By Manini Linuza
My highest priority is no longer achievement. My priority is to relax. Your actions are based on what’s important to you. Values and priorities fuel your actions. I believed that progress is happiness. Movement, change and success were my life goals. To the point that I would constantly ask myself ,“What is the most productive thing I can do right now?” I became obsessed with efficiency so that I could constantly be killing a few birds with one stone. If I wasn’t, I was wasting my time. This caused stress in my body and mind. I knew I needed to change something.
Here is what manifested for me. I was having a cup of tea at my sister’s, a yogi tea, you know the one that has the little fortune note attached? My note read “mental happiness is total relaxation”. I thought for a second, is this true? I felt inward, I began to relax. Yes, it is true. I immediately began to feel good. When you relax, you automatically become more present.
Life happens on it’s own, like a heart beating automatically. Whether I choose to get involved or not, life is constantly moving. Do you think if you stop putting in effort your life will stop? Actions are natural and it’s so easy to move from one thing to the next. But relaxation, being still, being silent, I think that’s more unnatural, in a sense. It can be more difficult to sit in silent stillness with yourself. But with relaxation, you open yourself to higher potential. Your life becomes less rigid. More happens – more flow, more movement, more progress. Relaxation is progress, is happiness.
