Allow yourself to do nothing

We live in a society in which it is imposed on us that we have to produce and produce. They give us the false idea that we must have a busy lifebecause if not, we don’t have as much personal value.

So we accumulate work, things to do and tasks throughout our daily lives, almost running out of a few minutes to do nothing. For this reason, many people develop what has come to be called leisurephobia or fear of free time.

What are leisurephobic people like?

Leisurephobic people feel a great inner emptiness when they find themselves in a leisure situation, which, far from generating enjoyment and well-being, causes enormous anxiety. In addition to anxiety, these people tend to feel very guilty, as if that freedom or that time for enjoyment was not deserved to them or as if they were wasting time that they could invest in something more productive.

Leisurephobic people feel an intense fear of the possibility of feeling bored, Well, that would mean something intolerable to them, that would cause them discomfort and that would continually remind them that they are not doing anything productive.

That is why they impose very strict work schedules and try to keep most of the time busy, whether with several jobs, learning languages, doing one master’s degree after another, etc. The fact is that they do not allow themselves time to do absolutely nothing, to simply lie quietly on the couch, listening to music or reading a book.

In the most extreme cases, these people become anxious about being on vacation., because they don’t know how to enjoy time in which they don’t have to do anything. The fact of having free time, in which there is no need to work or produce, disorients them and makes them feel very bad about themselves, as if they were lazy or stupid.

So many times they don’t even take vacations, which ends up exhausting them physically and mentally and making them even more anxious. Although they don’t even realize it, since they prefer to have their time occupied by the discomfort and guilt they feel, they don’t do it.

Why are there people who fear free time?

Evidently, This is the result of a learned irrational belief. As we have said before, industrial societies are very responsible for this behavior, but also the education received in our family or being excessively responsible people.

This people They are continually telling themselves that doing nothing or being bored is deplorable and totally bad. and that they are worthless and lazy if they don’t have their time occupied. They also say that you have to take advantage of your time, until the last minute, because wasting time is a very bad thing.

They see free time as a threat and consequently, they suffer. Therefore, it is essential that, to free yourself from this fear, you change your irrational belief for a more rational and adaptive belief that allows you to live more peacefully.

That is, they must internalize and tell themselves that practicing what the Italians call “il dolce far niente” (the sweetness of doing nothing) is beneficial and does not make us lazy, far from it, but rather people who need rest and enjoy other things that have nothing to do with producing or working.

To do this, as in any confrontation of beliefs, we have to look for evidence and provide arguments that convince us that this is so:

The first is to be aware that we are like animals that need rest. Nature did not design us to work and produce so many hours.On the other hand, it has been shown that boredom stimulates creativity. Great discoveries in history have occurred in the middle of “a sweet act of doing nothing.” Furthermore, we have to stop being so extreme and exaggerated. The fact that we take a few hours a day to do absolutely nothing or take a well-deserved vacation does not mean that we are totally unproductive people.

You can be an active person who carries out your obligations and routines and rest from time to time, It is not incompatible. All of this evidence shows us that we are harboring an irrational belief about leisure and that we must discard it from our minds if we want to stop suffering from it.

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