How to ACTUALLY RELAX on Vacation
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Summary
In this episode, let’s talk about how to mentally enjoy a vacation and avoid burnout. This episode was inspired by a DM I received from a new follower. She was heading out of town on a vacation but as she’s bouncing back from burnout and didn’t want to go on a vacation and not actually take advantage of it. We’ll dive into 6 tips, plus 2 bonus tips!
For full show notes, head to coachellyn.com/podcast, and, of course, follow me on Instagram OR check out my YouTube Channel for more!
Keywords
vacation, mental health, burnout, relaxation, tips
Some Takeaways
Give yourself an off ramp to transition from the hustle and bustle of daily life to vacation mode.
Take your time and avoid rushing from one activity to another.
Make space for emotional processing and address any negative emotions that come up during vacation.
Learn how you relax best and prioritize activities that align with your preferences.
Be spontaneous and avoid over-scheduling yourself on vacation.
Find a healthy-ish balance between indulging and taking care of yourself.
Plan ahead for your vacation and communicate your absence to colleagues and clients.
Have a buffer day when you return from vacation to ease back into work and daily life.
Do you have anything to add?
Drop a comment below…
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TRANSCRIPT:
Ellyn Schinke (00:00.678)
Hello, my friend, and welcome back to another kick -ass new episode of the Burnout Proof Podcast. And today I'm really excited to talk about a topic that was actually inspired by a DM, thing one, but also to talk about something that as we head into, if you're in the States, Fourth of July, and as we head into summer, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, we are probably gonna face this exact question. It feels so timely, and I'm so grateful.
that I received this DM recently because A, I needed a podcast to talk about this week and B, this just seemed like a perfect one. So let me go ahead and read the DM to you first and foremost. And I'll even do all the intro part of it. Hi, hi, question for you. Do you have any tips or a podcast episode about how to mentally enjoy a vacation? My vacation actually started a day early, amazing, I know. And I'm trying to get my mind right before, I'm trying to get my mind right after being in a state of burnout.
Let me know if I should ask the Facebook group instead. She is in the Facebook community, which BTW, if you are not inside of my brand new Facebook group, you should head on over to coachellen .com slash Facebook and it will redirect you over to my Facebook group. It's brand new, we're just getting going and it's super interactive thus far. There's only about 40 of us, which honestly to say about only about 40 of us seems like the wrong thing to say because the fact that I just opened it and there's already 40 people in it, I'm like so excited about that.
Let's answer this question. And I'm going to start off with, and I'm going to keep an eye on the time on this episode because I managed to come up with like eight different tips that didn't feel like cookie cutter tips that felt like very, very relevant tips for those of us trying to actually relax, actually get our mind into a state of relaxation when we are on a vacation. So the first tip I told this person, I sent her some things in a DM is to first and foremost, give yourself an offer.
What I mean when I say this is we can't expect ourselves to go from the crazy hustle and bustle of our lives to instantly into a slow down. That's not practical. That's not realistic. Even cars need space to slow down. Like if we think of freeways, freeways have on ramps and off ramps, right? Like, and sometimes having the expectation that we'll be able to flip into slow mode on day one of our vacation is part of what's setting us up for failure.
Ellyn Schinke (02:22.886)
on vacations and not being able to relax on vacations as much as we could potentially relax. The example I gave her is, for those of you who follow me on Instagram, you saw that I went on a staycation at the beginning of May, well, mid -May for my birthday. I went on a little solo staycation. I went to Victoria, BC, which is only a couple hour drive and a ferry from where I live. And my first day in Victoria, so I literally stopped working the day before. I packed, I ran around, I did all my like,
pre -trip shenanigans, which actually I'm gonna give you some pre and post trip tips as well. But that was my day before. And then the day of, I actually had to leave at like five o 'clock in the morning or some absurdly early time to make my ferry. And then when I got there, it was chaos at the actual like customs in Victoria. They need a way bigger like dock for the ferry to dock at, cause it was chaos in the customs line.
And then I got through customs. I had a one -on -one coaching session that had unfortunately gotten rescheduled to that day. And then the rest of the day, I walked 20 ,000 steps around Victoria. Now that is not necessarily my idea of a relaxing vacation either, but I was exploring, I was checking things out, I was doing my thing. And I kind of considered that in retrospect, it was kind of my off -ramp day.
It was my day where I wasn't hustling and running around in the work context and how we normally work and go about our day. But I was still doing a lot. It was still a very jam packed day. So that day was kind of like my off ramp day. And then the next day was absurdly slower. I actually intentionally the day after didn't make any plans or I think I had like one plan. I only had like one thing that I was committed to the whole day. And I scheduled it for the afternoon so that I could have like a nice
slow morning. So I basically am saying I gave myself some time to slow down. And I think that's what a lot of us don't do on vacation. We just expect ourselves to switch into vacation mode, to switch into slow down and relax mode. And I frankly think that's just a really terrible expectation to have when you go on vacation because you're setting yourself up for failure. Give yourself an off ramp, give yourself a day to kind of slow down to, you know, your cruising altitude, if you will, for for your vacation and then go from there. So that's my first tip. Give yourself an off ramp.
Ellyn Schinke (04:41.126)
My second tip is to take your time. And I feel like this is a really important thing because when you think about your day -to -day life, we spend a lot of our daily lives like rushing from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next. The worst thing you can do on vacation when it comes from being in vacation mode and being able to relax on vacation is to do that exact same thing. We don't wanna let our vacation become that. So some of the ways in which I would recommend taking your time is first and foremost, giving yourself some space for slow mornings. I feel like if
We are waking up to an alarm clock every day of our vacation. That's not gonna feel inherently relaxing. That's not gonna feel like a break from our day -to -day life. We need to give ourselves slow mornings. Let yourself sleep in. Let yourself have a leisurely breakfast. Give yourself that slow morning. So that's one way we can take our time. But another way is to just kind of do leisurely walks between activities. We don't wanna be...
so over scheduled and this might mean resisting the temptation to over schedule yourself and jam all of the things into your vacation time. So we want to be able to take leisurely walks from one thing to the next to the next as much as I walked when I was on vacation in Victoria and actually the same thing when I went to Boise for my family reunion slash grandma's 90th at the beginning of June. I know I've had a lot of trips recently, but like
I walked a lot on those trips and some of those walks the intention was to exercise but the other intention was just to get myself from point A to point B and I wasn't rushing in doing that. I was kind of enjoying it treating it as a way to yes get a form of exercise but also as a way to explore. So take your time, take those slow mornings, take those leisurely walks, resist the temptation to over schedule yourself and that's going to help you relax when you're on vacation. The third thing that I recommended to her and we've I've got
six tips and two bonus tips. And again, I said, I'm keeping track on the time because I don't want this episode to inherently be too long. But the third tip is to make space for emotional processing. When I was kind of DMing back and forth with this person and we were sending each other voice notes and all the things, one of the things that she mentioned was like guilt or shame or anxiety that might show up when you're on vacation. And when I say make space for emotional processing, what I mean is if this happens, if guilt, shame and anxiety come up for you when you're on vacation,
Ellyn Schinke (06:56.038)
Don't shove those emotions down because what it's gonna do is it's just get a fester or like bread when we make bread, it might just even rise and become bigger. Instead, what we need to do is we need to make space to emotionally process. And we all process our emotions differently. Some of us are verbal processors, some of us are written processors. So this might mean talking it out for my verbal processors or for my written processors, it might mean, you know, grab a journal and write it out. We need to start feeling like it's safe.
to process our emotions instead of getting frustrated with ourselves for feeling the way that we feel. Guilt, shame, anxiety, I would say are pretty normal for a lot of us. When we do finally make the space to pause, finally make the space to go on vacation and then take that time out, naturally there's gonna be some negative emotions that come up in that. Don't shove them down, don't pretend like they're not there, address them, process them, work through them because otherwise they're just gonna kind of be this nagging thing in the back of your mind on vacation and that's not what we want either.
So to recap what I've talked about so far, tip number one is to give yourself an off ramp. Tip number two is to take your time. Tip number three was to make space for emotional processing. Tip number four, and this is actually something that when I was kind of looking for inspiration online, I found and I loved, learn how you relax best. This I think is a really, really important thing to think about because what we deem as relaxing behavior is gonna vary from one person to another. For some people,
hiking sounds relaxing and for other people it sounds like hell. I think that's a great example. So maybe you're more of a yoga person. Maybe you're more of a long walks person. I personally love me a good walk. Maybe you're more of a lie on a hammock kind of person. We need to give ourselves the opportunity to figure out how we relax best. And if you don't know, give yourself the opportunity on your vacation to experiment with different styles of relaxation.
That is a great thing to do on your vacation. Like use it as a time to inform what is something that actually sounds like the best form of relaxation to you and prioritize that when you're on vacation. Don't be a hike five miles every day person if you're not a hike five miles every day person. Be a lay in the, lay on a hammock person if that's the person you are. No judgment or no shame either way. It's your vacation. We need to relax in the way that's best for you to relax. So that is my fourth tip.
Ellyn Schinke (09:17.766)
Tip number five, and this one I thought was super interesting as well, this is another one that I found online that I thought was fascinating, be spontaneous. And actually I can vouch that I feel like this is a better way to vacation. There's actually a study, it was a study in a 2018 paper in current opinions in psychology, and I can link it in the show notes for anybody who's interested in checking it out. What they found is that we actually enjoy planned leisure activities less than those that aren't scheduled.
I know, right? I think it's so interesting. And the reason why is because time strains when we're over scheduled will take us out of the now. So like, for example, one of the things that I did when I was in Victoria is I had a day where I wanted to do multiple different activities. I wanted to go to Bouchard Gardens and I wanted to go to Malahat Skywalk. Shout out to those of you who live in British Columbia or you've been to Victoria and you know exactly what I'm talking about.
I had all of these things that I wanted to do over the course of the day, but I didn't have a set schedule for when I wanted to go do them. I think really the only thing I had quote unquote set is when I wanted to leave in the morning so that I could get to Butchart Gardens at a reasonable time. And then from there, it was just kind of free for all, ad hoc. Like, do I wanna rush from one thing to the next or do I wanna putter around the gift shop for a while? I gave myself a like loose itinerary, but I didn't have like.
regimented schedule. I just was kind of allowing myself to get to one place when I like it's the next place when I got to the next place. Now this is in contrast to throw my dad under the bus for a second here. My I used to joke that my family had one of two styles of vacation when we went on vacation when I was younger and maybe some of you can relate to this. We either have the do all of the things vacation that literally you needed a vacation from when you got back from or we had the beach vacation.
So like we would either go to like Mexico and lay on the beach the whole time, or we would go to like Disney World and be like at the park the moment it opened and stay until the moment it closed. Like we had one of two modes and it was really funny because I remember talking to my mom about this at one point in time and we both were just like, yeah, no, I don't like the go, go, go vacation. And yet we did them all the time.
Ellyn Schinke (11:29.798)
And the reason why we didn't like it is it was so regimented. It was like, okay, we need to get to the park at this time. My dad's an engineer. So like, that's kind of why it was like this. It was get to the park at this time, it was okay, we're gonna go to this ride first, and then we're gonna go to this ride next before everybody else gets there. It felt like way too regimented and way too strict. Traveling with my family has kind of always been like that because that's just how my dad operates. But I now realize more and more when I'm older, I don't like that.
I like the spontaneous vacation. I like being able to figure it out as I go. I didn't actually schedule when I was going to go to Haiti in Victoria until like the night before actually might even been the morning of because I was just kind of trying to go with the flow and see how things felt. When I got to Victoria, I actually spent the first afternoon in Victoria kind of roughly laying out what I wanted to do then. And then as the vacation wore on, I kind of just
made decisions the night before of, okay, this sounds nice to do tomorrow. This sounds nice to do tomorrow. So I had like loose plans, but they weren't too strict because it felt like it wouldn't be relaxing if I was holding myself to some strict schedule that I didn't actually, that didn't actually fit where my mood was and where my energy was for that day. So be spontaneous, like cool, you can have a rough schedule, but like don't over schedule yourself. Don't be too strict with going from one thing to the next, because it's not going to feel as relaxing. Now tip number six.
I love this one. Be healthy -ish. Be healthy -ish. And when I say this, basically what I'm saying is there is kind of a happy balance on vacation to enjoying yourself, indulging, but also like taking care of yourself. Your vacation probably isn't going to feel super relaxing and super rejuvenating if you are staying, like you're not sleeping at all.
You are eating absolute shit food the entire time. You're not drinking any water and you're just drinking wine. Like don't get me wrong. I'm a wine human. I love me some wine. We need to be healthy ish. We don't want to be too strict with anything 6040 is a good balance on vacation or maybe even 5050. Like sure exercise but we don't want to slog away in our hotel gym. We might go for a walk or hike or a paddleboard. Sure eat whole fresh local foods but also if you're a french fry aficionado go eat the french fries.
Ellyn Schinke (13:46.982)
Or if you want to order gelato, I think I ate my body weight in gelato when I was in Venice forever ago. Like do it. You know, drink lots of water, but don't feel like you can't enjoy a cocktail. There's a happy balance to have on vacation. I think that's also a way in which we can relax is to allow ourselves to get away from kind of the strictness of how we might eat or sleep or operate in our day -to -day life. It doesn't mean throw all of that out the window because we'll probably regret it from like a rejuvenation perspective on the vacation.
but it does mean loosen up those guidelines a little bit. In the same way we might loosen up our strict regimented schedule when we're on vacation, we need to loose up those health expectations as well. So those are my six tips when it comes to being on vacation, but I've got a couple bonus tips that I wanna leave you with. And actually this didn't take me too long at all to get through, so I'm super excited I was able to get through all of these today. But the couple bonus tips I have are to bookend your vacation.
best practices when it comes to planning for your vacation and also when you get home from your vacation. So bonus tip, this tip number seven for today is to obviously plan ahead for your vacation. And I'm not talking about booking your flights ahead of time or any of that. What I'm talking about is making sure people know ahead of time. Have someone cover you while you're gone. Have an out of office, like stuff like that because the worst thing
when we're on vacation is getting like emergency work phone calls or emails or stuff like that that could have been avoided if we'd simply done a little bit of legwork ahead of time to just make sure people are aware when we're out. I've spoken to so many organizations at this point. I've talked to so many business owners and entrepreneurs at this point. And generally speaking, the thoughts behind somebody going on vacation is people are supportive of that.
people want you to rest and take a break. People are usually more willing to sacrifice themselves and throw themselves under the bus in terms of their workload to allow somebody they care about, somebody they like to go on vacation. Like generally speaking, that is the pattern I have seen. So people are gonna support you going on vacation, but they're gonna support you better if they know ahead of time and they are able to plan ahead of time. If you work in a corporate environment,
Ellyn Schinke (16:06.502)
Make sure people know so they have the opportunity to ask you questions, you know, to back you up ahead of time, to make sure that all of the loose ends are tied up before you then head off to work. So that is gonna be to your benefit. Make sure you plan ahead from the perspective of letting the people around you know the people you work with, the people that you spend some time with, like make sure they know so they're not harassing you when you're on vacation. So that is, it might be an obvious one, but I think it's a super important one to plan ahead for your vacation.
And then this other side of that, the flip side of that, the second bonus tip is to plan a buffer day if you can, when you get back from your vacation. Just like we talked about in our very, very first tip, we talked about giving yourself an off -ramp so that we can slow down from going full speed ahead. That buffer day is to give yourself that on -ramp back into the freeway that is life. Like, just like we talked about the transition from fast to slow, we need a transition from slow to fast. We need to give ourselves
the opportunity to return to reality. And if we return to reality too rapidly, it can be really, really, really harsh. So if we can give ourselves that space for a ramp back up when we return, it's gonna help us plan even better. It's gonna help us feel more relaxed as we come back from our vacation. So in the same way we have to plan for leaving, we also might need to plan for re -entry. Honestly, I feel like the best...
day like that, that best buffer day is getting back from vacation and having a chunk of time to unpack, to maybe do some laundry, to go to the grocery store. I feel like I always feel the most chaotic and like I'm not ready to go back to work after a vacation when I get back from my vacation at like 10 PM and then I'm starting work the next morning and I've got clients and calls and stuff the next morning.
I don't feel ready for that because I don't I usually don't have motivation to unpack or do laundry. I don't have I can't get to the grocery store that night. Like I feel unprepared going into my work week and my work day if I don't have that buffer day. So even if you can't take a full blown day, see if you can just try to get back from your vacation in the morning or in the early afternoon or something like that. So you at the very least have the remainder of that day when you get back to help you speed back up to the speed of light.
Ellyn Schinke (18:27.462)
And you know, I wish that life and the way we operated in our life was kind of a closer speed to how we operate when we're on vacation. But unfortunately for a lot of us, that's just not the case. So I think that buffer day helps to compensate for that. So these are some of my tips for how to actually relax on vacation. How to actually get your mind and your body and your soul into that state of relaxation so you can really take full advantage of vacation. I hope these tips resonated with you. And in fact, what I would love is if you could take
screenshot or share this podcast to Instagram or LinkedIn or your favorite social media platform. Tag me if I'm on it and I probably am. Tag me, let me know what your favorite tips are, which tips resonated with you in the most and if you had anything to add, please let me know, share it with me and I'd love to share your tips with the community. Like I said, go ahead and head on over to CoachEllen .com slash Facebook to connect with me further inside of the Facebook community. We also have a replay of our masterclass from last week.
our Sustainable Systems Masterclass from last week is available inside of the Facebook community. And I hope you have an opportunity to check it out. But with that, I hope you all enjoy your 4th of July, any vacations you might have coming up. And I hope that these tips really, really help you to take full advantage of that vacation. But with that, my friend, I will talk to you next time. Bye.