Vacationing

Early in the morning, I would slip into the hot tub on our patio and watch the sun come up, and then again into the hot tub at night before going to bed. The key idea here is relaxation. For my family’s part, they liked to spend much of their time playing in one of the seven pools at the resort. I hung out with them poolside several times, giving me time to chat with my son, Devon, and daughter-in-law, Halbe, while the kids swam and played. Of course, there were always pool staff wandering about, asking you if you wanted anything from the bar or the snack stand. I drank a lot of orange juice on the trip and a few ginger ales since I don’t like alcohol.

My very favorite activity was going down to the spa early in the morning to get a little workout in their gym and then go down underground to the hydrospa for a steam room, hot plunge pool, and cold plunge pool. A few times I was the only one there, and it was quiet enough to stretch out on the lounge recliner and meditate/nap in the quiet of the underground surroundings. The whole place has such a wonderful smell from a signature scent for the spa derived from Mexican vanilla. The spa takes the intention of relaxation and plunges it into reality for me.

For most folks going to Cabo, the whole idea is to go into town and go to the many famous clubs, restaurants, and street shopping. I have been to Cabo many times. The town activities have no attraction for me. The kids did head out one day for an ATV adventure back into the hills with dinner out on a beach. They really enjoyed that special trip. But other than that, we stayed at our resort. That may seem insufficient for many folks, but for my kids, just seeing the sun and feeling warmth in the winter is amazing. They are from the Pacific Northwest, where the sun is usually hidden in the winter. In fact, the day we were to leave, they got a call from Halbe’s mother letting them know that a storm knocked out the power to their whole area. They did not know what they would find when they got home.

So, other than sharing, what is my point in telling you about my recent vacation? The point is to communicate the importance of taking time off from the usual daily world. Even if you love your daily life, you still need to take a break from your usual pattern to experience something different. For me, that something different is about spending some down time rejuvenating and giving myself the space to see life from a different perspective for a bit. That does not have to be immersing myself in some new challenge, though it could be just that. It just needs to be different in a way that allows your brain to think in new ways about life. We need to shake up our usual habits of thinking and feeling with a change of pace and perspective.

For me, it has been many years since I have had the “joy” of immersion in the family dynamic. My kids are 40 and 43 at this point. This trip gave me the chance to relive participating with a 9-year-old and a 12-year-old. It has been a few years since my kids were those ages. At that time, I had no idea what I was doing. This gave me a chance to relive those same feelings, but with a greater ease. Back then, I had no idea how things would turn out with my kids, or what kind of impact I would be having on them. But now I have the advantage of seeing how great both of my kids turned out, so I was not feeling bad about being clueless. Things worked out just fine.

Part of relaxing is letting go of concerns, both old and current. We get so wrapped up in believing our day-to-day stuff is so critical, so important. This creates a tremendous amount of stress for us, and this stress takes its toll on our bodies. When we can step back and chill a bit, we can hopefully get a bigger perspective and see that the stresses we are obsessing over today are not that big a deal in the long run. We don’t need to take everything so seriously. We can adapt to what is, and that will allow things to work out. In the moment, we try to demand that things be the way we want, our way. But things (and people) just are what they are. We have the ability to dance around what is and get our needs met in different ways. Trusting ourselves to be creative enough and flexible enough to adapt to what is makes the daily dose of reality much easier to take.

This is another reason to take a vacation now and then. When you are having a good time vacationing, your good feelings about yourself expand. When you feel good, you can hold yourself in higher esteem. You can believe in yourself and start to trust yourself. This is a key element in reducing the stress that will otherwise eat you alive. So do things you enjoy while on vacation. That way, you will recharge your internal resilience batteries. You physically make yourself stronger and healthier, in spite of those poolside snacks. Your digestion may still complain, but your improved attitude will make up for it.

So I recommend taking vacations. Do something different that you will enjoy. Give yourself time to relax and experience life from outside the usual habit of life. Vacations don’t have to be just a break from work. You can get in just as much of a routine rut while being retired as you can working the 9 to 5. The idea is to break out of that rut and enjoy life doing something different. Break free, get free.
Take care,
David

Ellen

Ellen decided that while I was in Cabo, she was going to re-engage her cooking skills. For the last several years she has been letting me do the cooking on the excuse that she could not stand in the kitchen to do the work. While it is nice to have someone cook for you once in a while, eventually you get sick and tired of not having things cooked your way. So I showed Ellen how to use the Insta-pot and said “have at it”! This has been very empowering for her. Regaining autonomy in the kitchen is doing wonders for her self esteem.