REST AND RELAXATION IN CANCUN

“She needs a vacation…” I must say, traveling for me has typically been about seeing, doing and creating… blog content of course. I rarely consider the rest and rejuvenation aspect of vacation, despite that being one of main reasons people take them. I constantly feel pressure to keep moving and doing, so this is something I really want to work on and be more mindful of. So when I found myself worrying about captions and emails and my google calendar invites while laying on the most beautiful beach in Cancun, I realized this was an area worth looking at. Some more thoughts below, enjoy.

Make a plan to not make plans… one thing that gives me anxiety around “rest” is the thought that I may misuse valuable time. To me, that is the hardest cross to bear, the possibility that I wasted time, especially the free kind. Taking time off work, school, family, life is not easy for most people, and it can be expensive and take you away from other important tasks. I think this is why I put so much pressure on myself to spend my free time wisely, hence anxiety about it not being as productive as possible. So making a plan to not do anything for an entire week can be daunting, so I split it up into mini relax sessions. For example setting some parameters around how long I stayed away from my phone or take a nap in the sun, which I did but also got sunburnt from so be careful haha. Letting myself plan ahead lounge time versus getting ready time versus dinner time and letting mishaps or being late just happen, were very helpful ways to manage my need for consistent structure and productivity.

Remember why we rest… it’s helpful to remind myself that relaxation has a purpose, that it in fact is productive and necessary in order for us to continue doing the things we want and key to a well lived life. For me this is something I constantly have to remind myself, it doesn’t come naturally, it’s a practice. I had to treat it like that, it was a conscious act for me, I wonder if its like that for a lot of other people too. The impact of not having rest on the body is visible, negative and real. Burnout is a real thing, and often times the things we do to take care of ourselves, aka going to parties, dinner, events with other people, are fun and good for us, but not really restful.

Set aside time to do whatever you need to do… for some of us, especially bloggers, entrepreneurs, parents, etc. it’s not 100% feasible to take a every second off, we have things we might need or really want to do, for example calling our kids, checking up on some emails, taking a call here and there, waking up at sunrise for some amazing Instagram pictures heyyy. We also might have sites we want to see or a certain picture we want to take. These are all okay things, but the idea is to maybe plan ahead for them and set time aside from lounging so that you don’t have to have to worry about when you will get things done or sacrifice your own quality time or your travel partners time relaxing.

Watch the booze and food… This might sound contradictory, especially if you were following any of my Instagram stories, but I think it’s relevant at least for me. Sometimes we tend to think vacation means go all out in terms of our eating, drinking and exercise habits. I think that being on a diet while on vacation is a bad idea, but I also think going way outta bounds from your normal routine is an easy way to ruin something good. We stayed at an all inclusive resort, where all the food was delicious and obviously free. And even though I let myself eat without worrying about calories and carbs, I still tried my very best to keep a pace I could keep up with. The first night we overdid it for sure, and paid the price of feeling terrible that night and some of the next day, so I made sure to be cautious of that for the rest of the trip. But like everything, too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing. And who wants to spend a entire vacation day hungover or bloated? Now I didn’t exercise on this trip, but it’s probably my only regret, because it just feels so good to relax after a good work out session. But the key here I think is to maximize how good you feel in your body, while also enjoying yourself.