Time to Take a Vacation!
Whether you enjoy adventuring and spending your vacation days constantly busy and exploring, laying down by a beach and reading a book, or traveling to see family and friends, vacationing is a great thing to prioritize when it is possible to do so. Adventurous vacations may cause you to fulfill your inner desires and bucket list goals, leaving you with fun memories and stories to carry forever. Choosing to vacation to do nothing at all but getaway can keep you from hitting a breaking point from being overworked and neglecting self-care, which is crucial. Seeing long-distance relatives or simply planning a large family vacation to a unique destination can allow you to experience joy with your loved ones and grow your relationships.
Not all vacations have to be extravagant, expensive, and overly-planned, as even taking a last-minute weekend trip to a city a couple of hours away will give you a well-needed boost. Research has shown that a minimal amount of planning is required in order to keep the stress away, such as planning your accommodations, travel itinerary, and who is watching your house/pets/kids/work beforehand. If that is taken care of properly, there is a strong correlation between energy regeneration and happiness with taking a trip. Research has also shown that the ideal amount of time to take for a vacation is eight days, so keep that in mind. This allows your body and mind to get used to being on vacation once there, take its needed time to relax and filter out the remaining negative tensions you may be holding from day to day life, without overextending yourself and losing the special benefits from the vacation.
Who you choose to vacation with will also impact how much stress relief you are able to experience. Traveling with a spouse or romantic partner has been found to be the most beneficial, followed by traveling with friends and then traveling with your spouse and children. Taking a couples’ getaway allows positive growth within your romantic relationship and will allow your relationship to improve, keeping away causes of stress originating from this area long after your vacation. Traveling with friends allows you to escape all of your responsibilities and keeps vacations more lighthearted and fun, fulfilling your need for friendship socialization. Traveling with your children can be fun and rewarding as well, keeping in mind that while your happiness may increase over the trip, your continued responsibility for them may keep you from total relaxation and stress relief. Even taking a vacation by yourself every once in a while if you enjoy that can be a great idea. Taking a variety of different types of vacations with different people will fulfill all of your psychological needs, so be sure to stay open to trip possibilities when they come up and take them whenever possible.
What is the greatest about vacations is how long their positive benefits last us. Beginning when we hit a point and decide we need a vacation, choosing to take one and beginning the planning phase fills us with new excitement we desperately need. We begin to have something positive to talk about with our family after work, and we may internally countdown to our trip as we plan it with the happy, fun things we want to do. This helps bridge the gap while we continue to be stuck around the same stressors, negativity, or monotony of day-to-day life- having a tangible fix around the corner. While on the vacation we become filled with deeper excitement, joy, peace, serenity, and so many more positive feelings. We are able to focus only on our own happiness and experiencing that with people we care about as almost everything negative goes away during this time. That being said, choose to leave any cause of stress that you can at home or limit it, such as perhaps your phone or your work. Even when we have to return to normalcy, the effects of this positive boost linger with us for a long time, getting us through the everyday once again.
Take this article as a sign to plan a trip now! Whatever you have time for and can afford, make it a priority and make it happen. And remember, while we may all say we wish that our vacations last forever, and it is sad when they end, having them as special occasions keeps them special and keeps their benefits the greatest for us, assisting our everyday lives instead of replacing them. Cherish your vacations and focus on their benefits and you will find yourself more satisfied in your mind and life.
Kyndal Sims
Birch Psychology
Resources
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/do-vacations-make-us-happ_b_5022511
https://www.travelandleisure.com/trip-ideas/yoga-wellness/use-vacation-to-be-happier
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/how-vacations-affect-your-happiness/