Have You Tried Shutting Your Life Down and Restarting?

Always take your vacations! Health care providers, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review agree: Using all of your vacation time is a good financial decision that benefits your health and happiness. Would you like to be poor, sick, and sad with a memory bank full of regrets? By all means, martyr yourself to the relentless grind! Then you can feel that self-righteous victory of having thrown your life away in doglike submission to your boss, who won't appreciate your sacrifice in the least because you'll be dead or on disability instead of working! But goodness, you'll have the satisfaction of having perished in the sinless state of having said no to "laziness." You can ask your family to engrave it on your headstone.

Or! You could do your duty for the American economy and make your family happier by spending on yourself and your loved ones!

But don't just spend money, spend quality time! Spend evenings watching the sun set! Spend long days on the beach! Or in your backyard on a hammock!

Have fun with your children! Enjoy your lover! Nurture your friendships! Revel in nature! Visit an art gallery, a live musical performance, a fine restaurant, an iconic book shop! 

Breathe deeply!

Laugh freely!

Run and play all day!

Sleep soundly at night!

Give your body, brain, heart, and soul a powerful reset with effects that last long after your year's allotment of PTO runs out. The good vibes will benefit your coworkers you when you return to your desk refreshed.

I have always taken all of my vacation time, thank you very much, but I have not always used it most effectively. In the past I've tried to pack in big projects, which is necessary sometimes, but it doesn't offer the profound benefits of taking a real, relaxed, self-care-as-health-and-wealth-care vacation.

This summer, my family will take another road trip to Michigan's Leelanau Peninsula, because last time we did that, the seaside bliss carried us through the next few weeks after we returned home. But we'll spend a lot more of this year's time off in our hometown, making improvements to our house, having family and friends over for dinner, gobbling mulberries off the tree in the backyard, biking to outdoor concerts in the park, taking classes at the library, and sitting around bonfires.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jeannie Miernik (@msamiernika)

My mother-in-law is coming to visit this summer, and we'll take her out boutique shopping and to live music performances at local small venues like The Robin Theatre, which moonlights as a bookshop and sells my novels!

You don't need a plane ticket to take your vacation. When you have a moment to become fully present, you can take a look around and, wherever you are, find simple joys and local treasures close to home. Or you can feel like you've traveled far just by getting immersed in art, such as an arresting musical performance or a play or a gallery exhibit or a novel that takes you out of your skin.

Live while you're alive. Rest while it can do you good. Sleep well and beautifully, and let the worms grind your bones to dust when you're dead.