by Gemma Fox

Created on: October 04, 2009   Last Updated: October 06, 2009

In this day and age people are under a huge amount of stress from a variety of different sources. There doesn't seem to be a day go by when you yourself feel stressed or you meet or work with someone who is so completely stressed it appears to be taking over.

Apparently a small amount of stress is good for us and I would go along with that. A little bit of stress at work gives us the adrenalin boost to complete the task and go home feeling satisfied. Too much stress at work leaves us feeling dissatisfied at the end of the day so we go home with a disillusioned feeling of a task not completed and that sits on our minds so we don't completely relax.

However, we should relax at home. Work is work and home is home. We don't go to work worrying about not having done the dishes or finished building that shelf unit but we do go home worrying that we didn't send that email or finish that report.

Other pressures come at the weekend when people expect different things of you. They want you to visit them, come to their house for a dinner party or they want you to go shopping with them, see a movie with them, visit an exhibition with them. They want you to spend your weekend doing things when maybe, just once, you want to be lazy.

The pressure of doing things at the weekend can add on to the pressure built up during the week at work and eventually it adds up, builds up. Every so often you have to be firm and say 'No, I am having a ME day'.

There's nothing wrong with having Me days. In fact, they are essential and if anyone calls you selfish for wanting to spend time alone then say 'No, I'm recharging, I'm spending some time with myself because I need it'. The truth is, we all need it.

Don't know what to do on a Me day? Well, there's no set schedule. Just think of things you enjoy doing but don't normally get to do. Take the dog for a long walk. Don't shower, laze around in your lazy clothes watching DVDs and eating junk food. If you want to sleep for part of the day, do it. Do whatever it is that you know will relax you and chill you out.

You can be completely lazy on a Me day but the important thing is, don't feel guilty about it. If you don't leave the house for 24 hours and spend most of that on the sofa watching trashy TV then that's fine because it won't be long until you're back at work, or back facing the things that give you stress.

Maybe your Me day means taking a trip somewhere, even if you're alone. There's such a pressure to always be with someone and the popular

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