Zen and the Art of Relaxation
I’m currently on week three of my five week Christmas holiday and I’m loving every minute of it. I remember listening to the audiobook that Bush recommended last year “The 4-Hour Work Week” which dealt with taking long career breaks rather than brief holidays, and found my experiences so far have been right on the button.
At the start of the first week I had a real problem just trying to relax, you just get so used to the rhythm of waking up at some ridiculous hour and bundling out the door to get to work. Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum. Take that away for a week and by the end of that time you go back to work and use the cliche “I need a holiday to recover from the holiday”, regardless of whether you’ve been scuba diving with dolphins, bungee jumping in Australia or just painting fences and watching the telly.
By the end of two weeks off you’re really nicely relaxed, because one week is never really enough to get your body out of the rhythm of the daily grind. Then you go back to work with the blues again.
Have five weeks off and you can seriously start to relax.
Getting back to the start of paragraph two, after it was agreed that I could take the time off from my regular client (I am fortunate in that everyone I have worked for since going into business for myself has been extremely nice) I made big plans of everything I wanted to do. I wrote lists, got everything planned down to the most minute detail, and then started. By the end of the first week I had cleared the list but realised that taking that approach was neither fun, nor rewarding.
Reprogramming your brain to think differently takes quite a while, it’s very easy to fall back into the regular patterns and do as you always would. That’s why a number of dieters fail in the first couple of weeks, you begin with good intentions, really stick at it for a couple of days and then get bored and start eating pies again.
I didn’t start to really and truly fully relax until part way through my second week, and then it was like a light switch was flicked on in my brain (or perhaps flicked off would be a better analogy) and I finally got it. When you stop overthinking things and go with the flow, it gets a whole lot easier. That’s made all the more tricky for someone with a technical mind that is used to thinking in a very procedurally based way.
The lists have now gone and I’m just taking each day as it comes. “It’s eight o’clock, I really SHOULD get out of bed…”. “But why? Aren’t you supposed to be doing what YOU want to do rather than what you think you OUGHT to be doing?”.
Sometimes you pick up little gems from the most unlikely of places, I always remember what Agent Lundy said to Officer Morgan in the second series of the superb serial killer drama Dexter when he announced “The truth speaks to me from a quiet place”.
That it does, and to hear it then first you have to listen.
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Wow, taking some time off has let you dive deep there brotha’ !
I totally know what you’re talking about with reference to getting out of the rhythm of life.
Even on my days off, there is this counter in the back of my head . . . it just keeps counting down until my time is up and I have to go back to work. It’s very difficult to turn it off and just relax. Even on week long vacations, I usually plan to go somewhere (just to get out of the house) and end up only leaving myself a day to recover from the trip.
This last trip I allowed three days when I got back to relax and it went much better. Next year I get three weeks off for the year (for working at the church for more then 5 years) and I’m seriously thinking about taking two of them together.
Absolutely, I think a two week break is a necessity. Obviously there in the US you get less annual vacation time than the average worker here in the UK (on average its four weeks paid vacation). Unless you are self employed of course, in which case it is “don’t work, don’t get paid”. Or in my case “don’t work, company doesn’t get paid, I still get paid, have to make sure there is money in reserve for this”.
The only downside for me right now is my sleep pattern is totally out of whack, which is why I’m replying to blog comments at 1 o’clock in the morning. But what the heck, it’s not like I have anything to get up for in the morning
Lol 4 weeks a year ! Yah, I’ll be getting 3 weeks this coming year because I will have been working here for a total of 5 years. I think at 10 years, I get a total of 4 weeks a year paid vacation.
My worst problem is making sure that all the volunteers are available and up for the challenge while I’m gone. There are so many little things to keep up with (make sure this area is unlocked by this time, band practice is at such and such a time). Making procedure paperwork on everything has been a big help.
This comming year, I plan on taking at least a week and just staying at home and doing nothing. Eacy, cheep, with no need for sleep !