10 Steps to Be Happy Now

1. Put yourself first

Are you a busy parent, running around after your children and/or partner, ensuring everyone is happy, while neglecting your needs? Are you working tirelessly to earn more money, yet isolating yourself and giving up on your hobbies? Many place others first, thinking this is unselfish. However, this is the fast track to frustration, anger and resentment, especially on challenging days. Happy and successful parents, partners and workers, ensure they have a balanced life, including fun pursuits, socialising, rest and work. Be kind to yourself by doing what makes you happy every day. It is your life… so do not put yourself last. What do you feel like doing right now?

2. Be grateful

Although it’s hard to look at the wonderful things in life when you are feeling low, it is necessary. List the things you are grateful for and watch how your mood changes; it is all about transforming your mindset. Make it your new habit to list five things you are grateful for, every day, from small to large. By the law of attraction, you will attract more good into your life, improve your circumstances, and opportunities, when you spend the majority of your time focussed on the positive. Have you made your “grateful list” today?

3. Plan fun moments

It is essential to remain focussed on the present moment, but if your life is currently challenging, traumatic or filled with grief, you may need a break from this moment by creating wonderful future moments. You could plan a family holiday, a weekend getaway, a romantic dinner or a night out to a concert. Be kind to your future self and plan exciting adventures, fun days and opportunities to create wonderful memories. What wonderful experiences are you currently looking forward to?

4. Change your thoughts to positive

Are many of your thoughts negative? Automatic thoughts are commonly triggered by belief systems in your subconscious about yourself, circumstances and relationships. These core beliefs may be negative, causing your thoughts to be self-defeating. Be prepared to listen to your thoughts and argue with yourself. Does this thought need challenging? Am I jumping to conclusion? Is this black and white thinking? [i.e. something is either all wrong or all right] Negative thinking is simply a habit. Think of your mind as a television remote control, and then keep switching from the negative thoughts channel to the positive thoughts channel. You may use self-affirming statements such as: I will feel better tomorrow. This situation is temporary. By using thought swapping strategies, and self-affirming statements, you positively influence your thoughts, core beliefs and mood. You cannot stop your thoughts, but you can swap your thoughts. Have you been listening to your thoughts today?

5. Improve brain chemistry

Antidepressants often improve depression by changing the balance of neurotransmitters in the brain, such as serotonin and dopamine. Did you know that you can help your body improve these same neurotransmitters? Avoiding processed foods, and instead, eating whole foods such as quality carbohydrates, proteins, fruits, vegetables and raw nuts is thought to increase serotonin levels, reducing your risk of depression. Exercise releases endorphins, which elevate mood and increase your emotional resilience. Exercise often decreases the stress hormone, cortisol. High cortisol levels are believed to be a contributing factor in ill health, mood swings, weight gain, and depression. Therefore, exercise and healthy eating can assist you in the fight against depression, sickness, and the dreaded sad days. Have you scheduled healthy eating and regular exercise into your routine?

6  Reward yourself

What do you love doing? Do you love sitting in the sun reading magazines? How about a long drive to a hill station? Perhaps you love going on picnics, enjoying long bubble baths, or watching a movie. Is time in the garden your escape from life? Or do you prefer sitting with friends, eating takeaway foods, while watching the sun set? Whatever you love doing, do it; don’t deprive yourself. It is essential to reward yourself, especially on those sad days. What are your three favourite ways to reward yourself?

7. Sit in the sun

Sitting in the sun, even for a few minutes per day, can improve mood, positive brain chemistry, and vitamin D levels. When you feel unhappy, stressed, agitated, or even depressed, spend 15 minutes in the sun, and enjoy all the benefits of nature’s vitamin tablet. Relax, feel rejuvenated, and feel more grounded again, after some time in the sun… ready to face even the most complex of issues. Do you have a special place where you like to sit in the sun and relax?

8. Listen to music

Next time you wish to escape your troubles, grab your headphones, turn your favourite music on, and have a mini party. Music has the magical ability to transport your emotions to another place, making music a natural healer. So, if you want to forget your troubles dance or sing to your favourite songs. If you are grieving, and may need to cry, put the sad songs on, and give yourself permission to grieve. Tears that are “stuck” magnify your emotions, so allow the tears to flow. Bring a little magic to your day, or experience some of your deepest feelings, by allowing music to guide you. How have you incorporated music into your daily routine?

9. Meditate

Calm the mind, re-focus the thoughts, and feel peaceful again, with some guided meditation, using a CD or download. Regular meditation has been shown to improve brain function and health of the body. Scientific research suggests that long-term meditation thickens grey matter, and the number of folds in the cortex of the brain. This area is believed to play a role in thought, attention and memory. Accordingly, we can assume that to feel more in control of our mind, emotions, and health, we need to meditate regularly. Can you image how your life would improve with regular meditation?

10. Take a break

Sad or low energy days give us the chance to stand back from the frantic pace of life, and reflect on our goals. When we become fatigued, saddened or ill, we may find ourselves working less, yet having more time to reflect. Ask yourself: What is working in my life? What is not? Most of us do not stop enough and actively plan the life we want; we can find ourselves re-acting to life, instead of being pro-active. Have a daily break and remain rested and focussed. Give yourself permission to stop your usual activities, and ponder. Have you incorporated daily breaks into your schedule?

You have the ability to help yourself through these challenging days, with these ten steps. Put the power back in your hands. Keep asking yourself: What do I feel like doing right now? Change your day; change your life… start by changing this moment and be happy now. And if your sad days persist, you may have depression, unresolved grief, or anxiety; if so, please consult a doctor, psychologist or counsellor.

The post 10 Steps to Be Happy Now! appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Often, the initial response to working from home is relief, perhaps due to the novelty of the situation and other benefits such as relief from long commute times, minimal contact with toxic co-workers, and not having a boss looking over your shoulder at all times. However, after a few weeks or months, people begin to feel the negative effects of isolation, which only tends to worsen over time. This is what most people around the world are now facing.

Increasing cases of mental health deterioration

As per a study undertaken by the Indian Psychiatry Society, the number of mental illness cases in India increased by 20% within a week of commencement of the first lockdown. A few months later, the number of mental health issues reported began to accelerate. Experts attributed this rise in a parallel mental health pandemic, in large part, to woes of working from home. This fallout of working from home is a global trend.

A report published in April 2020, by Blind, a US-based professional network group, states that 52.9% of survey participants across organisations like Facebook, Apple, Walmart, and LinkedIn among others were suffering from loneliness due to working from home and social distancing.

The challenges of working from home

Stress begins to surge once the uniqueness of working from home wears off and its challenges rear their ugly head, leaving people in disbelief. While working from home has its share of advantages, it can create its own unique set of stressors. Here are a few of the common stress-producing challenges that those working from home face.

1. Muddling up of personal and professional life

Professional interactions, adherence to rules and policies as well as structure and organisation are the norm at workplace. Home, on the other hand, is synonymous with relaxation, unwinding and personal/family time. Home is a cosy environment where you enjoy home-cooked meals, read a book or simply play with your kids. When you enter your home, you are supposed to leave the rigidity of your workplace and the woes of your work outside. But working from home tends to dissolve the clear boundary that exists between workspace and personal space. As a result, you begin to feel like you’re never off the job.

2. Too many distractions

The dynamics of a home are different than those of a workplace. There are often children at home, retired parents and sometimes even a non-working spouse. For no fault of theirs, housemates find it difficult to respect the sanctity of work hours and end up causing distractions, even if unintentionally — after all they are at home, which has suddenly turned into an office for you. Plus, there are doorbells, quick personal phone calls, pets, sounds of TV, snacking or lunch with family — you get the drift. What most people don’t realise is that even minor distractions can disturb the flow of work, from which one takes time to recover. The result is poor efficiency and lower productivity.

3. No sense of timing

When working from home, work tends to stretch beyond the stipulated work hours. Employees are often expected to finish work assignments or get on calls at odd hours, including holidays, late nights, and weekends.

4. Communication woes

Not being in physical presence of your colleagues can make it difficult to communicate regarding work related matters, causing potential mishaps and adding to the stress of working from home.

5. Lack of social connections

Being around people and colleagues you can talk to about work-related issues helps release the pent-up steam of stress — a vent that is unavailable to those working from home. It is worse for those who live alone. Isolation might feel blissful at the start, but it can soon transform into full-blown depression arising out of a feeling of being disconnected from the world.

6. Physical and mental strains

Virtual meetings, long phone calls and sitting continuously put tremendous strain on your physical and mental health. Computer vision syndrome, carpal tunnel syndrome, back pain and other issues are common for those who are constantly working in a virtual environment.

While this is not an exhaustive list of issues that those working from home face, it gives you an idea how and why it can be so stressful. Let’s now see how we can deal with these challenges and keep stress and anxiety to the minimum. Here is a list of 11 ways that will make working form home less stressful and more productive.

11 ways to beat the stress of working from home

1. Plan and schedule

A key trigger of stress at work, or home, is poor productivity, which is usually the result of lack of planning and absence of a proper schedule. So, start your day by writing a to-do list and strike each activity after its completion. The very acts of planning your work and listing your tasks are in themselves empowering. You will feel in control and be able to resist getting distracted and therefore improve your overall focus. You might want to use productivity apps to help your efforts. [Read Sack Your Workload to learn how clearing, focussing, structuring, and action can help you increase productivity at work]

2. Create work protocols at home

Just because you are at home doesn’t mean you are not doing serious work. If your folks at home tend to take you and your work lightly just because you’re at home, sit them down and help them understand the importance of respecting workspace. Set work-related ground rules and protocols that everyone, including you, will respect during work hours. For instance, personal phone calls should be off-limits—unless there is an emergency.

3. Treat your workspace as sacred

Give your workspace the respect it deserves. For instance, keep your desk neat and avoid leaving personal stuff there. If possible, resist the temptation of using your desk for anything other than work. Doing so will create a mental boundary to keep personal and work-related issues from becoming intertwined.

4. Schedule regular breaks

Working at a stretch can, in the long run, cause undue strain on your physical and mental health and the situation worsens in a virtual work environment. In a formal work setup, there are specific times allotted for a long lunch break and short tea time breaks etc. Continue to follow the same schedule and insist that your colleagues follow them too. Breaks are important to avoid problems like eye fatigue and brain fog, which can affect productivity and efficiency, besides adding to stress and anxiety. [Read The hidden and obvious dangers of sitting too long]

5. Ask for help

When working from home, there is a tendency to take on more than you can chew, which often becomes a source of tremendous stress. Whenever you feel overburdened, reach out to a colleague, or even your boss. Seeking help is not a sign of weakness. It is an acknowledgement that you are human and have limits — just like everyone else.

6. Step out of your home

Working from home doesn’t mean you stay glued to your chair or sofa all day. Stepping out of your home is necessary for your mental and physical fitness. Assuming lockdown rules in your region allow it, make it a point to get outdoors at least once a day. If possible, take a quick stroll during one of your break times to get some sunlight and outdoor vibes. Later in the evening, go for a walk or just run some errands.

7. List the tasks you complete

Being home all day might make you feel that you’re not doing enough and may therefore experience a sense of guilt, inadequacy or overwhelm. One way to deal with such feelings is to list down all the small and big tasks you have completed at the end of the day. Making an accomplishment list every night builds your motivation and confidence, besides keeping feelings of overwhelm and guilt at bay.

8. Be mindful of your posture

Your posture makes a huge difference to not just your health but also the quality of your work. Always sit upright with your back arched. Invest in an ergonomic chair; if that is not possible, at least put a firm cushion on the back of the chair to support your lower back. [Read Why good posture matters]

9. Spare time to relax

Spare time for some form of stress busting activity – meditation, family time, workout, dance, or art – the idea is to eliminate the stream of muddled thoughts that fill your mind. Regular practice of meditation and mindfulness can produce a deep state of relaxation as well as a tranquil mind.

10. Take days off for sickness and leisure

There will be times when you feel unwell. On such days, don’t hesitate to avail of sick leave like you would’ve done had you been working from an office. You might think it’s OK to work as long as you are physically rested. But when you are sick, you need to rest and recuperate both mentally and physically. So do take time off for full recovery. Also, don’t forget to go on leisure vacations from time to time, for the sake of preserving your mental and emotional health.

11. Go easy on yourself

Finally, there will be days when you’re not going to be as productive at home as you are at the workplace – at least till you become used to it. So, calibrate your expectations accordingly and don’t be too hard on yourself when you fall behind on occasion. Resolve to learn from the experience so that you become better at juggling the responsibilities. Likewise, don’t forget to pat yourself when you do well.

The post 11 ways to beat the stress of working from home appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

“What will happen to work when I am gone? How will it go on?” We tend to build these questions towards disastrous consequences and convince ourselves that we are indispensable. We find contentment in remaining ‘switched on’ 24×7 but see catastrophe in even daring to think about switching off for a few days. Over the years, I have learnt that no one is indispensable, and guess what? If that weren’t the truth, then one would be as afraid of taking a vacation as one would be of dying. Given a fair chance, one will find equal talent and dedication in the next co-worker.

I didn’t realise the importance of taking a vacation and time off work until a few years ago, when I found myself forced into a trip with my friends. This was in order to attend a close friend’s wedding in Belgium. Right from the start, there were speculations about my arrival. I have a reputation for last minute drop-outs and by now my family and friends have made peace with my absence. I had cold feet from the time I booked my tickets for the 10-day long vacation. Knowing the wedding scene forward, I anticipated that I would be reprimanded for even using my phone. But I can now admit that those 10 days away from work was the best thing that I had done for myself in years and I vowed to take two weeks out every year to spend time with my family and friends. I realised that the toughest part was in getting there; once there, a new world of adventure opened up.

Here are some useful tips to my fellow workaholics who would rather be at work than anywhere else.

I have found that when people show care and commitment for their job, they get it back bountiful

Involve others in your fear of letting go of work

I could not help but keep rambling about how nervous I was about attending the wedding, knowing there would be reprimand on escaping from late night parties to check my mails and not to mention the time difference. I realised that the more I expressed my discontent about taking the vacation, the more supportive my colleagues became about me taking it. Reverse psychology never seems to get outdated. “Don’t worry, we will handle everything.” When I explained the challenges about not being accessible, they assured me that they would cover for me and contact me only if there was an emergency. I got support in winding up my work and in assigning duties in my absence. I have found that when people show care and commitment for their job, they get it back bountiful.

The first day is tough

I never lifted my head from the time I boarded the plane to the time I reached my hotel, covering as much work as I could. Keeping my phones and laptop out of reach was the toughest thing to do, since I already had warnings about carrying my work into the wedding. I remember taking long bathroom breaks to quickly read my mails and check on work. But the compulsion eased on the second day and continued to decrease in intensity in the days that followed. My need to be on the job all the time diminished and the fact that I had the option to sleep in and not wake up by clockwork was my first delight. I was pleasantly surprised to see that work was actually going on without me and a lot of people got their due importance in my absence.

Because I was occupied from the time I woke up to the time that I went to sleep, work stayed off my mind

Different time zones or low connectivity helps switch off

The one thing that really worked for me was the time difference between India and Europe. It helped ease my nerves about work and made me feel less guilty for having fun at work hours. When I would wake up, the team was already ahead of me and I just needed the half hour of my morning tea-time to see that all was in order and continue the rest of the day in peace. My phone calls turned into instant messages and then my messages turned into one or two emails a day. And by day four, I was officially off work. I have kept this as a tip when I plan my vacations, the further the distance and the greater the time difference, the better it is for me to really get off work and unwind. And when taking a vacation in India, I choose places with low connectivity, such as mountains, wildlife sanctuaries and cruises, so the reach between my work and me is limited.

Pack adventure into your vacation

Because I was occupied from the time I woke up to the time that I went to sleep, work stayed off my mind. We had sightseeing trips, lunches, dinners, parties and shopping sprees all planned and timed. As a person who works non-stop, I have so much energy and if I don’t plan how to expend it at my vacation, I will naturally get back to work. Now when I schedule time-off, I make sure to plan the adventure first. So even though I’m not working, I’m onto something equally exciting and that keeps my ever-ticking mind and creativity going. I have noticed that every vacation that I return from, I find a whole new perspective at work, a perspective that adds greater value, for I had the distance to see that which the proximity didn’t allow.

A vacation is something that is a reminder that there is a life beyond work

Great ideation opportunity

Take advantage. Every vacation has given me immense takeaways that my otherwise busy life disallowed. I could ideate without the pressure of having to do so. I could understand better, being away from the tension and appreciate even the slips and falls that I had been through as a learning curve. Once away from the scene, learning became much easier.

Discovering true happiness

Over the years, being happy had become a challenge. I needed a reason to be happy. So achievement became a necessity towards that end. But when on a vacation, I found happiness without reason, and that is true happiness. The sunrise made me happy, the silence brought joy; the extra sleep brought comfort; and walking in the wilderness brought an elation that no professional accomplishment could even match. This is what I work for—the time and luxury to be free and happy over nothing at all. And I carried that happiness back to work. My colleagues now comment on how I come back calmer and happier after each vacation. My drive was always at a fast pace but my attitude had shifted towards the better.

Value-add to friends and family with your presence

Over the years I had forgotten that I had a responsibility beyond work and that was to add value to the people around me. In spending time with my family it dawned on me how much they valued me and how appreciative they were to spend time with me. They were so eager to learn from my work and me and I could see a mutual exchange of respect in getting to know them better. Over the years the primary reason of going to work [family] had become the secondary reason. I had never known that so many people looked up to me and longed to spend time with me. If my own near and dear ones never get my time, then what good is my work that never served them?

A vacation is not something that comes in the way of work. A vacation is something that is a reminder that there is a life beyond work, a life that we have long forgotten under the daily pressures and professional expectations. If someone told you that you would never get time off when you started out with your job, I can bet my life you would never take it. As much as work is important, so is your life. The ability to ‘switch off’ is as important as the necessity to remain ‘switched on’. Even a machine needs its down time, and you being the one that literally makes your world go round, need that vacation. Take it as a part of your job profile. For, if you don’t discover the ability to switch off, you won’t remain ‘on’ for long.

The post Vacation from work: Switch OFF to stay ON appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

We work to occupy time. We work to establish our place in the pecking order, to guarantee status and prestige. And, too often, we work because we simply don’t know what else to do with ourselves, because we think we must and should.

Love it or hate it, work sets the pace and establishes the rhythm for everything else we do in life. Even when we‘re not at work, when we’re not on the clock, we consume time by constantly doing things and staying busy. Weekends are whirlwinds of activity. Vacations often resemble a blitzkrieg of organized movement with every moment of the trip preplanned and orchestrated for maximum efficiency and, of course, pleasure! For example—“Twenty-one countries in 14 days: Airfare, ground transportation, guides, lodging, meals, wine but not cocktails, and all tips included!”

James Gleick, in Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, reflects on why Americans [and, increasingly, the world] work and play as hard and intensely as they do.

Gleick suggests that we are now manic about speed. The world now seems to operate on five-minute intervals. We are rush freaks. We are time obsessed. “Lose not a minute” is the motto of the age. We are always making haste. Multitasking isn’t an option, it’s a way of life. Hyperactivity is the norm.

It has simply become standard to respond to the conventional salutation of “Hello, how are you?” with some version of the refrain “I am so busy!” Unfortunately, we say this to one another with no small degree of pride, as if our exhaustion were a trophy and our ability to keep going a mark of real character. As theologian Wayne Muller has pointed out: “The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and, we imagine, to others.” Sadly, to be busy, to be unavailable, has become the model of the successful life.

Here’s the problem. When life becomes an Olympic endurance event [“the Everydayathon”], when the stopwatch is always ticking, when are we supposed to have fun? When will there be a time to be human? As Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, professor of leisure studies, so aptly put it, “Having to go so fast to keep up, we miss stuff—our existence is truncated. Some things simply cannot be done going full speed: love, sex, conversation, food, family, friends, nature. In the whirl, we are less capable of appreciation, enjoyment, sustained concentration, sorrow, memory.”

I think, we all do too much or try to do too much. My mother used to accuse me of having “eyes bigger than your stomach.” She told me that I both literally and figuratively put too many things on my plate. “Alfredó,” she’d say, “You do too much. Slow down, take smaller bites, or you’re not going to enjoy anything. “Piano, piano arrive sano!” [Slowly, slowly, and you’ll get there surely, safely!]

My thesis is a simple one. Even if we love our jobs and find creativity, success, and pleasure in our work, we also crave, desire, and need not to work. No matter what we do to earn a living, we all seek the benefits of leisure, lassitude, and inertia. We all need to play more in our lives.

The urgent importance of leisure

According to the Harvard Health Letter, leisure time has dramatically eroded in recent decades, down to approximately 16.5 hours, per person, per week. A recent surgeon general’s report declared that the lack of “leisure-time physical activity” has become a serious health threat. The most hazardous work-related illness says Joe Robinson, editor of a vacation magazine, is “vacation deficit disorder” or “vacation starvation.” Robinson and the surgeon general are not alone in their warnings regarding the lack of leisure and vacation time and potential health issues. A fourteen-year study of 12,866 men published in The Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine found that annual vacations sharply reduced the risk of death in middle- aged men.

Similarly, a twenty-year study of 749 middle-aged women by the Centers for Disease Control found a direct link between a lack of vacations and a higher risk of heart attack and death. At the University of Essex, England, researchers found a link in women between working more than 48 hours a week for more than three years and high blood pressure, as well as ailments of the arms, legs, and hands.

Finally, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health claims that demanding jobs that give employees little control over their work increase the risk of heart disease.

Conclusion: “Vacations may be good for your health.”

Albert Speer, Third Reich minister of technology and armaments, argues in his memoir, Spandau, that intentions and ideology aside, Hitler’s chief failings as a military leader were overextension, overexertion, and fatigue. Hitler, said Speer, especially when the war began to turn against Germany, never seriously rested or recreated or could find any downtime, away time from the all-consuming particulars of the war. He took on too much, said Speer, and micromanaged too much. He got lost in the details, and his fatigue often blinded him to the obvious logic of the situation.

Fatigue and the frenzy of overstimulation can block objectivity, delimit perspective, and often deaden our ability to calculate and evaluate logically. Vince Lombardi, NFL coach and football legend, is reported to have said that “fatigue makes cowards and fools of us all and more often than not results in mediocrity.” Another American legend, Gary Cooper, in a less than-legendary 1953 film, Seminole, perhaps put it most succinctly: “Never decide or do anything when you’re tired.”

As the reclusive philosopher Baruch Spinoza suggested, in order to gain perspective, we need to step back; insight and wisdom are very often best achieved in moments away from the task at hand.

Even when you love the job you’re doing, you can’t do it all the time without losing something. To do almost anything well, you must have time off from it. Time away from constantly doing it. Time to recover and relax. Time to do something else. Time to just forget about it.

All of us need to “vacate” ourselves from our jobs and the wear and tear of the “everydayness” of our lives. All of us need to get absorbed in, focused on, something of interest outside of ourselves. All of us need escape, if only for a while, to retain our perspective on who we are and who we don’t want to be. All of us need to gain some feeling for, some knowledge of, the differences between distraction and insight, merriment and meaning, entertainment and recreation, laziness and leisure, rest and inertia.

If we are what we do, then to a great extent, as adults, we are defined by our work and our play. Both of these basic patterns of behavior influence not only how we define ourselves but how we understand and interpret reality and how we make ethical choices about our lives and our interactions with others. Therefore, depending upon who we want to be, and how we want to be known, we must be careful in our choices of what we do for a living and how we choose to play.

All of us need to vacate ourselves from our jobs and the wear and tear of the everydayness of our lives

Vacation on wheels

In Latin the word for vacation is vacare, “to be empty, nonoccupied,” “to suspend activity,” “to do nothing.” Work represents the everyday routine, and vacations are temporary interruptions.

On vacations we turn aside, go in the opposite direction, vacate ourselves from our usual course or purpose. Vacations connote downtime, choice, freedom, personal discretion, and activities an individual engages in for his or her own purposes and pleasures. Vacations are seen as an antidote to work. They are medicine, a remedy for counteracting the effects of labor. The psychologist Wayne E Oates believes that vacations offer us an opportunity to “empty ourselves of our multiple roles in life.” Vacations allow us to be away from the job, to change the patterns of our day, to alter our routine, to reconfigure our actions and habits, to rediscover ourselves.

Although it is not true for everyone, we commonly associate vacations or vacationing with traveling. In traveling, we take ourselves outside of ourselves, our normal life, our usual patterns. So where do we all go when we go on our private or familial odysseys? Not so surprisingly, an awful lot of us are pretty pedestrian in the use of our vacation time. It has been my experience that if you randomly survey a hundred people about how they spend their vacations the answers you will get are not scientific, and not always exactly the same, but they conform to a strikingly consistent pattern. Ten percent will gleefully report about doing something incredibly exotic: flying to Cape Town, South Africa, to go cage diving with great white sharks; sixteen days trekking through Tanzania; or a rafting trip down the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea. Another 10 per cent will report that they did nothing on their vacation. That is, due to lack of interest or lack of funds, instead of taking an exotic trip, they did some chores around the house, took a trip to the zoo, took in a few museums, and spent a long day and night at their closest Six Flags amusement park.

About 40 per cent of those polled will tell you that they had a wonderful time on their vacations even if their destinations of choice were not sites “where no man has ever gone before.” These are the people who try to make it to Europe every third year. These are the hard-core vacationers and tourists who make detailed plans and carefully manage their budgets so that they can take an annual vacation.

And then there’s the surprising 40 per cent of us who report visiting family and friends on their vacations. Going to see loved ones has historically always been a major reason for traveling. And now, given the fluidity of our lives, our mobility, our multiple job changes, more and more of us live away from our families and our friends because they are scattered about everywhere. So naturally, our vacation time may be the only opportunity we have to get together.

Going to see grandma and grandpa, or spending a week with your brother or best friend from college, does not, of course, mean you do nothing else but spend time with them. Visitors usually end up doing a lot of the stuff that tourists usually do—dinners out, shopping, a little sightseeing. The main problem that was reported to me by a number of people who regularly take “family-visit vacations” is what one of them called “vacation- interruptus” or “vacationincompletus!”

That is, going to see family and friends is a vacation of sorts—you’re someplace else, you’re doing things, you’re having fun—but you’re constantly trying to balance your wants and desires with those of others. Because of all this and the sheer numbers involved in the project, the first casualty is usually the possibility of anything resembling “spontaneity” or “adventure.”

Moreover, the concepts of silence, solitude, and rest rarely enter into the equation.

Putting aside my limited survey, I have also found a growing number of people for whom vacations are anything but pedestrian. The past few decades have seen the rise of adventure travel, ecotravel, and archaeological travel, and now there are vacations that “take you to the limit”—extreme sports vacations.

What defines an extreme sport? While there is no exact definition, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that all of them have an above-average propensity to result in death, injury, or maiming. Here are just a few examples: rock climbing, bungee jumping, white-water rafting, base jumping [B-A-S-E, an acronym for parachutists jumping off buildings, antennas, spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs)], bridge swinging, street luge, downhill roller blading, surfing in typhoonlike swells, skiing/snowboarding in avalanche country, and aerobatic parachuting.

Although extreme sports can be a local weekend activity [e.g. parachuting], many of them require time and travel [mountain climbing, skiing] and therefore, most extreme sport athletes dedicate their vacation time to their sport of choice.

Extreme sports is about pushing boundaries, taking risks, leaving safety behind to leap into the void. Extreme sports is about a radical rush of adrenaline. It’s about forgetting about standards of safety. It’s about not being cerebral. It’s about not having control over the elements. It’s not about winning, it’s about not losing, not dying. It’s about elevating risk to the extreme. It’s about living through the experience. Simply, it’s about the afterglow pleasure of survival. Clearly, extreme sports vacations are not for the faint of heart.

I do understand why so many of us are drawn to it: it’s a combination of the thrill of the unknown, novelty, dancing with danger, and the irresistible possibility of the joy of play—no matter what the downside. We are, after all, curious creatures and thrill seekers. According to Eric Perlman, a mountaineer and filmmaker specializing in extreme sports: “Every human being with two legs, two arms is sometime going to wonder how fast, how strong, how enduring he or she is. We are designed to experiment or die.”

My problem is not with what we do on vacations, or where we go on vacations, or how much we spend on vacations. My problem revolves around the issue of what most of us don’t get out of our vacations—the opportunity for solitude. We just don’t do nothing well!

Weekends: Thank God it’s Monday

A few of us, who are really good or just plain lucky in our financial and vocational choices, get to take the whole summer off. Some of us, with sufficient seniority, get a month. Most of us have the standard—but by no means guaranteed—two weeks off a year. Many of us make due with the occasional “four-day-quickie.” And a lot of us take our vacations or what leisure we can find on the weekends—if there is a weekend that week!

It’s been my experience that weekends in most family households are anything but leisurely or restful. In fact, I would suggest that the management of weekends in most “double-income with some kids households” [DISKS] can best be characterized as an experiment in controlled chaos.

Think about it, although you don’t have to go into “the job,” Saturdays are usually just another workday. A “honey-do list” is drawn up, chores are assigned, and you’re both off and running. Take the dog to the vet. Drop off Carla at ballet classes and Jason at little league practice. Pick up the dry cleaning. Stop at the hardware store. Vacuum and dust. Get Carla and Jason, bring them to swimming classes.

Go grocery shopping. Pick up kids again. Take Carla to the mall, drop off Jason at the cineplex. Get the dog. Do a load of wash. Start the sauce for dinner. Get the kids. Finish making dinner. Have dinner. Clean up after dinner. Drop off the kids at friends. Pick up two videos “not suitable” for family viewing. Fall asleep halfway through the first one. Totally forget to pick up the kids until they call looking for you.

And then there’s Sunday [You know the routine. Fill in the blanks as you deem necessary.] Church…lawn and yardwork …Little League game…wash the car…clean out the garage …have dinner with the in-laws…check the kids’ homework …check e-mail for work Monday…and—in the words of the late Sonny and the ever-rejuvenate Cher—”the beat goes on.”

Pop critics and commentators on the workplace keep telling us that the song that best reflects workers’ attitudes about the job is “Thank God It’s Friday” sung in celebration of the end of the week. That well may be so, but after a long weekend of kit, kin, and chores, there are a lot of people singing a slightly different tune—“Thank God It’s Monday!”—in celebration of the end, finally, of the weekend!

Although you don’t have to go into the job, Saturdays are usually just another workday

According to philosophers, pundits, pollsters, and politicians alike, weekends ideally are about freedom. The freedom to let go and let be. The freedom to explore your life, your world, and yourself. The freedom to stop, look, and listen. The freedom to examine an idea, pursue a dream. The freedom to think hard, to be serious, to ponder great ideas. The freedom to be a dilettante. The freedom to be whimsical, play hard, have fun. The freedom to be open to newness or nothing at all. In fact, practically speaking, we spend our weekends in a variety of different ways depending on who we are, what we do, where and how we live, and how much we make and can afford to spend. For most of us, the weekends are usually a mixed bag of relatively mild and pedestrian activities and experiences.

They usually start with the simple pleasure of sleeping in. [Which means, if you are over the age of forty, waking up at the usual workday time but forcing yourself to stay in bed until the deliciously decadent time of 7:15 A.M.!] Weekends mean being able to linger over breakfast, coffee, and the paper. They include a few [if you are lucky] household chores and repairs, as well as a little shopping. Weekends mean a walk, a run, a workout. Taking kids to the zoo. Watching a game. Playing catch in the backyard. Weekends mean turning off the phone, never getting out of your bathrobe, and watching the Sunday TV. Weekends mean breaking up the patterns of the week. Weekends are about going out for lunch or dinner, and maybe taking in a film.

For too many of us, concludes Witold Rybczynski in Waiting For the Weekend, weekends represent a different and sometimes a more pleasant way of staying busy and consuming time. But, he says, genuine free time, real leisure, must remain just that: “Free of the encumbrance of convention, free of the need for busyness, free for the ‘noble habit of doing nothing.’ And clearly, “doing nothing” does not describe the modern weekend!

Genuine leisure is what you need

Because too many of us live in a world of total work, we think that leisure is at least minimally achieved by the mere absence of work. Because we are so eager to escape the burdens of work, we think that any form of nonwork—quiet time, downtime, doing no-thing in regard to a job time—constitutes some form of rest, recreation, and/or leisure. Well, we’re wrong. To be idle, to be without a task, to be doing no-thing are prerequisites but not sufficient conditions for the achievement of genuine leisure.

According to the psychiatrist Leonard Fagin, the concept of control is the crucial psychological distinction between work and leisure. What characterizes leisure is the feeling, if not the reality, of greater control over one’s activity; leisure implies doing what one wants to do with one’s “free” or “non-work time.”

Englishman, Winston Churchill, had a few eccentric passions. Churchill was both an accomplished painter [on canvas, not walls] and a bricklayer. At Chartwell, his rural estate, he built two cottages, a playhouse, and several walls. Both Churchill and Fagin were convinced that leisure meant time free of the encumbrance of convention, free from “business-busyness,” free of the constraints of social obligation and duty.

Josef Pieper, in his cult classic Leisure: The Basis of Culture, argues that leisure is a necessary condition for both individual and communal survival, growth, and progress.

For Pieper, leisure is not simply a form of recreation or diversion, nor is it the natural result of rest, relaxation, or amusement. Although, it is necessary to be free of the toil and moil of the everyday burdens of work for it to occur, according to Pieper leisure is primarily a mental set, a psychological orientation, a condition of one’s soul or spirit. For Pieper, leisure is an attitude of nonactivity, of not being busy, of inner calm, a commitment to silence, meditation, observation, and letting things be. Leisure is a way of life and not just the inevitable by-product of holidays, spare time, weekends, or a vacation.

Leisure is a form of silence, of that silence which is the prerequisite of the apprehension of reality…For leisure is a receptive attitude of the mind, a contemplative attitude…

Leisure, like contemplation, is of a higher order than the vita active [active life]…It is only in and through leisure that the “gate of freedom” is opened and man can escape from the closed circle of that “latent dread and anxiety”…the mark of the world of work.

To be leisurely, said Josef Pieper, is a choice. To be leisurely is to be disengaged from the tedium of tasks—to be open, observant, and receptive to issues outside of self and one’s immediate needs. Leisure is time given to contemplation, wonder, awe, and the development of ideas. Leisure is about creativity, insight, unregulated thoughts. It is about intellectual activity, but not intellectual work or utilitarian problem solving. It is about desire, wonder, and unbridled curiosity.

But we just don’t do leisure well. We rarely deliberately devote ourselves to idleness. Although I know it sounds like a Zen paradox, we almost never slow down enough to experience the experience of not doing anything at all. We rarely attune our inner ear to the needs of our inner self. We usually stay too busy, we usually do too much, and in the doing insulate ourselves from ourselves. As a friend once told me: “Most of us will take time off, but very few of us want to spend time with only ourselves. It’s too boring and scary. It’s a lot easier to do something and just keep busy.”

We just don’t do leisure well. We rarely deliberately devote ourselves to idleness

In an almost completely forgotten book [who’s got the leisure to read anymore?], Solitude: A Return to the Self, the English psychiatrist Anthony Storr speaks to a profoundly neglected human need: the need for solitude. The Random House Dictionary defines solitude as “the state of being or living alone.” Although optimum solitude can occur only in the physical absence of others, the general state of solitude can be achieved in the presence of others. Just as it is possible to be lonely in the company of others, it is also possible to achieve solitude, of a kind, in the company of others.

The state of solitude is about calmness, centeredness, and focus. It’s the ability to get “lost in the present.” It’s about being able to rivet our attention, getting in touch with our deepest thoughts and feelings. It’s about being able to ruminate without distraction, to meditate, to idly muse, to become totally absorbed in thought.

Of course, a lonely mountaintop is always preferable, but solitude can be had about anywhere.

Achieving solitude is easier said than done. As William James pointed out, reality is a “booming, buzzing, confusion.” The excessive busyness of our multitasked lives and the constant overload of outside stimuli are much more conducive to the production of migraines than to the pursuit of meaning.

Nevertheless, suggests Storr, “finding down-time,” “time outside of usual time,” “time to reflect on time,” is a sine qua non condition for emotional and intellectual stability.

Parting shot

It is my hope that we will learn or relearn two complementary and fundamental truths regarding the human situation. [1] Adults need work in the same way that children need play in order to fulfill themselves as persons. [2] Adults need play in the same way that children need play in order to fulfill themselves as persons. An overworked man is an unimaginative one, at best dully completing a routine, at worst making serious mistakes. Far from benefiting his company, he is very likely creating problems rather than solving them—and so making work for other overworked men to boast about. We get new ideas when our mind is allowed to roam in a free and relaxed way around a problem—and for that we need a reasonable amount of leisure and thus a decent annual vacation.

Maybe the European practice of five weeks paid vacation goes too far—but not by much! [John Sullivan, columnist, Chicago Sun-Times, January 1, 2002]

The ability to play, to go on vacation, to take long walks, to have a quiet weekend, to have time to think, should not be perceived as a perk or privilege. We need not always be doing. In fact, we must all try to studiously do less, in order to be more.

P.S. To maintain sanctity of the source, this article follows American English.
Excerpted with permission from The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure, and Vacations by Al Gini; published by Routledge.

The post The Urgent Importance of Leisure appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.