A Vacation State of Mind

I like to think that I have a constant summer state of mind during the eight week bliss between the end of the spring semester and the start of a new school year in August. I like to think that I engage in intentional rest and investment of self. One of my personal favorite parts of this eight week bliss includes our annual family vacation to Hilton Head Island, a true week of love, laughs, and fun with my husband and my family. It is a week of rejuvenation, rest, restoration, sun, and lots of belly laughs. You can be assured that I leave the week with a very full heart and stomach. **Post updated February 2020.

So, naturally all week long I have been preparing for our beach trip. I have been anticipating what I am going to bring and what we are going to do in order to make sure I checked off all the tasks this week so that my heart and mind and body could be fully prepared for the week ahead. And as I have been running around all week completing these tasks, I have continued to fall back on the same thought,

What if we lived everyday life with the same anticipation and excitement that we feel before an actual vacation.

Now, you may think I am crazy and if you want to be that way go right ahead. But, I truly believe my heart was on to something today when I was thinking and processing this through. In fact, I have been very much looking forward to sitting down and working through my thoughts with my keys all day long, so I am very excited to see where this goes.

I’ll say it one more time just in case you really were thinking I am crazy… What if we lived everyday life with the same anticipation and excitement that we feel before an actual vacation.

Pre-Vacation to-Do List

Think with me for a moment, pretend you are about to go on a week long vacation and start to create in your mind the list of things that you would do in anticipation and preparedness for that trip. Some of these things might include

• Tidy up around the house
• Clean your car
• Catch up on laundry
• Buy a new outfit or two
• Find a new book (or five in my case) to read
• Decide on the puzzle for the week (this is super important in my family)
• Pamper yourself
• Plan out all your outfits for the week
• Be intentional with diet & exercise
• The usual errand-run for the vacation essentials
• Overly anticipate the week with endless excitement and giddy-like joy

But what if? What if we challenged ourselves to approach every day as a vacation

So you may or may not do some of these things prior to a vacation, everyone has their own list of what they deem important and necessary, but regardless of who you are, most likely you have some kind of list. And so as I have been (slowly) checking off items from this list this week, I was hit with the bold (and far-fetched) realization of what it would be like to approach every single week as if it were vacation.

Imagine how a week would go for you personally if you were as excited (beach-excited) for a week at work or another week of classes. Imagine the freedom that would be experienced and the release of joy and rest that we would experience by living in a vacation state of mind.

For many, vacations provide a time to reset, reconnect, rejuvenate, replenish, and restore. As well as relax and run free, freely pursuing those things that originally fuel us. Think.. so many times we immediately connect with the original pillars that hold our heart when we have an actual second to think. So what if we created an environment in our everyday life to where we could actually appreciate and rest in a vacation like state of mind. Imagine the position our hearts would be in by the end of the week and every week for that matter.

Own Your Mindset. Change your life.

(Listen, I get it… this sounds so crazy, I understand that… I am a little bit of crazy, we all are) But I just have felt this building in my heart all day and I believe in where this is going. After a vacation, typically most humans feel rested and further encouraged and refined in their identity, their dreams and their purposes. Their reality is assessed and redefined. I dream the most when I have the ability to step away from my normal, but what if we created a new normal that allowed us to equally step away and retreat. What would this actually look like?

9 simple steps to live every day as a vacation

• What if we created a set time each day where we turned off our phones (or turned on the Do Not Disturb) and disengaged with the social media world and focused on our heart.
• What if we actually started each morning by drinking a slow cup of coffee while reading something that is purposeful for the heart. Whether you find yourself in the Word, or just a good book, or your journal, what if you purposefully create this moment everyday.
• What if we (just like so many of us do before vacation) go treat ourselves to a new outfit or pair of shoes or new pair of earrings because sometimes its the little things in life that make all the difference in the world.
• What if we actually planned out our outfits the week before as we do when packing a suitcase for a trip (you know how many seconds this would save in the morning and how much anxiety this could prevent the night before work).
• What if we actually bought the new book and carved out twenty minutes in our day to ourselves to get lost in another world.
• What if we treated ourself to a pampering session even if that is just a bubble bath or  a quick trip to the nail salon.
• What if we put ourselves first and made ourselves and our family a priority while we are home.
• What if we made a point to hydrate and exercise to the extent that makes us individually feel good. Often times we put an end goal on how we should look (or how much we should weigh or how our body should fit in certain clothes) as a specific date for trips and such when in reality our goal should consist of being healthy and feeling strong and confident in our own skin.
• What if you pin-pointed your week out in advance (to the extent of what you can control) so you can experience an intentional excitement and giddiness. (Again, you probably are thinking GIRL YOU ARE CRAZY… I get it, but so often our mind and our mentality has the ability and the potential to determine our actions and our outlook. We have the ability to think positive things and see them to fruition. So, yes, lets do what we can to anticipate each week with the exact same anticipation as we would while on vacation because when we can do that we are unlocking the potential for further joy and further peace.

Treat Every Day as a vacation

And probably the most important thing of all, I feel so many times while leading up to a vacation humans generally have a more care-free aspect to them. People are more willing to extend grace to themselves because “I will be on vacation next week I can take care of it later, etc…” (whatever your dialogue is) BUT this should be something we do every single day. Extend grace to yourself. Do your best, but realize simply by showing up, attempting a smile (whether genuine or not) and putting forth some effort is more than enough. Realize that you are more than enough. So have grace for yourself. When you don’t meet your personal goals or your own quota or criteria, shrug your shoulders, learn a quick lesson to help you develop more as a human, but have grace for yourself. Because we have got to give up on holding on to this expectation of perfectionism that so many of us cling to as a lifeline and a standard of self-worth.

You are worth more than any expectation this world, society, social media sets. You are worthy of more. You are worthy of a life that radiates joy and peace and hope. You are capable of having that. You are capable of living out a vacation state of mind.

xo. Haley