“There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.”

— Alan Cohen

A prolific author, Allen Cohen is well known for his bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series, a staple of bookshelves all over the world. Cohen also maintains a weekly radio program, Get Real, and For the Heart, a monthly magazine column. But that doesn’t mean he’s all work and no play. Cohen’s words evoke a simple, often ignored truth: the importance of work/life balance. Work without relaxation leads to stress and burnout, frayed relationships and bad habits. But too much relaxation makes us lazy and unmotivated. The solution lies in the middle path, a serene balance of work and rest that compliments both and diminishes neither.

Time to relax

• “Drinking something very cold or very hot. The surprising temperature of the drink makes me be mindful of it and takes me out of the worry of the moment. It’s a little trick a therapist taught me once.” – 22 Unexpected Things That Relax People Who Live With Anxiety
• “The Neck Hammock claims to be able to cure your neck pain in 10 minutes or less. It was invented by a licensed physical therapist with hopes of giving people a cheaper alternative to relieve neck pains in their homes. ” – This neck hammock is supposed to help you feel more relaxed
• “Oh, okay, so at one point I made a Sims apartment where there were five different women. One is a blue alien who has romantic aspirations and everyone keeps finding out, and she’s kind of shy. So every time she starts to get close to someone, they find out she’s an alien and that’s one thing. Then I made this one Sim who’s just deviant, and she’s fun. She’s a klepto and aspires to be a crime lord. I wanted to make her a vampire, so I had her befriend an old vampire.” – Jessica Williams: Self-Care Through The Sims
• “Retraining the brain to get out of the hyper-stressed, anxiety driven state to a more relaxed state doesn’t happen just because you decide it’s time to relax. (If only the mind worked in this way…) Rather, it requires that we create the right condition in which the mind can naturally relax.” – How To Relax The Thinking Mind
• “There are few better ways to grab attention than being funny — so they wanted to raise awareness while simultaneously injecting some humour into the world of wildlife photography.” – The 2017 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are sure to leave you laughing

Enjoy your weekend 🙂