Rethink your Weekend

You only live twice they say, once before the dream vacation and once afterwards! Who wouldn’t love to take one, but it remains unfulfilled for most and the culprit are the obvious ones - some times its lack of time or money, while most of the times its both. What they endure is continuation instead of a vacation let alone the dream one. 

With a different thinking and right approach, we might succeed in circumventing both the obstacles and reap all the benefits that comes from a vacation. 

• Improve mental power by healing
• Improve productivity & focus
• Rejuvenate body & mind
• Improve physical health
• Improve relationship with people & work
• Improve sleep quality
• Strike the right work-life balance

Research has shown that vacation is an antidote to chronic stress that builds within us slowly and destroys our body’s ability to protect itself. There are no reasons why we shouldn’t reap the rewards that a successful holiday has to offer utilising the opportunities available at hand.

We can gain the advantages of a vacation through invocation of the “placebo effect”! the remarkable phenomenon that harnesses the power of human brain to cure our body. It may be a form of deceit but that’s how powerful human brain is.

The beneficial effect comes from the expectations concerning the vacation rather than the vacation itself.

Another tool that can be used complementary or independently to achieve the effect is “self-talk”. We can self-talk to our brain and program it to align with the above but the obvious perquisite for success being our willingness to self-listen. Self-listening is also known as self-awareness.

The concept I am advocating is to use these two tools to make our minds rethink weekends as mini vacation. Not every weekend but the one we would simulate to be a vacation.

We shall plan weeks in advance, book a hotel for stay-cation and gradually built up the tempo. Once the vacation start there will be no limit to the indulgence as we will be waking up late, spend time at the pool, have late morning brunch, visit a local attraction we have been postponing, go for shopping and the whole nine yards.

After the weekend we shall return home, having enjoyed a well-deserved vacation albeit mini, fully rejuvenated nevertheless with plenty of photos in our camera and memories in our minds!

Everyone need a vacation once in a while and everyone can settle for one!