A Travel State of Mind

How We Spend Our Days

Traveling and vacationing have a profound impact on how we perceive and spend our normal days, offering a change that can move our daily routines toward more adventure. Here at Great Resort Vacations, we’ve found from our own personal travels that it takes a couple of days to fully decompress from the our usual work-life balance before we actually start feeling relaxation. For whatever reason we can’t flip a switch to vacation mode. The decompression is slow and requires an almost stillness to observe a change. A long drive to a destination helps with this, getting actual distance and time between our stress, our lives and the vacation spot.

Boredom Required

When we finally open our eyes on that second or third morning of vacation, we’re greeted with a new question: “What could I do today?” The question only arrives when there is nothing to do and the distractions of what “we should do” that would otherwise fill our day at home is no longer an option. We have the chance to become adventurers in a city that others are experiencing as part of their normal work life balance. For us, the visitors, this place feels entirely different. The hours are easily scheduled, filled with local attractions, natural wonders, and the joy of discovering a hole-in-the-wall restaurant.

Creativity Born

An endless list of possibilities unfolds before us, many of which might exist in our own cities but are rarely explored with the same enthusiasm and curiosity.

On vacation, we transform into eager explorers, much like a child running with excitement to fulfill an idea. We embrace the freedom to experience new things without the constraints of our daily routines. Many of us do the research and already know how to fill the day, especially for popular destinations with well-known attractions, like Disney, Vegas, Hawaii, etc. Otherwise, the research happens as we venture our, in real time, or the night before we venture out again. On a vacation, ideas are easy. Accommodations or work-arounds are somehow easy too. When we have energy, we use it. When we don’t have energy, we push ourselves to experience one more thing we might not be able to do again.

When We Reutrn

When we return home, we go through another phase of decompression. Our homes become sanctuaries of a comfortable routine, where we can let our guard down and indulge in lazy days without judgment. This transition back to normality is often enhanced by an extra day before returning to work—a vacation from the vacation—that prepares us for the predictable structure of our lives. We almost welcome that normalcy again.

Why We Need to Travel Again

Travel offers us the opportunity to romance the ordinary in our own lives. However, this realization often comes only after experiencing the first-hand novelty of new place. For whatever reason, it’s not enough to see it on a screen, on social media. The movement in ourselves to seek out special experiences – to improve our own work-life balance here at home, comes so much easier when we allow ourselves to be removed and inserted somewhere else.

One team member here at GRV often sets up a movie night outside with a projector and a bed sheet. We all know that idea, we’ve seen that idea. But she didn’t move herself to set it up until her and she and her husband were inspired to replicate the experience after enjoying a movie night in the pool at the Grand America of Salt Lake City.

There is opportunity for joy and beauty at home, and we see it best when our surroundings are changed, and changed regularly, so that we experience the joy and beauty prepared for us as visitors, the explorers of the world.

Commit to a travel mindset!