It’s okay to be a couch bum.
In this day and age, we love some good sense of ambition. Go to school and get that degree! Strive for the promotion! We care about the numbers. It’s the status quo for dating. Who wants a lazy person in their house? Who wants a couch potato? NOBODY!. I grew up in an African household, it’s forbidden to lounge around and be useless laying on the couch. I feel like I created my ambitious persona out from the shaming of laziness. Even though I don’t like the foundation of this ambitious personality I have; I do like being ambitious. I love my entrepreneur spirit. It’s rewarding. I love being driven, I love getting the moneyyy! I love achieving..However;
I also loveeee and pioritize my Lazy, messy, “do nothing” goal-less, aim-less, unproductive days!
I believe it’s healthy to be aim-less sometimes. Its okay to be use-less. Some of you cannot dare to see yourself as use-less. Well let me break it down. I mean;
YOU DON’T NEED TO USE YOURSELF TO GAIN OUTSIDE VALIDATION TODAY.
You are not a machine. You’ve got blood flowing through your veins.
Be useless to other people’s perception of you or external pressure so that you are useful to your existence alone today by laying on the couch resting, if that looks like laziness then be lazy.
It’s healthy to flow and let the day be what it wants to be. It’s okay to drop your hunched shoulders from sitting in front of a computer working all day everyday day. It’s okay to lay down on the bed and stare at the ceiling.
But I’ve got bills to pay you may say…if you continue to neglect rest, there may be no bills to pay because there may be no YOU to pay it. Stress kills. Chemical imbalance in the brain from stress shrinks the brain, people die from that. I have a entrepreneur spirit however, I love being a couch bum too.
REST. Money will always come.
I can hear some of your thoughts right now..
“Money will always come? Yeah right! Easy for you to say!”
You know what’s interesting about the ecosystem of this life? It is self-replenishing, self-healing, self-sustaining. Things have a funny way of taking care of themselves when we trust the energy of our life and let go. I urge you to let go and be lazy today.
I love that type of lazy day with my hair bonnet on and zero pressure to take a shower. Let me stink in peace. I want to do nothing but lay on the couch, order food from uber eats and let time pass.
I believe those aim-less days are just as important as my ambitous days. I love those days when I give space and time for nothing….when just simply “breathing is enough” or stepping outside for the sun to touch my skin is enough.
I believe it’s okay to be bored; the feeling of boredom comes from the discomfort with simply BEING with your existence. Sensory deprivation is uncomfortable. But we need it.
If our brain is constantly “doing”, it becomes uncomfortable when there is nothing to do…we call it boredom…we want to jump out of that boredom and find something to do. We escape into toxic productivity to feel worthy of existing.
Your existence alone is enough right now. Always have been enough and always will be enough.
Productivity is okay, don’t throw that trait away; it helps us grow, however; simply become open to your unproductive side too because that part of you exist. You are not one dimensional, you are multi dimensional. Life is Ying and Yang and so are you. Balance is the essence of living.
Your body and your mind is very intelligent; it sends you signals to slow down when you’re over productive and your mental pH is off. The signal could be a migraine, feeling sleepy out of nowhere, lack of focus, lack of drive, brain fog, and sometimes to the extreme it could send moody signals associated with mental illness; thats the emergency signal because your over productivity created chemical imbalance in your brain.
I was one of those people who self diagnosed myself with Bipolar disorder from browsing the internet. I would get moody up, down and sideways from what seems like it came out of nowhere. Until I started practicing mindfulness and studying myself and this body that I live in.
I learned that my body was simply trying to talk to me in its own language. My body was saying “I WANT REST NOW , I WANT TO PLAY, I WANT TO BE LAZY TODAY”.
Mental illness I believe is a compounded history of neglecting the human body, the human mind, and the human psyche. You’d think you’re crazy or in some sort of psychosis but all you need is simply laziness, connecting with yourself or with someone else in the form of play or you just need to be bored for a little while and YOU NEED TO BREATHE. Pheww we take for granted breathing.
The brain needs oxygen to function properly. When we tighten up from doing too much and don’t properly inhale and exhale in the rhythm that the body needs, we get mentally and physically sick. Your breathing pattern can send your body into survival mode or thriving mode. All you need is to simply STOP DOING and BREATHE Consciously and slowly deep into your belly and out. It will release tension throughout the body.
Do you have a laptop or computer? If yes, have you ever experienced it over heating from prolonged use? To the point that it’s not loading pages correctly, or file size is suddenly too large to process or it just shuts down out of no where? Then you turn it off for a little bit, let it cool down and it reboots itself? Yeah, that’s how your brain is.
If only we can sit with boredom, breathe and settle into it, we will find out it’s exactly what we need after a busy week of “doing” and “reacting”. Boredom reboots the brain. Take a nap if you can’t handle being bored. Some of the best naps is that boring afternoon nap.
I personally love those playful, lazy, “stare at the ceiling” days.. That boring afternoon where all I feel is the temperature in the room, and I can hear the sound of my brain activity…those lazy moments is when my mind, spirit, soul, body integrates all the “doing”. It’s incredibly healing.
I can just “BE” in the timeless space of “here” and “now”. My biggest inspirations, creativity comes from those boring, aimless days. It boost my productivity when the time for productivity presents itself because then my mind is clearer, and calmer. My creative genius speaks to me in those quiet boring moments. Ideas come to me in those moments when I do nothing but stare at the ceiling. I can hear myself, I can see, I can envision, I can feel, I can sense, I can know in those moments all that I need to know. In those moments just me being human is enough.
