113. Vacation Brain 2.0
Do you need a vacation from your vacation? Yes! You are not alone. We often put a lot of pressure on our vacation time, and when things don't go according to plan, stress levels skyrocket. This week, I share three common vacation brain expectations that keep you from being present and enjoying your time away.
By unpacking the reality that vacation is not an escape from life, we can come to terms with the thoughts and emotions as they arise, validate all our experiences, and create space for them to pass. Challenges occur in all aspects of life, at any time, even on vacation.
This week, I remind you how to prepare your mind for your upcoming vacation. I share examples of my vacation brain and how to approach these thoughts, as well as explore the cultural root of a toxic vacation brain. Remember, we are unraveling deeply ingrained cultural programming, and it takes time to change. Let's approach our vacations realistically this year. Tune in to discover how.
To celebrate reaching over 15,000 downloads, I’m hosting a giveaway! You could win a $300 gift card to a local spa near you, the books Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski and Rest is Restraint by Tricia Hersey, and a Worthy Sweatshirt by Health Equity Jazz.
All you have to do is click here to enter and follow the instructions!
What You Will Discover:
What ‘vacation brain’ is.
How to respond to emotions on vacation.
Why vacation is stressful and the cultural root of this stress.
Why hyper-fixating on your trip is ruining your experience.
Resources:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey you all, I’m Marissa McKool, and you’re listening to the Redefining Rest Podcast for Public Health Professionals. Here we believe rest is your right. You don’t have to earn it, you just have to learn how to take it and I’m going to teach you. Ready? Come along.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another week. Happy Monday if you’re listening to this the day it comes out. And if you’re not, happy whatever day it is for you. I have to tell you all, I am tired. I have been going to bed later than normal the past couple of nights. Listen, daylight savings really fucks with me. The sun being out till eight ish or later at night has really tripped up my sleeping habits and I am feeling it today. It’s catching up to me. I am recording this and then I have a consult for my coaching program and then I am closing down my workday.
I’m going to go celebrate a friend’s birthday, hopefully get to bed at my regular time then I can catch up on my sleep. But welcome everyone if you are new here, if this is the first episode you’re listening to, I am so, so glad you’re here. And actually this might be the best starter episode because I am announcing a really, really exciting giveaway that opens up today as this episode airs. I have been doing this podcast for over two years. And we have reached over 15,000 episode downloads. And I really wanted to celebrate that.
But more than that I wanted to celebrate all of you, especially those of you who have been listening for a long time. In the podcast world how many downloads you get is kind of a main metric of your podcast success. And by a lot of podcast standards, 15,000 downloads isn't necessarily considered a huge amount but I'm going to tell you why it's actually a huge amount to me and it matters for you.
Recently I had a couple interactions with different podcast hosts of podcasts that seem much bigger than mine because their overall downloads are way, way higher. However, in conversation with them what I came to discover was their podcast, they have new listeners come in and listen to one episode and then never listen again but it would count towards their total downloads which was fascinating to me. Because for this podcast even though we have 15,000 downloads which by some people’s standards is huge but by others is not as nearly as large as theirs.
The difference is those of you who are regular listeners, you listen every single week. The majority of downloads are from people who listen to the podcast every single week. You all are taking time out of your day each week to get help with saving time, getting more rest, feeling better, reducing your stress. And to me that is what matters most, not the number of downloads, not any of those metrics, what number am I on the charts? The reason I'm doing this podcast is for you to get you support and coaching and teaching that helps you feel better.
And there is no more meaningful metric than the fact that all of you are listening regularly and every single week. That's why I started this podcast, to help you, not just once, not twice but consistently each and every week so you can reduce your stress. And I want to celebrate you showing up every week, your commitment, your dedication to being here and getting support and implementing what I’m teaching and really thinking about it and seeing the changes. That is no small feat.
I am so beyond proud of you and your commitment to yourself to feel better, to get rest, to reduce your stress. So I actually want to celebrate you more than the metric of 15,000 downloads. I want to celebrate your commitment, your dedication. And if you’re new here I want to celebrate you too because you are going to continue to listen and get support and get help. And that's what matters most. So to do that, today we’re opening up a podcast giveaway. We will be giving away one $300 gift card to a local spa near you.
We’ll also be giving away the books Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski and Rest is Resistant by Tricia Hersey. And a worthy sweatshirt by Health Equity Jazz, Jasmine Leonard. You may be familiar with her from Instagram. She has an amazing kind of apparel line that has worthy statements on it. So anyways, those are the amazing, amazing prizes. The giveaway opens today and ends July 14th.
So here’s the deal, in the show notes we have a link, go click that when you’re done listening to the episode. Follow the link and it will bring you to enter your name and email. And you will be directed to review this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Once you do that, you will be entered to win. And the way the raffle’s going to work is you get a certain number of points for just initially entering and then you get more points for sharing on social media, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. So the top three people with the most points will be the winners.
So after you listen to this, go click the link and enter the giveaway. It will only take a few moments, a few minutes and you could win a $300 spa gift card. Go get yourself a facial or a massage or a pedicure. Win two of my most favorite books that I recommend. I actually give these books to my one-on-one clients as gifts. I think they are so useful. And win an amazing sweatshirt that reminds you, you are worthy. So make sure to do that after this episode and let’s get into what we’re talking about today.
So this episode as you saw is called Vacation Brain 2.0. I talked about the concept of vacation brain. A concept that I really kind of created back in 2021. And I aired an episode called Vacation Brain, I think it was episode 15 back then. But I wanted to bring it to the forefront and talk about it again with some of my thoughts since then, especially because it's summertime. So many of you are taking vacations, whether you're heading out on a three day holiday weekend, going camping for a few days, taking a week long tropical vacation or anything else.
So many of you take less time off than you actually want or are afforded. For some of you, your PTO, your paid time off is sitting in that PTO bank of your benefits somewhere rarely touched. You might be losing your PTO because of it. Yet for others of you, maybe you don’t have the greatest PTO benefits and you only get minimal opportunities to take paid time off. No matter which situation you're in, I want to make sure that when you do take that time off, when you do go on vacation, you have an amazing vacation.
One thing we don't realize is we have a vacation brain and this gets in our way of really enjoying and being present on our vacation. It's the reason we often say, “I need a vacation from my vacation.” You just aren’t aware of what vacation brain is and what’s happening and what to do about it. So don’t worry, I’m going to get you covered. We’re going to talk about all that. There are three beliefs that our vacation brain holds that can really ruin our vacation.
The first is that we shouldn’t feel any stress or anxiety on our vacation. The second is that we should feel happy all the time on our vacation. And the third is you have to make the most of your vacation. So let’s talk a little bit about each. Most of us consciously do not think that when we go on vacation we shouldn't or we won't feel any stress or anxiety. We have this expectation simply because we drive several hours away or hop on a plane or go somewhere else or take the time off, that it means we leave all our stress or anxiety behind.
That our brain will magically turn off, that automatically our brain will no longer think about those emails we haven't checked or the report we just submitted or your kid getting in trouble at school recently. Or the negotiation that’s ongoing with the contractor for your home repairs or the struggle you're having with paying off student debt or how frustrating your boss is. That just somehow those thoughts will magically go on pause and disappear for the time you’re on vacation.
And then you go on vacation and your brain reminds you of all those things. And you feel anxious and frustrated and stressed and then you get upset with yourself on the trip for feeling that way. And you make that mean that you're not enjoying your vacation, that you’re not relaxing enough, that you're wasting your vacation. And then you get even more frustrated with yourself. Here’s the deal. We take our brains with us on vacation, of course your brain is offering you these thoughts.
Even if you’re on a beach or camping or on a hike or in a new city, your brain has been thinking these thoughts for a while. Going on vacation doesn't change that. There is unfortunately no out of office for your brain. The thoughts you think when you're working at home in your ‘regular life’, those thoughts are mental habits. Those thoughts don't disappear when you go on vacation. They remain, they come with you, your brain comes with you. It doesn’t mean you’re doing vacation wrong. It doesn't mean you can’t relax. All it means is you have a human brain.
You can allow those thoughts to be there and nothing has gone wrong. It’s okay if you feel a little anxiety. It’s okay if that stress comes with you a little bit, totally normal. Don’t try to force yourself not to think about those things. That will just intensify it more. Allow those thoughts to come and go like the waves. You can ride them. You can let them pass. You don't have to solve all the problems. You don’t have to fixate on it. You don’t have to resist it.
The kind of flipside of that is we think we should feel happy and blissful and joyful the whole time we’re on vacation. We have this vision and this expectation, we put vacation on this pedestal that it should just be so joyful and blissful and we should just feel happy the whole time. And then we go on vacation and we inevitably get frustrated or feel disappointed or anxious, of course. You are a human with a human brain and human emotions. You will feel negative and positive emotions no matter where you go. That is a part of life.
When you set the expectation, conscious or not, that vacations should always be amazing, then you’re going to have the normal human experience of having some negative emotion and you’re going to freak out and make it mean you've done something wrong. But nothing has gone wrong. Vacations are not exempt from the 50/50 of life. Vacation is going to be 50% great, amazing and 50% not at all. You’re going to have the full human range of emotions on your vacation. You may still fight with your family. You may get anxious. You might feel sad.
We think we should be happy and joyous on our vacation the whole time but that’s not true. And setting that expectation and then resisting the reality that we will still have some negative emotion only makes your experience worse and harder. Vacation is not an escape from life, it’s not an escape from the emotions of life. It is a part of life. What if you just allowed those emotions to be with you on vacation? Sometimes it means you're going on a bike ride with some sadness in your body. That’s okay.
If you allow it then it’s more likely later on you have space to invite in excitement or contentment. Maybe it means you hike a little with anxiety and it’s tightness in your stomach, that's okay. Maybe allowing that will let you tomorrow be really present and laugh and have a good time. Resisting your emotions and telling yourself it shouldn't be there and you should always feel a different way, doesn't make your emotions change. Allowing your emotions whatever they are means allowing yourself to be present with whatever you are doing and feeling on vacation.
And allowing your emotions creates the space where they can ebb and flow and you’re not just stuck in a certain set of them and there’s space to invite in others.
The third piece that comes up with vacation brain is believing that you have to ‘make the most of your vacation’. We put so much pressure on ourselves to have the perfect vacation, to do all the things, to have the best time. Part of this, I think, is from the social norm of not really taking enough time off particularly in the US context, which I’ll talk about a little bit more later on. But I experience this whole, you have to make the most of it on your vacation. I experience this a lot, a lot less now that I understand vacation brain and have coaching but it definitely still comes up.
It's that urgency to do or get somewhere, to maximize your time, to have everything planned out to a tee and go perfectly. The feeling like you have to go to a specific restaurant or your trip wouldn’t be worth it. That you have to spend 50% of the time on the beach or it was a waste of time. That you have to get out of the Airbnb every day, you can't stay in any of the days or that’s a waste. This can lead to internally, constantly judging and critiquing and questioning all the decisions you’ve made prior and on the vacation.
So for example, a few years ago, Jared and I went to Hawaii. And one of the most popular hikes that’s highly recommended was reservation only. And by the time I went to book, there were no reservations. We ended up going on a different hike but the whole time leading up to the vacation, on vacation, my brain was constantly telling me how the trip would have been ‘better’ if I just reserved the other hike on time. The one we ended up doing is not as good. The other one must have been better and on and on and on.
And nearly every time I go on vacation my brain always thinks I could have booked a better hotel or Airbnb, always. Recently I was in Miami for a work trip. And in planning the trip, I decided to stay longer for personal reasons after the conference was over but I made the choice to book a different hotel for the personal part of the trip. My thinking was, it’ll help separate work and vacation. But then when I got there my brain kept going on and on about how I should have just stayed at the conference hotel, that was really nice.
I picked the wrong personal hotel, I should have looked somewhere else. I should have gotten a better deal and on and on and on. All of that noise in your head takes away from your experience, it makes it harder to be present to enjoy it. So where does a vacation brain come from? There’s three main areas I want to highlight. And they all overlap and intersect. The first is workplace PTO culture, particularly, again in the US. The second is hustle culture and the third is this glamorization of vacation that we have in our society.
So in the US workplace culture, vacation is considered a rarity, a luxury, a privilege, something you have to earn, something that you only get access to more of the farther along you get in your career. And some companies don’t even offer paid time off or some companies’ policies are really limited or require you to work a certain amount of time to earn it or you have to use it or lose it. Or your workplace might have a great PTO benefit but the culture doesn't promote or encourage taking time off. There is no real norm, everyone's overworking.
I think unconsciously, indirectly this makes it feel like we have to optimize or make the most of our vacations when we do have that chance or when we do take vacation. And we put a lot of pressure on ourselves and on our vacations. I also think we have kind of been taught to use vacation as a recovery mechanism for overworking or feeling overwhelmed as if it's like our Hail Mary, our saving activity, it will save us from ourselves and how overworked and overwhelmed we are. So we put a lot of pressure on a vacation to do that.
But that’s not the purpose of vacation and that's not going to solve your overworking or your overwhelm. I think the second piece is we have a do it all framework in our brain, mentality, whether you’re aware of it or not. To optimize, to get everything done, to do as much as we possibly can, which really comes from toxic capitalism and hustle culture. This shows up at work, trying to get everything done, get everything on your to-do list done, not asking for help, working late, getting through all your emails.
This shows up at home by believing you’ve never gotten enough done, trying to run too many errands in a day, not letting yourself enjoy the evening because you didn't get enough chores done. This also comes with you on vacation, you bring that do it all framework because it operates in your brain. And you bring your brain with you on vacation. So you end up again consciously or not, whether you’re aware of it, trying to optimize and do it all, see all the things, make the most of it, run around town, check off all the tourist locations, do all the recommendations.
And your vacation experience becomes more of a checklist, chasing a checklist, rather than actually being present and enjoying it. And I think the third piece is this glamorization of vacation. Part of the way we think about vacation, one, like I said a little earlier, is it’s the recovery, it’s the treatment, it’s the medicine to our burnout, to our overworking, to our stress, which it is not. It will not solve that problem. You have to do the work of solving that problem, vacation is not that. It might serve as a band-aid, but it does not solve that problem.
But I think the other piece is our society, our culture has made vacation seem like a privilege or rarity. In some circumstances they create barriers so it actually is. So not everyone has access to it. So there is this expectation that if you do take a vacation, it better be good. And then think about social media, how vacations are portrayed. It’s just the best moments captured by everyone, posting with the best lighting and the best filters and getting an angle where no other person is in the photo so it seems like you’re alone. People don’t post the reality of vacation where things go wrong.
You might end up crying, you get frustrated, you get in a fight. That doesn't make the TikTok reel of a vacation but those things happen. So we have this expectation, this idea of vacation that's not based in reality at all. Then we go on vacation, it's much different than we had thought and we resist that reality and it makes it so much harder.
Here is a bonus reason. I also think the fact that most of us are not taught that life is 50/50 no matter what, half of it will be great and half of it will be challenging no matter what, no matter who you are, how much money you make, where you live, how many vacations. We’re not taught that. We’re also not taught that negative emotions are normal, they’re not a bad thing. They will happen, there's no way to avoid them. And we’re not taught how to process our emotions so this contributes to our vacation brain.
We go on vacation expecting our whole mental and emotional experience to be drastically different than everyday life, where it’s blissful and we have no negative emotions, where everything goes perfectly and there’s no challenges. That’s not reality. And that expectation sets you up for disappointment and frustration and resistance. When you accept and know that every aspect of life is going to be 50/50, when you know how to process your feelings, when you know that negative feelings are normal and nothing's gone wrong.
Then when you have emotions, they don’t have to get in the way of your vacation. When changes are unexpected, challenges happen, doesn't have to ruin your vacation. When you aren’t aware that this vacation brain is happening or you aren’t managing it and you’re kind of letting it run wild, you end up waiting for the best moments to happen, always thinking later to the week, believing that's when the best moments will happen rather than being present right now.
You try to control everything even where the places where you don't have control, hyper fixating on things that need to go perfectly, overthinking about how to make it all happen, getting upset at stuff out of your control, micromanaging yourself and even others. And you completely miss out on the vacation you’re on right now. You're so focused on making sure the trip goes right, you actually miss out on being present on your vacation with your family, with your friends, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing.
This is exhausting, it's not restful. And it doesn't help you enjoy your vacation. It drains your energy. When you’re not processing your emotions, when you are not managing your mind, you exhaust yourself. You resist reality. Here's what to do when your vacation brain shows up because it will. Mine still does every time I go on vacation. Don't believe everything your brain says is facts. Get curious, write your thoughts down, but just don't believe everything your brain says. They’re not all true. They’re not all facts.
Decide on purpose to accept what is rather than wishing what was. Let go of the idea that there is such a thing as a perfect vacation. Stop entertaining the idea of how it could be better. Be present with what is. When you feel a negative emotion, process it, allow it, don't resist it, don’t make it mean anything, nothing's gone wrong. Allow that to be there. The more you allow all the emotions that come up, less intense they will be. The more space you will have to allow other emotions to come in and out. Remind yourself that vacations are 50/50.
Things will go wrong, there will be challenges. You might fight with others. That’s all normal, that is life, nothing has gone wrong. And if you accept that and allow that, then you also get to experience the other 50 where you are present, you are laughing, you are enjoying. And lastly, give yourself permission to do anything on your vacation. Don’t force yourself to do anything but give yourself permission. Give yourself permission for it to not look like an Instagram ad. Give yourself permission not to do everything. Give yourself permission to hang out in the Airbnb half a day and not go sightseeing.
Give yourself permission to change plans. I promise when you stop resisting what is on your vacation, stop judging yourself or making your vacation mean anything when things change and challenges arise, when emotions come up. You will enjoy your time off so much more and be more present in your experience. So if you’re heading on vacation, I want you to keep this podcast episode tagged so you can come back to it. I can’t tell you how many of my one-on-one clients, when they go on vacation, I send them this episode and they always end up listening to it.
Because I promise, your vacation brain will come up. And having this episode to come back to will be so, so helpful. And if you’re new here, make sure to subscribe so you don’t lose this because on the podcast players if you don't subscribe, it's not like Facebook or TikTok or any of those places where it will pop up at some point. And reminder, we have a huge giveaway, I don’t want you to miss it, whether you've been listening since the beginning or this is your first episode.
All of you, I want you to enter. I want you to enter the podcast giveaway. You could win a $300 spa gift card. You could win books on burnout and rest, books that I personally use and I give my clients to use, or a worthy sweatshirt to remind you, you are worthy. So check out the show notes. Click the link. Enter your name email, review the podcast and share so you can build up as many points as possible so you can win one of those prizes. Alright you all, see you next week. Bye everyone.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another week. Happy Monday if you’re listening to this the day it comes out. And if you’re not, happy whatever day it is for you. I have to tell you all, I am tired. I have been going to bed later than normal the past couple of nights. Listen, daylight savings really fucks with me. The sun being out till eight ish or later at night has really tripped up my sleeping habits and I am feeling it today. It’s catching up to me. I am recording this and then I have a consult for my coaching program and then I am closing down my workday.
I’m going to go celebrate a friend’s birthday, hopefully get to bed at my regular time then I can catch up on my sleep. But welcome everyone if you are new here, if this is the first episode you’re listening to, I am so, so glad you’re here. And actually this might be the best starter episode because I am announcing a really, really exciting giveaway that opens up today as this episode airs. I have been doing this podcast for over two years. And we have reached over 15,000 episode downloads. And I really wanted to celebrate that.
But more than that I wanted to celebrate all of you, especially those of you who have been listening for a long time. In the podcast world how many downloads you get is kind of a main metric of your podcast success. And by a lot of podcast standards, 15,000 downloads isn't necessarily considered a huge amount but I'm going to tell you why it's actually a huge amount to me and it matters for you.
Recently I had a couple interactions with different podcast hosts of podcasts that seem much bigger than mine because their overall downloads are way, way higher. However, in conversation with them what I came to discover was their podcast, they have new listeners come in and listen to one episode and then never listen again but it would count towards their total downloads which was fascinating to me. Because for this podcast even though we have 15,000 downloads which by some people’s standards is huge but by others is not as nearly as large as theirs.
The difference is those of you who are regular listeners, you listen every single week. The majority of downloads are from people who listen to the podcast every single week. You all are taking time out of your day each week to get help with saving time, getting more rest, feeling better, reducing your stress. And to me that is what matters most, not the number of downloads, not any of those metrics, what number am I on the charts? The reason I'm doing this podcast is for you to get you support and coaching and teaching that helps you feel better.
And there is no more meaningful metric than the fact that all of you are listening regularly and every single week. That's why I started this podcast, to help you, not just once, not twice but consistently each and every week so you can reduce your stress. And I want to celebrate you showing up every week, your commitment, your dedication to being here and getting support and implementing what I’m teaching and really thinking about it and seeing the changes. That is no small feat.
I am so beyond proud of you and your commitment to yourself to feel better, to get rest, to reduce your stress. So I actually want to celebrate you more than the metric of 15,000 downloads. I want to celebrate your commitment, your dedication. And if you’re new here I want to celebrate you too because you are going to continue to listen and get support and get help. And that's what matters most. So to do that, today we’re opening up a podcast giveaway. We will be giving away one $300 gift card to a local spa near you.
We’ll also be giving away the books Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski and Rest is Resistant by Tricia Hersey. And a worthy sweatshirt by Health Equity Jazz, Jasmine Leonard. You may be familiar with her from Instagram. She has an amazing kind of apparel line that has worthy statements on it. So anyways, those are the amazing, amazing prizes. The giveaway opens today and ends July 14th.
So here’s the deal, in the show notes we have a link, go click that when you’re done listening to the episode. Follow the link and it will bring you to enter your name and email. And you will be directed to review this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Once you do that, you will be entered to win. And the way the raffle’s going to work is you get a certain number of points for just initially entering and then you get more points for sharing on social media, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. So the top three people with the most points will be the winners.
So after you listen to this, go click the link and enter the giveaway. It will only take a few moments, a few minutes and you could win a $300 spa gift card. Go get yourself a facial or a massage or a pedicure. Win two of my most favorite books that I recommend. I actually give these books to my one-on-one clients as gifts. I think they are so useful. And win an amazing sweatshirt that reminds you, you are worthy. So make sure to do that after this episode and let’s get into what we’re talking about today.
So this episode as you saw is called Vacation Brain 2.0. I talked about the concept of vacation brain. A concept that I really kind of created back in 2021. And I aired an episode called Vacation Brain, I think it was episode 15 back then. But I wanted to bring it to the forefront and talk about it again with some of my thoughts since then, especially because it's summertime. So many of you are taking vacations, whether you're heading out on a three day holiday weekend, going camping for a few days, taking a week long tropical vacation or anything else.
So many of you take less time off than you actually want or are afforded. For some of you, your PTO, your paid time off is sitting in that PTO bank of your benefits somewhere rarely touched. You might be losing your PTO because of it. Yet for others of you, maybe you don’t have the greatest PTO benefits and you only get minimal opportunities to take paid time off. No matter which situation you're in, I want to make sure that when you do take that time off, when you do go on vacation, you have an amazing vacation.
One thing we don't realize is we have a vacation brain and this gets in our way of really enjoying and being present on our vacation. It's the reason we often say, “I need a vacation from my vacation.” You just aren’t aware of what vacation brain is and what’s happening and what to do about it. So don’t worry, I’m going to get you covered. We’re going to talk about all that. There are three beliefs that our vacation brain holds that can really ruin our vacation.
The first is that we shouldn’t feel any stress or anxiety on our vacation. The second is that we should feel happy all the time on our vacation. And the third is you have to make the most of your vacation. So let’s talk a little bit about each. Most of us consciously do not think that when we go on vacation we shouldn't or we won't feel any stress or anxiety. We have this expectation simply because we drive several hours away or hop on a plane or go somewhere else or take the time off, that it means we leave all our stress or anxiety behind.
That our brain will magically turn off, that automatically our brain will no longer think about those emails we haven't checked or the report we just submitted or your kid getting in trouble at school recently. Or the negotiation that’s ongoing with the contractor for your home repairs or the struggle you're having with paying off student debt or how frustrating your boss is. That just somehow those thoughts will magically go on pause and disappear for the time you’re on vacation.
And then you go on vacation and your brain reminds you of all those things. And you feel anxious and frustrated and stressed and then you get upset with yourself on the trip for feeling that way. And you make that mean that you're not enjoying your vacation, that you’re not relaxing enough, that you're wasting your vacation. And then you get even more frustrated with yourself. Here’s the deal. We take our brains with us on vacation, of course your brain is offering you these thoughts.
Even if you’re on a beach or camping or on a hike or in a new city, your brain has been thinking these thoughts for a while. Going on vacation doesn't change that. There is unfortunately no out of office for your brain. The thoughts you think when you're working at home in your ‘regular life’, those thoughts are mental habits. Those thoughts don't disappear when you go on vacation. They remain, they come with you, your brain comes with you. It doesn’t mean you’re doing vacation wrong. It doesn't mean you can’t relax. All it means is you have a human brain.
You can allow those thoughts to be there and nothing has gone wrong. It’s okay if you feel a little anxiety. It’s okay if that stress comes with you a little bit, totally normal. Don’t try to force yourself not to think about those things. That will just intensify it more. Allow those thoughts to come and go like the waves. You can ride them. You can let them pass. You don't have to solve all the problems. You don’t have to fixate on it. You don’t have to resist it.
The kind of flipside of that is we think we should feel happy and blissful and joyful the whole time we’re on vacation. We have this vision and this expectation, we put vacation on this pedestal that it should just be so joyful and blissful and we should just feel happy the whole time. And then we go on vacation and we inevitably get frustrated or feel disappointed or anxious, of course. You are a human with a human brain and human emotions. You will feel negative and positive emotions no matter where you go. That is a part of life.
When you set the expectation, conscious or not, that vacations should always be amazing, then you’re going to have the normal human experience of having some negative emotion and you’re going to freak out and make it mean you've done something wrong. But nothing has gone wrong. Vacations are not exempt from the 50/50 of life. Vacation is going to be 50% great, amazing and 50% not at all. You’re going to have the full human range of emotions on your vacation. You may still fight with your family. You may get anxious. You might feel sad.
We think we should be happy and joyous on our vacation the whole time but that’s not true. And setting that expectation and then resisting the reality that we will still have some negative emotion only makes your experience worse and harder. Vacation is not an escape from life, it’s not an escape from the emotions of life. It is a part of life. What if you just allowed those emotions to be with you on vacation? Sometimes it means you're going on a bike ride with some sadness in your body. That’s okay.
If you allow it then it’s more likely later on you have space to invite in excitement or contentment. Maybe it means you hike a little with anxiety and it’s tightness in your stomach, that's okay. Maybe allowing that will let you tomorrow be really present and laugh and have a good time. Resisting your emotions and telling yourself it shouldn't be there and you should always feel a different way, doesn't make your emotions change. Allowing your emotions whatever they are means allowing yourself to be present with whatever you are doing and feeling on vacation.
And allowing your emotions creates the space where they can ebb and flow and you’re not just stuck in a certain set of them and there’s space to invite in others.
The third piece that comes up with vacation brain is believing that you have to ‘make the most of your vacation’. We put so much pressure on ourselves to have the perfect vacation, to do all the things, to have the best time. Part of this, I think, is from the social norm of not really taking enough time off particularly in the US context, which I’ll talk about a little bit more later on. But I experience this whole, you have to make the most of it on your vacation. I experience this a lot, a lot less now that I understand vacation brain and have coaching but it definitely still comes up.
It's that urgency to do or get somewhere, to maximize your time, to have everything planned out to a tee and go perfectly. The feeling like you have to go to a specific restaurant or your trip wouldn’t be worth it. That you have to spend 50% of the time on the beach or it was a waste of time. That you have to get out of the Airbnb every day, you can't stay in any of the days or that’s a waste. This can lead to internally, constantly judging and critiquing and questioning all the decisions you’ve made prior and on the vacation.
So for example, a few years ago, Jared and I went to Hawaii. And one of the most popular hikes that’s highly recommended was reservation only. And by the time I went to book, there were no reservations. We ended up going on a different hike but the whole time leading up to the vacation, on vacation, my brain was constantly telling me how the trip would have been ‘better’ if I just reserved the other hike on time. The one we ended up doing is not as good. The other one must have been better and on and on and on.
And nearly every time I go on vacation my brain always thinks I could have booked a better hotel or Airbnb, always. Recently I was in Miami for a work trip. And in planning the trip, I decided to stay longer for personal reasons after the conference was over but I made the choice to book a different hotel for the personal part of the trip. My thinking was, it’ll help separate work and vacation. But then when I got there my brain kept going on and on about how I should have just stayed at the conference hotel, that was really nice.
I picked the wrong personal hotel, I should have looked somewhere else. I should have gotten a better deal and on and on and on. All of that noise in your head takes away from your experience, it makes it harder to be present to enjoy it. So where does a vacation brain come from? There’s three main areas I want to highlight. And they all overlap and intersect. The first is workplace PTO culture, particularly, again in the US. The second is hustle culture and the third is this glamorization of vacation that we have in our society.
So in the US workplace culture, vacation is considered a rarity, a luxury, a privilege, something you have to earn, something that you only get access to more of the farther along you get in your career. And some companies don’t even offer paid time off or some companies’ policies are really limited or require you to work a certain amount of time to earn it or you have to use it or lose it. Or your workplace might have a great PTO benefit but the culture doesn't promote or encourage taking time off. There is no real norm, everyone's overworking.
I think unconsciously, indirectly this makes it feel like we have to optimize or make the most of our vacations when we do have that chance or when we do take vacation. And we put a lot of pressure on ourselves and on our vacations. I also think we have kind of been taught to use vacation as a recovery mechanism for overworking or feeling overwhelmed as if it's like our Hail Mary, our saving activity, it will save us from ourselves and how overworked and overwhelmed we are. So we put a lot of pressure on a vacation to do that.
But that’s not the purpose of vacation and that's not going to solve your overworking or your overwhelm. I think the second piece is we have a do it all framework in our brain, mentality, whether you’re aware of it or not. To optimize, to get everything done, to do as much as we possibly can, which really comes from toxic capitalism and hustle culture. This shows up at work, trying to get everything done, get everything on your to-do list done, not asking for help, working late, getting through all your emails.
This shows up at home by believing you’ve never gotten enough done, trying to run too many errands in a day, not letting yourself enjoy the evening because you didn't get enough chores done. This also comes with you on vacation, you bring that do it all framework because it operates in your brain. And you bring your brain with you on vacation. So you end up again consciously or not, whether you’re aware of it, trying to optimize and do it all, see all the things, make the most of it, run around town, check off all the tourist locations, do all the recommendations.
And your vacation experience becomes more of a checklist, chasing a checklist, rather than actually being present and enjoying it. And I think the third piece is this glamorization of vacation. Part of the way we think about vacation, one, like I said a little earlier, is it’s the recovery, it’s the treatment, it’s the medicine to our burnout, to our overworking, to our stress, which it is not. It will not solve that problem. You have to do the work of solving that problem, vacation is not that. It might serve as a band-aid, but it does not solve that problem.
But I think the other piece is our society, our culture has made vacation seem like a privilege or rarity. In some circumstances they create barriers so it actually is. So not everyone has access to it. So there is this expectation that if you do take a vacation, it better be good. And then think about social media, how vacations are portrayed. It’s just the best moments captured by everyone, posting with the best lighting and the best filters and getting an angle where no other person is in the photo so it seems like you’re alone. People don’t post the reality of vacation where things go wrong.
You might end up crying, you get frustrated, you get in a fight. That doesn't make the TikTok reel of a vacation but those things happen. So we have this expectation, this idea of vacation that's not based in reality at all. Then we go on vacation, it's much different than we had thought and we resist that reality and it makes it so much harder.
Here is a bonus reason. I also think the fact that most of us are not taught that life is 50/50 no matter what, half of it will be great and half of it will be challenging no matter what, no matter who you are, how much money you make, where you live, how many vacations. We’re not taught that. We’re also not taught that negative emotions are normal, they’re not a bad thing. They will happen, there's no way to avoid them. And we’re not taught how to process our emotions so this contributes to our vacation brain.
We go on vacation expecting our whole mental and emotional experience to be drastically different than everyday life, where it’s blissful and we have no negative emotions, where everything goes perfectly and there’s no challenges. That’s not reality. And that expectation sets you up for disappointment and frustration and resistance. When you accept and know that every aspect of life is going to be 50/50, when you know how to process your feelings, when you know that negative feelings are normal and nothing's gone wrong.
Then when you have emotions, they don’t have to get in the way of your vacation. When changes are unexpected, challenges happen, doesn't have to ruin your vacation. When you aren’t aware that this vacation brain is happening or you aren’t managing it and you’re kind of letting it run wild, you end up waiting for the best moments to happen, always thinking later to the week, believing that's when the best moments will happen rather than being present right now.
You try to control everything even where the places where you don't have control, hyper fixating on things that need to go perfectly, overthinking about how to make it all happen, getting upset at stuff out of your control, micromanaging yourself and even others. And you completely miss out on the vacation you’re on right now. You're so focused on making sure the trip goes right, you actually miss out on being present on your vacation with your family, with your friends, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing.
This is exhausting, it's not restful. And it doesn't help you enjoy your vacation. It drains your energy. When you’re not processing your emotions, when you are not managing your mind, you exhaust yourself. You resist reality. Here's what to do when your vacation brain shows up because it will. Mine still does every time I go on vacation. Don't believe everything your brain says is facts. Get curious, write your thoughts down, but just don't believe everything your brain says. They’re not all true. They’re not all facts.
Decide on purpose to accept what is rather than wishing what was. Let go of the idea that there is such a thing as a perfect vacation. Stop entertaining the idea of how it could be better. Be present with what is. When you feel a negative emotion, process it, allow it, don't resist it, don’t make it mean anything, nothing's gone wrong. Allow that to be there. The more you allow all the emotions that come up, less intense they will be. The more space you will have to allow other emotions to come in and out. Remind yourself that vacations are 50/50.
Things will go wrong, there will be challenges. You might fight with others. That’s all normal, that is life, nothing has gone wrong. And if you accept that and allow that, then you also get to experience the other 50 where you are present, you are laughing, you are enjoying. And lastly, give yourself permission to do anything on your vacation. Don’t force yourself to do anything but give yourself permission. Give yourself permission for it to not look like an Instagram ad. Give yourself permission not to do everything. Give yourself permission to hang out in the Airbnb half a day and not go sightseeing.
Give yourself permission to change plans. I promise when you stop resisting what is on your vacation, stop judging yourself or making your vacation mean anything when things change and challenges arise, when emotions come up. You will enjoy your time off so much more and be more present in your experience. So if you’re heading on vacation, I want you to keep this podcast episode tagged so you can come back to it. I can’t tell you how many of my one-on-one clients, when they go on vacation, I send them this episode and they always end up listening to it.
Because I promise, your vacation brain will come up. And having this episode to come back to will be so, so helpful. And if you’re new here, make sure to subscribe so you don’t lose this because on the podcast players if you don't subscribe, it's not like Facebook or TikTok or any of those places where it will pop up at some point. And reminder, we have a huge giveaway, I don’t want you to miss it, whether you've been listening since the beginning or this is your first episode.
All of you, I want you to enter. I want you to enter the podcast giveaway. You could win a $300 spa gift card. You could win books on burnout and rest, books that I personally use and I give my clients to use, or a worthy sweatshirt to remind you, you are worthy. So check out the show notes. Click the link. Enter your name email, review the podcast and share so you can build up as many points as possible so you can win one of those prizes. Alright you all, see you next week. Bye everyone.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
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