Take your Vacation

Take your vacation. Sometimes you just have to shut it all down and undertake a change of scenery. If you stay home you always have some sort of routine task to consume your time. It is healthy and good for your overall production to use that leave that your company provides you, if you are so lucky, to benefit your mental health.

Get up in the morning to a different day. Sleep all day if that is what you want to do. Just to see that the same 24 hour roll out on a new day takes on a little different slant away from home. There is nothing wrong with sitting on a porch and looking at a mountain off on the distance, hearing a river run constantly, hear the surf pound all day and all night. Just mixing it up brings renewal.

Surround yourself with loved ones. Yes, those are the same people that drive you nuts at home. However, they will look and seem differently to you in new surroundings. Talk to them before, during and after a trip. This will make your overall relationship with them a little taller as you share a journey.

Read a good book with all that extra time you have. It never fails that a book lends you a new perspective on things. Sit and daydream. It is amazing what sorts of ideas your mind will spontaneously produce when it has the time to roam.

My family, just a few weeks ago, spent a week together in the Great Smokey Mountains. There are 16 of us. We stayed near Bryson City in three different mountain cabins. They were located in a 20 mile radius of my wife and me. We also had local relatives in that area that we got to see. There was lots of hiking, tubing, whitewater rafting, picnicking, shopping, eating together, sightseeing, visiting and just plain being lazy. We have been back for 6 weeks now and I cannot help thinking about various elements of that trip. I hear the same thing from children and grandchildren.

During the thirty years that I worked for DuPont there were many different trips I took with work colleagues. We went to some pretty interesting places and participated in team building activities. The interaction spurned many unique discussions and new approaches to our business.

There is no more important team than your family. You need to get off together and do some team building now and then. It pays dividends and fosters many wonderful ideas and fresh takes on relationships, interaction and approaches to solving problems.