Vacations are no longer “getting away from it all”. “I’m away but I’ll be checking email.” Is this you?
I’d love to offer you the opportunity to do some research.
- Try a vacation where you check your email. You can even respond to it. How does this feel at the end of your vacation time?
- Try a vacation where you don’t. That means you will actually have to disable your work email app from your phone. How does this feel at the end of your vacation time?
Our bodies, in the environment that most of us live in, are never really at rest. What does this do to us? Over the short term, not much. Over the long term, much wear and tear happens. We are almost never able to return to a true state of relaxation. Our rest is perennially incomplete. When we couple this practice with constant multitasking, our brains become fragmented.
We need to de-frag (yes, this is a computer analogy).
Have you ever had a wilderness experience, with no cell service for days? Maybe you did not see other humans for days. While this is rare for most people, the true relaxation and state of grace that can be achieved is indescribable. Think back through time; Jesus in the desert for 40 days, Thoreau, etc., they all went away to do their deep work.
While a full wilderness experience may be impractical for most of us, we can learn from history. There are reasons we go on retreat. We need to weed out the noise to discern what is important. Email, while meant to be an easy communication tool, mostly serves as a fragmenting distraction.
What step feels right for you to de-frag? What do you “just wish” you could do to that end, no matter how silly it might feel? What is getting in your way from stepping toward that ideal? Take this to our call on July 10th- I’d love to put you back into control and have you “re-frag.”
