Rest, Vacations, and Relaxation: One Great Technique. How to Learn to Relax in Any Circumstances

AVAlexander Volchek

You need to allow yourself a state in which you, as a person, understand very clearly that rest isn't something to search for. You don't need to wait for rest, wait for a vacation, wait for a break. You don't need to earn rest. Rest doesn't arrive through some incredible miracle. Rest isn't something that costs money. Rest is always within you. You need to allow yourself this possibility: rest is always within you. It's much better to frame your goal and the cause-and-effect relationship more broadly: “I'll work on having rest within me always,” rather than setting the goal, “How can I rest once a year? How can I get any rest at all? How can I get home early from work in the evening? How can I avoid getting tired at work? How can I stop thinking about how not to work seven days a week, twenty hours a day?” Instead: “How can I make my inner state a state of rest?” By a state of rest here, I mean a state of freedom, awareness, life, a state of living each day naturally, freely, purely. Every moment of that day. It doesn't mean you spend every moment of the day doing nothing. It doesn't mean you equate the concept of rest with your current understanding of it.

For some, it's watching a series in the evening. For some, having a drink with friends. For some, going for a walk in the woods. For some, going to Turkey once a year. For some, going to the nearest lake once a quarter. For some, traveling to another country during school vacations. For some, going to the countryside on weekends. It's important to bring into yourself the possibility that rest is something else, that there's something beyond all this. That there's a state beyond all this. That rest is something you can have within you constantly. Or at least have quite often throughout the day. An enormous number of comedy and instructional videos have been made about this. Someone arrives somewhere and spends an enormous amount of time working, sitting on their phone, telling themselves, “Today I won't take my phone. I'll switch off from work. I won't read emails.” They put various barriers around themselves. Can you make life such that those barriers don't matter at all? The question is how you see each day, how you see the experience of living each day and the things that happen during it. I'll give you an interesting example from my life, something happening right now. My wife is going away on a four-week trip.

It's happening for the first time in our lives. Probably, she has never gone anywhere alone for four weeks in at least the last fifteen years of our marriage. And before this, of course, she'd never gone away separately, alone, leaving her family and four children with me. Who gets to rest? Her, me? Or neither of us? What is rest? Since it's a new event for her, she could experience it as incredibly difficult and demanding, and spend all four weeks in the opposite of a state of rest: tension, various difficulties in how she perceives things. Or if she tells herself she's going away to rest, she's thereby saying that her life is something difficult. But we're talking about my state, not hers. Nine out of ten people, when they hear my wife is going away for four weeks, say, “How will you stay with the kids on your own? How does that work? What will you do with them?” Among the people close to us, my wife's mother asked what I'd feed them. My mother asked about certain circumstances and is more inclined not to ask what I'll do, so as not to learn what my actual experience of these things is.

Some friends ask: will there be a nanny? Have you prepared for the trip? What will happen? What are your plans? How will work happen? In all this, you can enter a state of intense difficulty. It's not simply a lack of rest; it's the opposite of rest. Or you can tell yourself that, for the first time in fifteen years, I'm getting the opportunity to be alone with my four children. I spend a lot of time with my children, but here I'll be on my own. What incredible freedom, ease, rest, and joy. But is it rest? For me, it's simply life. And what does it mean that rest is simply life? What kind of state is that? And do I get rest? This past Saturday and Sunday, I hardly worked. All right, on Saturday I didn't work. Does that mean I rested? And when I worked, it was harder than when I went out with the whole family on Saturday. Or we went for a walk, walked five kilometers, or went into town together to walk around, to go into a store, for example. Or guests came over for dinner. Was that harder than working or not?

Or is that rest? Or if we're watching a movie, is that rest, or is it harder than work? Of course, I'm not including work... Perhaps someone watching this video does very demanding physical labor. But you can do demanding physical labor outside work. Just last week, I was planting new flowers and trees on my property. I carried so much soil, dug so many holes, and did so much fertilizing that I clearly felt very tired. And rest happened, very natural, ordinary rest. That's when your physical body is tired and you recover quickly. How do you recover quickly? You sleep, you go to bed, wake up in the morning. I woke up in the morning feeling fresh as a daisy and began doing other things. Of course, if you compare them, it's probably easier for me to hold a meeting with fifteen people and discuss a business strategy for making two hundred million dollars than to carry bags in the garden. Or perhaps carrying bags in the garden is easier, because at that moment I'm not discussing strategy with anyone. I'm alone with myself, alone with that bag and the soil, and nothing else. My mother told me there had recently been some study in which scientists proved that people who come into contact with soil receive certain components or enzymes, or some kind of state.

I don't know what. That there's something in the soil that brings a person happiness. People, scientists, are constantly trying to find the various elements of happiness. So what brings happiness? A nice, large property, animals, nature, children, a wife, a husband. Sitting somewhere shut away on your own, looking at the ocean. What brings happiness? You can sit looking at the ocean, and the ocean can bring madness. Madness! Put this before yourself—

The state of rest is completely different from the one you're searching for. Make this something you constantly observe. Don't set a goal of achieving that state. Keep it in a constant state of observation. Can you be in a state of rest all the time? Can you be in a state of not resting all the time? The state of rest and of not resting is the state of life. Can you approach everything calmly? Just as I calmly approach the fact that in two days I'll be alone with four children. I'll need to take them to school, look after them during the workday, and do thousands of things I don't do in my life. Because there are things I don't do in the family, other things. I don't even know how to do them. More precisely, sometimes I fill in with something, but there are many things I don't do because I have a wife. A great many things she does, I don't know how to do. Am I seeking this out? Am I preparing for it? I'm not seeking anything out or preparing anything for this, because for me it's simply life, even if this life is unique. To reach an incredible state of rest, you need to do the most important exercise.

An exercise that may seem very strange to you right now. I'm deliberately saying this at the end of the video so you won't immediately switch it off and think it's madness. A state of rest and a state of freedom come from daily, monotonous, repetitive, real work in life. And, in that work, serving other people. When you truly understand that all your actions toward other people bring those people into a state of rest. Bring them into a state where they don't strain, don't argue, don't come into conflict, aren't dependent. A state where they don't get angry, don't react emotionally, don't worry, but rest and relax. When, through your work and your life, you bring others a state in which life flows calmly. When your rest and your desire to rest don't become a difficulty for other people around you. I know so many people who create difficulties for others through their own rest. Someone plans for an entire year to go somewhere and rest, and simply creates endless difficulty. Someone plans to rest on the weekend and constantly creates difficulty for themselves, their family, their parents, children, husband, wife, friends, colleagues, relatives, boss, subordinates, partners. Creates difficulties, not a state of joy. They're the one who wants to rest, yet they're creating a state of problems for everyone else. The first thing to begin doing in your daily work and your daily life, even when you don't yet feel rested yourself, is to bring a state of rest to other people, to create a state of rest for them.

And when you want to create rest for yourself, keep a very strict watch on whether your rest is becoming a problem for other people. This is an enormous, tremendously powerful key to resolving things in a person's life. You're on Alexander Volchek's channel. I'm very glad you've watched the video to the end. If you haven't subscribed yet, subscribe. I really ask you to like this video, regardless, and leave a comment in any form. The algorithms really need it. Of course, if you have questions or stories to share, I always respond to all the comments and address them. I address even more questions in my V100 mentorship program, which you can join through the link below. For those who really need it, for those who are truly looking for it. For those who don't want to compete with me. For those who don't want to compete with the people around them. For those who seek true harmony within themselves, who seek freedom. See you next time!