An Entrepreneur’s True Vacation–And Why It’s No Ordinary Trip
If you’re like most entrepreneurial women I’ve met, chances are that when you take a vacation, you come back not totally rested. In a lot of cases, you’re probably not rested at all – and you come back feeling more exhausted and overwhelmed than ever.
I get it. It’s hard to understand how to really take a break and feel rested as an entrepreneurial woman – especially if you’ve got a family and kids to take care of.
I think the most important piece here is to understand that all vacations – even though we call them vacations – are not really vacations.
The truth is that for a vacation to be truly restorative, you’d have to honestly be taking real time off – time where you’re not making decisions, not taking care of other humans, and allowing your brain and nervous system to completely turn off. And in most cases, we’re not taking those kinds of vacations.
I want to reframe this by explaining that what we often call a “vacation” is actually a trip, and there are different kinds of trips.
The first kind of trip is what I call a family trip. A family trip means taking your family to a place – maybe you’re going to Disney World, to see Grandma and Grandpa, or to explore a new city.
Especially if your kids are younger – but perhaps also if your kids are older – you’re not going to get a lot of rest on this kind of trip.
You may have a lot of fun, create memories, and see beautiful things – but you’re still going to come back tired, because you’ve traded one job for another. Instead of working in your business, you’re working for your family.
The second kind of trip is a work trip – going on a trip for work. Maybe you’re going to a mastermind, a business event, or a network event, or maybe you’re just going to a new location to get work done.
This is not a vacation, no matter how fresh and inviting your surroundings may seem, because you are still working. Your nervous system is still firing. You’re still making decisions.
The third kind of trip is what I call a work-play hybrid trip. This is the kind of trip where you maybe do a few hours of work in the morning, and then spend the rest of the day resting or hanging out with family.
While this kind of trip is great because you’re giving your nervous system a chance to wire down for part of the day, your nervous system often needs complete and total rest in order for you to feel rested.
So what is the only kind of trip that is a true vacation for most entrepreneurs? The kind of vacation where you are 100% off work for at least seven to ten days.
Why? We often don’t realize that what our brain really needs in order to rest is to stop making decisions, stop talking to people, and stop thinking about work. When you do that, you’d be surprised how quickly your mind can rejuvenate.
The second piece is that, for most entrepreneurs, it takes a few days to power down. If you’re only taking a seven day vacation, you might not feel truly relaxed until day four – and then you’re back to work in three days.
That’s why it’s really lovely to take 10 or even 14 days so that you can really spend a good amount of time powering down and recovering.
My invitation to you this week is to look at any trips that you’ve planned for this summer and fall and ask yourself – What kind of trips am I really doing? Are they family trips, work trips, or work-play hybrid trips?
Whatever the answer is, that’s perfectly OK. Just make sure to be really honest with yourself so that you don’t have the false expectation that you’re going to feel rested when you come back.
If you’re someone who doesn’t have any real vacation plans this year, now might be a good time to set aside even a couple of days in your calendar to really power down and turn that brain off so that you can finally face your daily life feeling fully rested.
