​When we give ourselves a vacation, we have the opportunity to cleanse our body and reset it to see beauty and embrace the joy of living.  Our daily living in the “same-old, same-old” has a way of cluttering up our senses that steals our joy and obscures the beauty of life.  We become trapped into believing that the world is as we experience it every day.  We begin to lose sight of the breadth and vast depth of life beyond our daily paths. 
 
Our senses become dulled to anything beyond what we experience each day.  We come to believe that anything we have not tasted, seen, heard, smelled, or touched is worth experiencing.  Our physical world becomes very small.  This smallness invades our mind and soul as our lives shrink to fill the space we have allotted to it.  Our perceptions of time, color, flavor, aroma, sound, and touch become stunted as we whither away from the joy of life.  The “same-old, same-old” becomes all there is for our lives.  Nothing else exists beyond the narrow trails we have carved through our own little space.
 
We need to escape to places and among people where the beauty is inescapable, and the joy surrounds us.  We need to fling open the windows in our little world and crawl out among the wonders and joys of the rest of the world.  This does not mean we have to fly around the world or spend a year’s income.  It means that we need to break out of the rut and encounter people and places that are new to us in places we have never been.  We can do this with a trip across the city or across the state.  We can do this by trying food we have never eaten.  We can do this by opening a book and reading about a people we have never met and learning something about them and their culture.
 
Human beings have evolved as travelers.  Our need to journey has led us into every continent and is taking us beyond the Earth itself.  We are “sensation junkies” who crave the sights, sounds, aromas, tastes and touch of the world around and beyond us.  Vacations allow our body to become reawakened to this deep need to wander, or rather “saunter” beyond the realm of the known.  John Muir believed that the word “saunter” came from the Latin for sacred-land.  By sauntering into the unknown we will find ourselves on holy ground where we are reborn to the gift of life.
 
Take a vacation and allow your body to reset itself for the joyous life that awaits you.

• Bathe in the visual, aromatic, and aural beauty of the natural world.

 

• Be soothed by the touch of and being touched by the world around you.

 

• Taste a full range of flavors both familiar and exotic.

 

• Allow your sense of time to be challenged by traveling far enough North and South to feel the differences in the length of the day as well as East and West to experience the shift in time that new Time Zones offer.

 

• Celebrate the varying hues and colors of light as you bask in sunsets and sunrises (and everything in between) of mountains, shores, prairies, deserts, and open water.

 

• Listen to the music of new places and voices speaking languages beyond your understanding.  Enjoy the cadence of the conversations and the timbre of the lives being lived around you.

 
Allow joy to rise within you as you are embraced by a world not of your making or design.  Be refreshed by the sensations that will rekindle your thirst for life and hunger for the new day that dawns each morning.
 
Blessings,
Bob
 

Why Travel?
 
Travel Benefits
 
The Staycation

​Vacation: “an extended period of leisure and recreation, especially one spent away from home or in traveling” or “a respite or a time of respite from something” or “the action of leaving something one previously occupied.”
 
Over the next few weeks I will be thinking about vacationing, especially how we take care of ourselves while on vacation.  But I must first decide exactly what I am talking about when I use the term “vacation.”
 
The most common usage, the extended time of leisure…, has several shortcomings.  First, vacations may not be all that extended.  For many they are brief breaks from work that may be 3-4 days.  Second, I have had a number of “vacations” that were anything but leisurely and recreating.  Third, the cost of travel has made “staycations” much more common.  So, I will be talking about the common idea of vacations, but not exclusively.  I will also be talking about the other two ways of defining a vacation.
 
A vacation should be a respite, a healthy break, especially from your daily routine.  Respite is a fancy word for “breathing space.”  In hospice, we would offer families a time of respite where others would care for their family member for a few days or so.  This gave the families breathing space to recoup and prepare to begin caring for their family member once again.  A vacation should offer us the same room to breathe before we pick the tasks of our daily living.
 
But, in order for the breathing space to happen, we need to vacate something we previously occupied.  This may mean a house or office, but it could also mean the walls of responsibilities and tasks that frame our daily life.  If we take our work with us can we really say we are vacationing?  The “leaving behind” is just as important as the time we have set aside for our vacation. 
 
So, with these thoughts in mind, over the next few weeks I will be pondering the ways that we can take care of ourselves when we choose to make some breathing space in our lives by leaving behind some of the things that define our daily life.  Whether we choose to travel or stay at home, hit the tourist trails or visit family and friends there are things that we can do to take care of ourselves along the way.

​Here are a few indicators that you need a vacation.

1. Your internal conversation is growing increasingly angry or bitter.
2. The joy in your day-to-day routine is nearly non-existent or absent.
3. Your hope has taken a beating as despair becomes more evident.
4. Trusting your friends and family to “be there” is feeling challenged.  You find yourself less and less trusting of you co-workers and your managers.
5. Your day-to-day relationships are feeling more and more difficult to carry and intrusive.
6. You find that you have fewer and few small problems and more and more big ones.
7. You have lost any sense of balance between your work life and your private life.
8. You find yourself staying awake at night thinking about your problems and losing needed sleep.
9. Finally, you have read all of these indicators and nodded your head at a good number of them.

 
We all need a healthy respite from our daily lives from time to time.  Start planning to make some breathing space in your life today.
 
Blessings,
Bob

The Importance of Taking a Vacation
 
Too Busy to Take Vacation?  Think again!
 
Healthy Vacationing
​

​Taking care of ourselves when we are out and about among our friends and enemies can be quite difficult.  We all have buttons that can be pushed and people who know where they are.  We all carry around painful memories that can bubble up with explosive force on those around us.  We have all found ourselves being manipulated into making a bad decision by people who may not have our best interest at heart.  Protecting ourselves and developing healthy and meaningful relationships is the goal for Self-Care among our friends and enemies.
 
In the last few weeks I have discussed ways to accomplish this with the face-to-face relationships as well as the relationships that we carry around in our heart and soul.  As I close this series, I want to consider the importance of taking care of ourselves in our online relationships.
 
I do not have space or the expertise to say all we need to know about online safety.  But I do want to share some thoughts for you to consider that can help you take care of yourself online.
 
It is difficult to discern who our friends and enemies might be.  It is incredibly easy to deceive someone online.  We have a very limited view of the other person and much of that view is under their control.  It is important that we are comfortable knowing who we are dealing with and avoid sharing personal information with people we do not know or cannot trust.
 
We may have a much broader range of contact via friends and friends of friends as well as strangers who prowl the net.  Once we put something on the social media, we have essentially lost control of it.  Even privacy policies cannot protect you from someone copying and posting your words.  If we find it difficult to know our online friends and enemies, imagine the vast number of strangers out there who could gain access to your online presence.  In short, avoid posting anything that could place you or your family and friends in danger.
 
We may suffer from the Illusion of safety of physical distance.  Online presence offers the illusion of anonymity and distance.  We may say and do things online that we would never do to a person’s face.  We can hurt other people by what we say from our “online” distance.  Carefully process your posts before you hit the “send” button to ensure that you are not pretending to hide behind a non-existent wall.
 
Unfortunately, many people are tempted to abandon net relationships all together and believe that they are safe.  First of all, once it is posted, it may never die.  Shutting down your accounts will not erase any information you have already shared.  Further, if you enjoy the relationships you have with the people in your online network, you will likely lose that support when you go offline.  Self-care is not as easy as signing off everything.
 
For these and many, many other reasons, we need to accept that we are responsible for managing our relationships with friends and enemies (and strangers) online.  We can use many of the ideas I have shared in previous posts.  There are other resources available to help you take care of yourself online.  I have posted a few in the FYI section.  But none of these will help if we do not accept responsibility for our relationships, online and otherwise.  Do they enhance your well-being?  Do they add unnecessary stress or worry to your life?  Do they help you grow or prevent you from reaching beyond the moment?  These are personal decisions that each of us will have to make.  There are no “one size, fits all” solutions or easy “cliched” short-cuts.
 
Take good care of yourself in all of your relationships.  Each relationship can enrich your life in unimaginable ways.
 
Blessings,
 
Bob

Online Safety for Kids
 
Online Safety for Teens
 
Staying Safe online
​

​A big part of our day-to-day living is sharing “inner space” with our friends and enemies.  We make room in our thoughts and feelings for them.  We think about them.  We worry about them.  We respond to them whether they are present or absent from our immediate presence.  We carry feelings about them.  We react to those feelings.  All of this adds up to what some have called an “emotional investment” in them.
 
What is emotional investment?  It reflects the extent of our soul’s involvement with them.  We do not have an unlimited supply of emotional energy but being in relationships involves some level of emotional investment of the energy.  Soul weariness occurs when the energy we invest has outweighed the energy we have gained from the relationship.   When this energy gets used up, we wilt inside.  Feelings become more difficult to manage.  We lose our resilience.  We may feel empty as despair overwhelms our joy and hope.  Love and trust may fall victim to apathy as we let go of our healthy disciplines and relationships.  Self-care of the soul among our friends and enemies is all about taking responsibility for our emotional investment in others and thereby managing the emotional energy we have to deal with the roller coaster of living in the here and now. 
 
It is important to note that both enemies and friends come with an emotional investment.  To the extent that we are vulnerable to our enemies’ attacks will determine how much investment we have in them.  If we harbor a guilty conscience over an encounter with the enemy, we are more heavily invested in a relationship with them and any encounter with them will cost us more energy.  If we reconcile with an enemy or learn to cope during our encounters with them, we may actually gain energy from the relationship.  On the other hand, if we are crazy in love with someone, we will also have a deep emotional investment in them.  If they hurt, we hurt.  If they rejoice, we rejoice.  In hurting we use energy.  In rejoicing we gain energy.  Good self-care is learning to deal with these relationships in such a way that we keep our energy high enough to maintain our soul health.
 
This is not easy.  In fact, it is very difficult and even managing these relationships can cost us a great deal of emotional energy.  This is why we all need to just take a break and enjoy some solitude.  We need some time to break our dependence on and engagement with others.  We need time to recoup and build a healthy relationship with ourselves.  We can do this while alone or in a crowd, but there comes a time when we all need to step back and lean on our inner lives.

​What can I do to create some solitude in my life?  (Be aware that being alone is not the same as solitude.)
 

• Find something else to redirect your attention away from other people.  (Take a nature walk.  Sit quietly and stare into a candle.  Listen to music.  Meditation, etc.)
• Redirect your inner conversation away from the world and focus on your personal needs, hopes, and dreams.
• Allow silence to overwhelm that inner voice and release any need to respond to thoughts or sensations by naming them and letting them go.
• Foster a stillness of body-mind-soul by listening to the sounds of the breath moving in and out of your life.
• Enjoy yourself!

 
Blessings,
Bob
 

Emotional Overinvestment
 
Maintaining Emotional Balance
 
Date Night with Self
​

​There are those special moments when I am facing a difficult question or situation when a familiar voice rises within and offers some bit of forgotten wisdom.  Sometimes I can recognize the voice and tone.  Sometimes there is simply a familiarity about it, but I cannot identify the one speaking.  Sometimes they are voices of family and friends who have died while other times they are from authors/scholars who I have studied.  Sometimes they are the words of friends who passed through my life and moved on.  At times they are friends and family who do not happen to be present at the time.  There have been times when I have engaged these voices in conversation, struggling to understand what they are saying.  At other times I hear them and add them to the jumble of thoughts.  These conversations are not only ok, they are normal and helpful (usually).
 
Our mind is a deep reservoir of memories that help us understand and reflect on our lives. It includes things we have learned, experiences we have shared, and insights that have accumulated over the years.  Much of this information is held in narratives around people we have studied, encountered, or known personally.  As these people passed through our lives, they have left us with ideas, experiences, and insights that have become part of the way that we see and understand the world within and beyond our selves.
 
Unfortunately, some of these memories have been lost and forgotten.   Some can be recovered by recalling the person who was involved in creating the memory.  In fact, I believe, we keep some people in our minds to hold on to the things they taught us.  We hold on to them to keep them alive.  We want to hold on to them as conversation partners.  We want to keep them as companions to remind us of insights and ideas.  Sometimes, the things we have learned from them are “too important” to be forgotten and by creating space in our memories for them, we increase the odds of remembering what they taught us. 
 
Self-care of the mind among friends and enemies involves being aware of and responding appropriately to these people in our “heads.”  They include many who may no longer be physically part of our lives, but they can also include the people around us who influence the way we see and think about ourselves and the world around us. 
 
Are these voices truly helpful or do they seem to interfere and tear down healthy ways of dealing with our lives? 
 
These voices can rip apart our self-esteem.  They can lead us to doubt ourselves and the people around us.  They can form the framework for long-held prejudices.  On the other hand, they can help us see through the fog of the present by offering a broader perspective on our lives.  They can help us deal with the real world by challenging any ideas that merely serve the moment.  These voices can remind us that we are far more than who we believe we are in this moment of despair, failure, or disappointment.
 
By listening to and identifying these many voices, we can decide how much time and influence will we allow them over our memory and reasoning.  Ultimately, we can decide how much space do you give your friends and enemies in your mind – reasoning and memory.  There are some voices that can be released.  This may include forgetting, forgiving, or simply ignoring.  Others may need to be recovered so that we can explore the gifts they offer.  Regardless, by carefully attending to the voices and people that “live in our heads” we can offer self-care to our minds when we are among our friends and enemies.

​Listen for those lingering relationships in your internal conversations.  Identify, as best you can who they are and where you encountered them.  Make a list and then ask yourself the following questions about each one.
 
How do they help you through your daily living?  Enhance your inner conversation?  Do they increase your capacity for love and trust, joy and hope?  Do they bring you an uncomfortable growth of insight?
 
How do they interfere with your daily living?  Do they tear down your self-image?  Do they steal your trust and joy?  Do they challenge you hope and love?  Do they encourage your negative feelings about yourself and the world around you?
 
Identify those voices that need to be retained in your memory and Learning to let go of the rest.  Remember, we need both friendly choices that affirm and challenging voices (whether they be friend of foe) to help us grow.  Keep those that are helpful and disregard those that are not. If a destructive voice persists you may want to see the help of a trusted friend or therapist.  But you do not need to yield space in your mind to those voices that do not serve your health and happiness.  Discerning the voices and taking steps to use them to promote your love and trust, joy and hope is good self-care.
 
Bob

A Positive Inner Voices
 
The Critical Inner Voice
 
Dealing Your Parent’s Voices
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