When we go on most vacations, once we arrive at our destination we typically settle into a calm and relaxed mood.
If it’s a tropical trip, we lay out by the water and soak up the sun’s rays. We become more aware of our new surroundings and radiate a sense of relief and appreciation for the time off and escape from reality.
Throughout the trip surges of excitement and laughter fill the air, especially when we are enjoying our vacation with those we love and care about. We express our gratitude for the memories and experiences we are creating in that moment and truly feel them.
Just reading the above can place you into a more peaceful state of mind and remind you of a past trip that you took, and that was the point of it!
Now, what if I told you that it was possible to harness the “vacation” mindset without having to go on vacation?
That you can live with those feelings of emotions throughout each and every day of your life, EVEN if you don’t absolutely love the life that you’re currently living?
Well, it’s possible and if you take the time to read the below and apply it into your life, your world will change for the better almost instantly.
The average person has about 16 waking hours each day, of which typically around 8 of them, excluding most weekends, are spent working.
With just 2-3 weeks of vacation time each year, we are talking about roughly half of our waking hours in our life being dedicated to work (potentially more if your thoughts, emotions and actions before and after work are focused on work related matters and concerns).
The bad news about these facts is that we spend a LOT of time working, the good news is that we have a LOT more time than we realize to spend how we choose to.
Whether you know it or not, every impulse, habit and belief that you have was created either by your family and friends while growing up or by yourself over the years. And just as they were created, the ones that aren’t beneficial to living your best life can be eliminated and recreated.
The Vacation mindset is composed of three primary habits. If you intentionally plant these seeds into your mind and make the effort to water and nurture them, they can and will grow into beautiful and flourishing trees with roots and branches that extend into the lives of those you love.
The three habits are: Meditation, Practicing Gratitude and Visualization.
Meditation
It’s well known today that meditation has many positive benefits, it can make you more calm and peaceful, heighten your awareness, recognize your thoughts, help you sleep better, etc.
By taking the time in the morning to meditate (even for a few minutes) you can start your day in a relaxed manner. Many underestimate the power of meditation and just how much of an impact it can make on one’s life.
When you meditate and focus on simply recognizing your thoughts each time one comes about, (then returning to your breathing, or the sensations of your body, or the sounds that you’re hearing) without judgement but simple recognition of the thought, you’re starting to train yourself to catch your thoughts as they happen.
This exercise then begins to spill into your day to day life, allowing you to become mindful of the thoughts you’re thinking in your mind and actively deciding whether or not they serve you and should be pursued or quickly shot down and put to rest.
Meditate in the morning and you’ll soon notice how much more clear your mindset and approach is towards the rest of your day.
Practicing Gratitude
When you take the time to think about what you’re grateful for (I recommend thinking about three different things each day, and writing them down) you shift your focus from your typical daily cares and concerns to intentionally contemplating things that have tremendous meaning and purpose in your life
When you’re grateful for a certain quality that you possess, maybe that you acquired from a parent, you start to feel the appreciation you have for your mother or father, as well as the pride and humility you have that you’ve taken it upon yourself to instill that quality into your life.
When you’re grateful for something that you were born with that was simply provided to you the moment you took your first breath (if you’ve been fortunate to possess these), such as your ability to breathe, your legs or arms or eyes or heart, you start to realize how for decades it’s always performed its function without you ever having to do anything for it. What an incredible thing to think about and feel, right!?
As you practice this for a few minutes consistently (could even be repeated a few times each day), the effects begin to compound over time.
You start to seek out more and more of what you’re grateful for throughout your day, and when you take the time to not just think about what you’re thankful for but actually feel it, your life begins to transform as well as for others around you.
Visualization
Just like when you’re on vacation and you envision how life would be if you could do this forever, you can apply that same technique into your daily living.
By taking the time to visualize yourself meditating and practicing gratitude, and trying to recreate the scene as vividly as possible in your mind, you begin to produce the feelings that derive from actually performing those exercises.
Since the mind cannot tell the difference between a real experience and an extremely detailed one performed through visualization, there’s nothing stopping you from enjoying these powerful effects on a daily basis.
Now you may be thinking a handful of rebukes to the above, but just realize that despite your present circumstances, you have much more control over the way you think, feel, act, and react than you currently give yourself credit for.
If you’re not happy with certain aspects of your life that you have decided cannot be improved (which is more of a you problem than the actual problem), you can at least learn to put up with them from a new light by cultivating these three habits into your lifestyle (after all, wouldn’t it be better to go through life this way?).
You can harness the Vacation mindset and become similar to a thermostat, where your energy and presence instantly regulates the temperature of any place you may find yourself to your positive level of being, undoubtedly uplifting all others around you.