helpful to unwind on this level, we don’t have a lot of control over how effective it is, or even when it happens. Even the word “relaxing” doesn’t seem strong enough, does it? Easy to say…difficult to do.

That reason is why it’s so important to create a new definition that involves intentional action. Unwinding now becomes an active verb, something you can turn on and off like a switch to help you remove layers of fatigue by breaking free from what’s causing it.

But is this good enough?

Do you bother to unwind?

If you do…what’s your “go to” way of unwinding?

I’ll share mine if you share yours.