Try this while you're on holiday

In the final episode for 2025, I'm inviting you to observe something next time you're on a break. It's about noticing to the elements of a holiday that make it feel so good. It goes beyond simply not working, if you really pay attention, and it can make a difference in your day-to-day if you choose to let it. 

This is the final episode for 2025. I'm taking an intentional pause and will return in the new year with refreshed clarity and rhythm for the year ahead. Thank you so much for being with me this year. I'll see you on the other side. 

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Transcript

Hey friend, welcome. I'm Annie and I am here on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and I want to pay my respect to Elders past and present. And may I also extend that to any First Nations people that are listening. If you are an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person, I honour you and thank you so much for listening.

This will be my final episode for 2025. I'm gonna be stepping into a quiet season to recalibrate and reset to return in the new year with fresh clarity and a sense of rhythm for the year ahead. So thank you for being here throughout this year. Thank you for being here for this episode. Hopefully you will also have a break coming up sometime, and I'd like to offer you something to observe, something to play with through that break.

Lately for myself, I've been reflecting on the qualities of a good break and how I might be able to incorporate some of those qualities more into my day-to-day life. Because on the surface, the most obvious difference between a work season and a break or holiday is the work part. So either you're working or you're not working, and the goodness of a break can be due to the absence of work, and that is definitely part of it, of course.

But what other ingredients of a good break might exist that you could weave in, stir into your day-to-day life. For myself, having reflected on this, I'm gonna be paying attention to it even more as I take my pause over the next little while. But here are some of the things that I have already reflected on.

Maybe some of these will resonate with you. So these are qualities of a good holiday or a good break that are beyond just not working. So the first one is being in nature or literally just being outdoors. Less time spent inside, more time outside. For me on holiday, I tend to have a lot less screen time, less computers, less phone, less TV.

Something else is I tend to mute notifications, although, to be honest, I usually have all of those turned off as much as I can in my day to day, but I'll do that to another level. So even having out of office responses on emails and things like that. Also just, yeah, muting any groups that I'm part of or anything like that so that I can really just check in when I choose to check in and not have these things kind of pushing their way into my day-to-day. 

Another aspect of being on holiday for me is tuning into my body's rhythms in different ways. So that will be about sleep, where I tend to just sleep when I wanna sleep, and that might mean that I stay up later than I do in my regular life. Or it might mean that I go to bed earlier. I might wake up later.

Unlikely that I'd wake up much earlier 'cause I wake up fairly early in my day-to-day life. But even down to that I might wake up and then go back to bed for a nap or have a little nap in the afternoon. Really just responding to my body's desire, or inclination towards sleep, and doing that at the time that feels right, rather than just necessarily trying to fit into a set routine.

And because often my holidays do involve more nature, especially if say, we're camping, then I'll find that those rhythms tend to align more with nature. I'll find myself wanting to wake up when the sun comes up and go to sleep when it starts to get dark, but also other rhythms like hunger, for example.

Again, perhaps letting go of the sense of routine around eating or having to eat at a certain time because that's the time that I've got in between this and that. Instead, eating when it feels like time to eat and eating, taking as long as I choose while eating or eating a few different meals or just a couple of meals in a day.

So again, rather than following some external timing imposed by circumstance, there's more space to just tune into, how am I feeling? Am I hungry right now? What do I feel like and eating in that way instead. And the same with exercise. So rather than, well, I know I've got an hour each morning and that's my time to do the exercise.

Maybe I'll continue that routine while I'm on holiday, but maybe I won't, and maybe it will just be from day to day, just feeling into what feels like a good way to move my body and doing that. Another ingredient that I find in my time out in these holidays is just more time to play. So time to explore, time to do stuff that actually doesn't really matter.

It's not really purposeful, and that can be tied with space for creativity. So I might find myself more inclined to draw, or one thing I like to do is play with, uh, calligraphy or typography. I don't think it is called typography when you're doing it by hand anyway, that's irrelevant. You get the idea like playing with hand lettering, that's what it's called, or picking up my guitar and singing or listening more to music.

Something else that I'll find is a feature usually of a break, is just some quiet and solitude. So just some nice long walks or just sitting quietly on a beach or somewhere in nature. No hurry, no need to fill the space just existing, just being.

Something else that I find tends to be part of a good break is good conversation.

And again, there's something about it that is purposeless, if you know what I mean. It's not just task orientated conversation. What do we need to talk about? What do we have to get done? But when there's that space for meandering chat and catching up on something that doesn't really matter or telling the long version of the story or getting deeper into something that perhaps hasn't felt appropriate in the regular day-to-day or busyness of life. And space is a feature, just space. I guess I've described that already in that space for creativity, space for quiet, space for solitude, space for good conversation.

So there's some of the things that I have already noted for myself, but what else might there be for you? It could be really different things than I have listed. The things that refresh you on a break. They might be different to mine, but here's what I'm inviting you to play with. Just noticing them. Keep a note of those things, the things that make up a good break for you, that help you to feel great in the way that perhaps you do on a holiday or a break, and keep a note of them. So you might even just have a running note in your phone and just keep adding every time you notice, oh, that—that's a key ingredient for a good break to me, and write that down or pop it into a journal.

And then as you return to your day to day, whether that's returning to work or to routines of family life or to study or whatever it might be. As you return, ask yourself, which of these ingredients that have been key elements of my break being so good, so refreshing, rejuvenating, inspiring, cup filling. Which of those ingredients might I mix into my regular life, even when I'm back at work, back into the day-to-day routines and what could that look like?

So take a moment to imagine how you could bring some of those elements into your day to day.
And it may not be possible to bring them all, and it may not be possible to bring them in as much fullness as you experience them while you are on a break or on a holiday. But that doesn't mean that you can't bring them in somehow. So take a moment to consider how you might be able to bring them in, and then ask yourself, which ingredients will I mix into my life as soon as I return?

And then put it into your calendar. Set the alarm for it. Write it on your bathroom mirror, put it on a sticky note. Whatever you need to do to bring it to life for yourself. You may like to just choose one thing. Maybe you decide I'm gonna bring some creativity, some artistic expression into my life, and maybe that looks like for you, planning out 10 minutes, three times a week, that you get to sit down with a sketch pad and a box of pencils and just draw because it fills your cup.

Yeah. It might not be quite the same as when you have endless hours to be able to just sit there and do it and nothing else before or after that you particularly have to do. I get that, but maybe having it built into your regular routine could be nourishing for you, and that seems worth exploring to me.

So that's something that I will be exploring as I'm taking some time out. And it's not too cumbersome. It's not like homework. It's just really about noticing, ah, that feels good. Ah, that feels good. That helps me to feel at ease. That helps me to feel rested, relaxed, open, calm, curious, all these good qualities that I like to cultivate more and more in my life.

So maybe I can then bring them into my regular life a little more. It's not hard work, it's just openness. And so maybe you might wanna have a play with it as well. And if you do, I wish you well with that. As I mentioned, I will be taking a deliberate pause from here and I'll be back in the new year.

Thank you so much for being part of 2025 and the story of Yes, You thus far and I will see you on the other side. Much love to you. Bye.