Relax.

“I don’t have time to relax,” you say. Honestly, you do.

Far too often we get caught up in the belief that there simply isn’t enough time for us to spend alone in peace and quiet contemplation. This is a lie. Modern life has conditioned us to embrace a go-go-go lifestyle, with a need to constantly fill any available time with something. Our culture has turned us into stimulus junkies; silence has become awkward and seemingly foreign. We get overwhelmed by the bombarding pressures of feeling compelled to constantly do, to perpetually move. We find ourselves stressed out, full of anxiety and depressed.

Though it seems as though 24 hours simply aren’t enough in which to get everything done, the truth is that without a healthy release, without a recharge, we aren’t able to make the most of our busy hours. We lose focus, we make mistakes, we get frustrated and we cram more and more stress in an already full vessel. This leads to anger and sadness, illness, and even death. Where are we supposed to find this quiet time? What are we to do when there simply isn’t time to take?

Purposefully choose to make time. It’s there for your taking—you just need to recognize it and claim it. We don’t need to be drastic—we all have obligations—but there are simple things we can do to reclaim enough time to just be. Learning to live in moments of quiet solitude are vital to peace, happiness and release. We need to discover true “down time.” We often think we are relaxing in our down time, but often we really just fill it with noise.

It’s essential to unplug. And there is time available to do so. Watch one less TV show. Check Facebook fewer times per day. Put your iPhone on a shelf, out of arms reach. Stop playing Angry Birds. Reduce your internet immersion by an hour. Check your email less often. Wake up an hour earlier. Devote less time to the consumption of news. Make fewer commitments. It’s okay to say “no” to things, to people, and to events that feed upon your time.

And don’t fill this newly found free time with some other noisy distraction. This is you time. This is time for quiet solitude. It may be difficult at first—it’s always hard breaking a routine—but make a purposeful decision to find areas in your life where you can carve away unnecessary events. Take baby steps if you have to. But use this quiet time to consider things that complicate your life; to find things that you could eliminate in favor of more important ones. You do have time to relax; you just have to choose to recognize and recapture it. Relax.

“Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” — Luke 5:16