The Power of Time Out This Holiday Season - Reconnect With The Real You

Photo by Andrey Larin

In another month, people world over will take time out from their hectic routines, relax, and inevitably start to contemplate where their life is going.

Right now though, many of us are starting to feel frazzled even when we don’t recognize it. Often there’s a feeling of invincibility that comes first, “Check me out, look at all these balls I’m juggling”; that’s just the adrenaline rush from the sheer amount of activity going on. When you look deeper, fog brain is the norm and you are really just trying to ‘get through’ to the holidays.

The power of time out shouldn’t be underestimated, the constant chatter that goes on in your mind, relating to your everyday routine, will calm for only a brief period. It’s time to pay attention, listen.

Right now your vantage point is too obscured by the day to day stresses and tensions that will soon get blown off over the holiday season if you make room to relax, unwind, and enjoy. You will start to feel like yourself again, things that are truly important to you start to surface from your subconscious with great clarity. When they do, take notice. That is why so many people make new year’s resolutions.

Very quickly your life can ramp right back up again and your innermost desires will appear less urgent. Those resolutions get pushed to the bottom of the list, instead, the day to day spot fires take precedence. However, what you truly want won’t be so easily pushed aside. It will keep showing up in many different ways, in every level of your wellbeing, bugging you, thwarting you, making your life more difficult, until you pay heed.

Life is quite simple, what is good for you (the real you, the one you get to meet when you’re less wound up) feels right. If it doesn’t feel right, it’s not. When we are distracted by the day to day, our mind tends to play a much greater part in our decision making than is healthy for us. You start to think about all the common things you heard growing up –“no one in this family ever…”, “men only want one thing”, “money doesn’t grow on trees” and “money corrupts“ and all the things in between that affect the way you see yourself, your relationships, your health, your success, your finances, everything.

Over time you will have attracted many circumstances into your life that reaffirm all these things, because thoughts affect the way we feel and the way we act, so we inevitably – albeit not intentionally – you attract many of things you don’t want. It’s a vicious cycle until you become conscious of it. Knowing who you are underneath the layers of defense and perception that have accumulated from the moment you were born is an unfolding process.

However, there is no better time for most of us to get in behind those than when we take a break.

Last year I had finally paid attention to the voice telling me to leave the corporate roles I’d had. When redundancy was offered I took it, with no real clue as to what I was going to do instead. A year on, I’m happily learning, growing and sharing through these articles, it’s a great outlet. One day that may lead to something more, but for now I’m just enjoying the process.

In the meantime, to earn, I’m helping a worthy organisation with a cultural transformation. The dynamic is completely different from anything I’ve done before. The main difference, aside of being a consultant rather than employee, is in who I am. The inner sense of self is restored, no more feeling like a square peg in a round hole, compromising. I operate with a sense of ease and authenticity and, well, I am happy.

Our family has relocated, with lifestyle in mind, the kids are in kindergarten attached to a school that values natural development and creativity, allowing the children more freedom in the way they learn, allowing them to retain more of a sense of who they really are rather than having to remold themselves to fit into a traditional system.

Whether it’s a change in career, a more healthy lifestyle or a promise to yourself to take that long anticipated trip, life will have a way of nudging you along until you take notice. So why not take the lead from whatever arises for you this season and commit to it?

That doesn’t mean you have to force something, in fact, if you are having to force a change, you are simply creating barriers to what is coming your way naturally. Your job isn’t to figure out the details of how to make the changes in your life occur, it’s simply to pay attention.

If you are able to, and wondering whether to take a break right now, do. For those who have to work through, plan your next break, look forward to it with relish. There’s nothing that feels as good as the moments you are completely in tune with yourself and that is within reach. Think about the things you feel really proud of in your life, you’ll see there’s pattern of having achieved them from a place where things just seemed to flow.

Great things happen with people tune in and turn on, 2016 promises to be an amazing year for you if you’ll let it.

First published on LinkedIn.