Leisure Interests |
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Using your leisure time effectively plays a vital part in stress management. Leisure interests are an essential counterpart to work, and developing them will stand you in very good stead when the time comes for retirement.
It is essential to choose hobbies and interests which are right for you, and to regard them as purely leisure activities, rather than treating them like work! It's often a good idea to choose leisure interests which will balance out your job situation in terms of contrast, by providing something in your life which your work cannot.
For example, if you have a very active, physically demanding and tiring job, you may find that learning a language in your spare time offers an ideally relaxing yet stimulating contrast. On the other hand, if you have a highly cerebral job, confined to a desk for much of the time, taking regular physical exercise and making a real interest of it - joining a ramblers’ group or swimming club, for example - may provide just the right balance.
Certainly any leisure activity which can be shared, through joining a class, club or other type of association, has an extra dimension in terms of stress therapy, offering companionship, social contact and opportunities for meeting new people, all in themselves valuable and enjoyable ways of dissipating harmful stress that comes from loneliness.
By the same token, taking up some voluntary work on behalf of others less fortunate than yourself is not only a thoroughly worthwhile way of doing something constructive to help, but will also indirectly enable you to get your own problems into perspective, while meeting all sorts of people in a variety of situations.
Playing and listening to music, singing - especially in a choir - painting, making pottery, cooking and gardening, are among the most valuable hobbies for keeping stress levels down. Music in particular has unique soothing qualities and ability to lift the spirits. Cooking, like painting, can be highly absorbing, offering plenty of scope for experimentation and creativity, as well as giving a great deal of pleasure in terms of the results: some of the techniques of cookery - kneading bread dough, for example - are especially therapeutic, in the same way that working with clay is.
Gardening is arguably the most highly recommended stress-relieving activity of all. Very importantly, it keeps you in touch with nature and the rhythm of the seasons, which can be all too easily lost sight of while coping with the pressures of modern life; it is excellent exercise, carried out mostly in the fresh air, and endlessly absorbing, offering an infinite variety of tasks.
In addition the achievement of having helped beautiful things grow affords great satisfaction. Gardening also offers unrivalled camaraderie based on shared interests, cutting through barriers of class, age and sex. Flower shows at national and local level do of course create considerable competitive stress and tensions generated by unpredictable weather, for instance, but on the whole it must be possible to rate keen gardeners as among the least stressed of people!
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