Everyone likes to go on vacation. It’s fun, but when we think about delegating/trusting someone to our “business tasks” while we are absent from the office…
Well, it can be hard to get into the vacation spirit.
What we might not realize is the benefits of vacation outweigh any worries we have of being away from the office. A vacation doesn’t have be long or expensive to reap the rewards of taking a break. A few days or even a long weekend is better than no downtime at all. The important thing is to totally disengage from work activities during whatever downtime you can manage to take. The reason is that it allows your body, mind and yes, your soul to recharge.
As I mentioned, a vacation doesn’t have to be fancy or costly. If you look at the photo below of me and my grandson fishing, I can’t imagine a better way to be spending my downtime. While I am in these precious moments, I can’t imagine thinking of work. I’m not going to write a long article, because we should be able to easily understand the need for downtime. So, I’m going to offer just three steps to challenge you to take some downtime for yourself.
Step One: Like Louis Armstrong says in the song – Leave your worries on the doorstep. It’s hard to fathom, but hard play is just as important as hard work. So, like Louis says and “before you leave for vacation” let your worries go. We live a fast-paced business life, personal life, each full of more stress than ever. With so much media demand, it’s hard to give our brain, our body and our life as a whole – a real break. Work and home life demands, expectations, and information overload continue to increase. We hear it every day that stress is the number one killer and is often the underlying reason behind many illnesses. We get used to being stressed we don’t take notice that we need a break. We get caught up in the work of work, the work of life and we should not!
Step Two: Recharge Your Batteries (Unless you’re that Pink Bunny) If you give play as much importance as work, then you shall play. When you play whether its for a weekend, a week or however long you have, your body clock resets. A friend of mine takes something called a “Me-Treat” sometimes. It’s a self-indulgent, cut off all media, no travel, no cost, be in the moment, decompressing weekend. How awesome does that sound!
Step 3: Improve Relationships What happens when you have accomplished step one and two is you end up in step three. You don’t even have to try, plus the first better relationship you create is with yourself. And, when you treat yourself better, then you come from a better place with others. Now, I cherish any time with my grandson, but when this picture was taken, I didn’t have one business meeting scheduled, wasn’t in a hurry, no deadlines, no nothing except moments to be made with this little guy.
Downtime just doesn’t get any better!