You Know You Need A Vacation When …

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Last week Kim and I took a mini vaca­tion of three days in Las Vegas. I didn’t par­tic­u­larly want to go because we have so much on our plate that I felt the tim­ing was bad. I’m the type of per­son who will just bur­row in and work all the time, putting off that vaca­tion until some myth­i­cal time in the future when, ha ha ha, you get caught up and the decks are clear. I’m not proud of my delu­sional think­ing, and in fact see it as some­thing I have to work on. Vaca­tions are important.

So, I am at the air­port prepar­ing to go through the secu­rity shake­down, when I real­ize that I am wear­ing two dif­fer­ent shoes! This after care­fully select­ing and pack­ing my clothes so that I won’t feel like a hay­seed in the “big city.” This is a direct result of sim­ply hav­ing too much on my mind.

As it turned out, we upgraded to an amaz­ing suite at the MGM Grand, a lovely hotel. I swear, our suite was as big as our house. They had a superb “lazy river” pool which we really enjoyed. By the sec­ond day I was begin­ning to relax and for­get about work. By the third day I was in the vaca­tion groove. Unfor­tu­nately, it was time to go home already!

Clearly, I have to plan longer breaks, and more fre­quent ones. I sus­pect many of my read­ers are in the same “shoes” as me. You are striv­ing so hard to make your busi­ness a suc­cess that you are putting off the very things in life that you imag­ine that suc­cess will provide.

I had another epiphany on that trip. The Las Vegas strip is a parade of expen­sive cars and images of fash­ion and wealth. I was look­ing at a ruby col­ored Mer­cedes con­vert­ible. My first thought was that the per­son who owned it must be really wealthy. Some­thing inside me sud­denly spoke up and said, “Those things are just toys. Noth­ing you can buy has any real value; they are all just things. The real trea­sures in life are the peo­ple you meet, your loved ones, the price­less mem­o­ries you store up.” I don’t know if it was an angel on my shoul­der or my own inner voice, but it seemed like a moment of clarity.

I don’t mean to preach, but I hope you take a moment to think about your own life, and try to carve out some time for the real trea­sures in life. Take a vacation!

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