30 Days Change Your Habits, Change Your Life A Couple of Simple Steps Every Day to Create the Life You Want
Chapter 88: Take Time off “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” Mahatma Gandhi
With the stressful, fast paced life that we are living it becomes even more
important to slow down your pace of life and take a break! Take some time off.
Recharge your batteries by being around nature. You can start by scheduling
some relaxation time into your weekly schedule which by now you are hopefully
making time for (
see Chapter “Manage your time”
). If you dare - start with
weekends in which you are completely disconnected from the Internet, TV, and
your electronic games. One of my best vacations ever - if not the best - was
being on a houseboat in the Midi Channel in the south of France. No mobile
phone, no Internet, no TV. Only ducks. The boat’s top speed was 8 km/hr (= 5
miles/hr) so we were literally “forced” to slow down. It is also due to the fact
that when you are floating on the channel, children on their bikes overtake you
on one side of the channel. The villages you pass through are sometimes so
small, that they don’t even have a supermarket. So the whole trip comes down to
the question, “Where will we get food?” No worries! There is always a
restaurant close by, but the charming thing is to cook your own meals on the boat
and have dinner at the harbor watching the sunset or just being around nature.
Once time, we had dinner in the middle of a vineyard! Priceless! So is to walk
into a tiny French village in the morning and get your baguette for breakfast
from the only bakery in town. We got up at sunrise and went to bed two chess
matches after sunset. Or as my wife described it afterwards “We got up with the
ducks and went to sleep with the ducks.” Take time off and connect with nature!
It doesn’t have to be a long trip. Walk in the woods, on the beach, or in a park
whenever you get the chance and observe how you feel afterwards. Or just lie
down on a bench or in the grass and contemplate the blue sky. When was the last
time you walked barefoot on grass or on a beach? Did you get the idea of how
important, relaxing, and reenergizing taking some time off is for you? I hope so!
