Can relaxation ever become a problem? It can if your body feels too relaxed and you start to feel restless, anxious, and empty.
You know the feeling: you’ve been lounging on the couch day after day, week after week. Maybe you’re watching movies in bed every night and weekend. You have nothing to do and nowhere to be, so why not just kick back and relax?
But inside, there’s a nagging tension you can’t shake. It’s uncomfortable. Suddenly, there’s a feeling of sadness, anger, or irritability, maybe even some mild depression. This isn’t just a quirk of your body; it’s a signal that your balance between relaxation and activity is off.
In this post, I’ll cover why being overly relaxed can actually contribute to stress, and how to fix it so you can enjoy life with the right balance of work and leisure.
Why Over-Relaxation Is A Problem
Over-relaxation becomes a problem when it starts impacting your overall health and mental well-being. We often hear that relaxation is actually a good thing, but when taken to an extreme, it can actually be just as harmful as working 24/7.
First, let’s acknowledge that wanting to relax and de-stress is a normal desire. If you feel yourself working long hours at the office or doing physical labor, it’s only normal to want to kick back and take a load off.
The relaxation I’m talking about here, though, is the kind that’s just pure laziness.
If you’ve ever laid in bed or sat on the couch all day, and when you get up, you find yourself with aches and pains, those aren’t pains from a difficult life; those are actually pains from too easy of a life.
I’m only human too; my wife and I sometimes catch ourselves watching TV every night after the kids are asleep, and by the time I’m ready to go to bed, I’m moaning and groaning from the aches of just lounging.
We need to look at this not just from a physical lens, but also from a spiritual lens.
Don’t Lose The Excitement Of Life
Aching physical pains from lounging around or laziness are a deeper problem beyond the physical. They start with your attitude, beliefs, and consciousness.
If you believe that life is difficult and play victim to it, it will manifest as bodily aches and pains. Why? Well, what you’re holding in mind is: “Life is difficult and pains me.” And so, all you manifest is a difficult life with pain.
On the flip side, if you believe life to be exciting because it’s an opportunity to learn and grow, what you hold in mind is: “Life is an adventure; I can’t wait to experience more.” And then you manifest a youthful energy that is able to accomplish the miraculous.
You don’t want to lose that zest for life! It’s that zest that attracts more life energy to you, and then radiates and pours out of you.
When you play victim to hardship and seek relaxation constantly, you actually sap yourself of life energy, and it disappears. That’s why the more you move, the easier it is to stay moving, and the more you relax, the easier it is to stay comfortable.
Does all this sound too good to be true? Well, keep an open mind, and set aside all that you think you know. If you are here to learn how to fix the problem of stress and aches, it starts with a willingness to at least try and experiment.
So how do you know when it’s time to make a change? You must pay attention to the signs when your body starts to feel too relaxed.
Signs Your Body Feels Too Relaxed
- Heavy, sluggish limbs – Moving feels harder than it should.
- Low physical energy – No urge to stand, walk, or engage.
- Excessive comfort-seeking – Wanting to lie down, lounge, or stay still.
- Lack of motivation – Tasks feel optional or easily postponed.
- Mental fog – Slower thinking, poor focus, or daydreaming.
- Restlessness despite being calm – The body feels relaxed but the mind is unsettled.
- Aches and pains – The body is sore or feels weak.
- Irritability or boredom – Comfort without stimulation becomes uncomfortable.
- Subtle anxiety or guilt – A sense you “should be doing something.”
- Poor sleep at night – Feeling relaxed all day but not sleepy at night.
- Blunted stimulation – Things that normally excite or engage you (TV, video games, scrolling) feel dull or flat.
Related Reading: Reducing Workplace Stress And Anxiety Through Mindset Shifts
All of these are signs that it’s time to get up and go to work. Whether that be to go to your actual job, come up with a fitness philosophy and get some exercise, find a creative outlet, or build a business. Any one of these is better than over-relaxing.
When Overworking Becomes a Problem Too
Let’s not get confused here, though—overworking is as much of a problem as over-relaxing.
You don’t need to be in a constant state of GO GO GO! If you work all day physically and mentally and never give yourself a proper break, then you risk burnout.
If you over-exert yourself, you actually become just as unproductive as being lazy. You stop producing quality work, and it all becomes a wasted effort.
Here’s an example that happened to me when I started blogging. I pushed myself so hard to produce content daily. I didn’t feel satisfied unless I made 3 blog posts a week and worked at it every single day.
I pushed myself like this for about 3 months until one day, I was typing on my laptop and I couldn’t write a clear sentence anymore. My brain just stopped working. My belief was that I would fail if I didn’t push myself each day, which only resulted in guilt.
I surrendered to God/Higher Power, “Okay God, you win. I’m going to get good sleep tonight and give myself a day or two to recharge.”
The next day, I hung out with my wife and kids, enjoyed a cup of coffee and some music, and made myself a nice breakfast. By noon, I started to get that tension where my body feels too relaxed. I was just flat out bored!
So I allowed myself to be bored, and all of a sudden, a surge of ideas for content to write started flowing from my unconscious mind. I grabbed my laptop and started writing, and a natural momentum took over. I wrote a blog post effortlessly, as if it wrote itself and I just witnessed it.
This is what happens when you let go of a relentless pursuit—the momentum naturally picks up when you’ve rested, as if some higher power is moving through you. This is what finding the right balance between work and relaxation looks like.
How to Find The Right Balance Between Work and Relaxation
To find this balance is easier than you think. The important thing to note is that this balance is the ideal we’re striving for in this post.
If you’ve stuck with me this long, you’ve:
- Acknowledged that to function optimally in the world is to find the balance between work and relaxation.
- Understood that your body feeling too relaxed all the time can spiral into restlessness, anxiety, and physical discomfort.
- Embraced life and its experiences.
The next step is to actually take action.
It doesn’t have to be extreme action, nor does it have to be something with a huge goal at the end of it. Just get up and do something!
Stay busy throughout the day. If you are cooped up inside, go for a walk, do some chores, cook food, or go browse aimlessly at a mall; there’s never a shortage of things to do.
Understand, it should feel a little uncomfortable! That’s a sign it’s actually good for you and to head in that direction.
When the night has come and you’ve done everything you feel like you could do, your body will naturally want to rest, and it should. This is when you should not resist the rest and allow yourself time to recharge.
The key is that rest will find you when you’ve put in a hard day’s work. A hard day’s work is no different than just living life to its fullest and meeting your potential.
Work until you’re ready to rest. Rest until you’re ready to move. That’s the balance.