You know the look, don’t you? You have probably worn it a time or two yourself. That glaze in the eye on your first day back to work/school/life after a one week (or dare I dream) two week vacation. It is true that vacations can be a great time to recharge the batteries. It allows us to spend time with our loved ones, put aside our daily routines and chores, and experience new and exciting things. But why do we feel so let down when we need to return back to reality? In this article, I’d like to share some ideas on maybe why we feel this way, and how to reduce or wipe out the post vacation blues.
Just last week I was talking to my hairdresser during my monthly appointment, when she declared matter of factly to me that she “needs a vacation” really badly. She went on to share with me that her idea of the perfect getaway was not having to do laundry and cook for a few days. Spoken like a true working mom of a two year old. However, I secretly thought to myself….if that is all it takes to make you happy, then why can’t you get a break from those things during the rest of the year when you aren’t on vacation?
As I started to reflect on this subject more, I personally think that our daily lives have become way too overloaded. It is obviously leaving everyone frazzled to the breaking point. I also think that all the electronic gadgets we have buzzing in our ears and into our eyes are having an effect on our ability to “chill out” and properly unwind each day.
This, plus a whole list of other things I am leaving out, leaves many of us with that desperate feeling of needing to run away once or twice a year from our lives in order to get some proper rest. Why are we doing this to ourselves? This is why when that period of rest ends, we truly dread returning back into our lives….leaving us with that empty feeling.
I think the key to beating the post vacation blues is to make enough changes in our daily lives that we improve the quality of it, giving us enough time to rest or spend time together as a family unit during the year and not just on vacation. Here are just some ideas to consider how this may be accomplished:
1. Reduce your use of T.V. and electronics daily – I would like to encourage everyone to analyze the amount of time each day you watch television or are playing around on the computer or other electronic devices. Then, challenge yourself to reduce that by 1 hour, or more if you can do it. Use that “extra” one hour to take a walk with your family outside, or have a cup of cocoa together and just hang out and talk.
2. Consider cutting the volume of your family’s wardrobe – One thing is really clear to me by traveling the world and comparing notes with others—is we in the U.S. have lots of stuff. This includes lots of clothes. Having more clothes means you have to do more laundry. Having to do more laundry is stressful. If we all challenge ourselves to keep our wardrobes to about 60 articles of clothing or less, it will reduce the amount of laundry and clean up you need to do. The other thing is that you don’t have to wash clothes after just one use. Learn to hang up clothes after wearing it to get more use from them.
3. Get the family to help out more – I am not sure that chores around the house (which by talking to family and friends is a major source of stress) is being fairly or equitably distributed among capable family members. These mundane but important tasks need to be completed, but should not be the burden of only one person in the family. If possible, start incorporating kids at a young age into helping around the house, rather than hitting them up all of a sudden when they are 14 with a huge to do list.
4. Sit in complete silence for at least 10 minutes per day – In the Corporate world that I work and live in, we use the buzz term of needing to “decompress” after a particularly hard day at the office. The daily grind of life can get really stressful, thus leading to that feeling of needimg to escape on vacation. We need to do a better job of cherishing and taking advantage of the moments we can get to just let our body and mind take a rest. An easy way to do this is to turn off the radio and phone when you commute to or from work. This is often the only alone time we get if you have a family waiting for you when you get home.
In summary, if we all take a look and examine our daily schedule we can come up with several ways to make time for ourselves and catch that daily break. The key is to not let our stress levels build and grow to such a massive scale that the only solution is total collapse on a vacation.
As always, I wish you all the happiest of lives…….and travels!
