Post-holiday blues?
By Yvonne McLean

On a scale of one to 10, how pleased are you to be back at work after the summer break?

If the answer is any lower than eight out of 10, take comfort in the knowledge that you’re not alone, and read on for ways to increase your happiness quotient quickly and easily.

So many people seem to feel depressed at the thought of getting back to work and their daily routines. It’s hardly surprising – UK research has shown that 75 per cent of people returning to work from holidays estimate that their stress levels are back at their pre-holiday highs within a week of returning to work.
So how can you extend those feel-good feelings that the holidays brought for you? Try these simple strategies:

Continue to enjoy life
Don’t let work swallow you up, even though the temptation is to step up the gears and get back to the path that is probably all too familiar. Believe it or not, taking breaks during the day, working on average an eight-hour day, relaxing and spending time with your friends and loved ones, eating well and healthily, getting a good night’s sleep, and taking the time to exercise and do something other than work, will make you far more productive than burning the candle at both ends with no time out in between.

Plan your year
If you’ve not already done so, work out what you want for yourself during 2010. Take the time to figure out what’s really important to you and who you want to spend your time with, and plan to ensure that everything you do takes you closer to achieving what you’ve said that you want. Who or what do you want to be cuddling up to in your dotage – the mansion in some fashionable part of town, that luxury sports car you’ve longed for, the bach (or palace by the sea), and the boat? Or is it family or one special person who means more to you? What do you need to do to enrich those relationships? What might you have to do less of in order to achieve that?

Plan your next holiday
It shocked me when I first came to live in New Zealand that the prevailing expectation was that people would take just one holiday a year – and only between 24 December and mid-January. I had come from the UK, where people had already adopted the European concept of at least a couple of holidays a year and a few short breaks, thrown in for good measure. Thankfully, over the past 20 years, things have changed. But it’s troubling to see that the Government is planning to change the law to allow employees to take cash instead of holidays. We need frequent breaks to recharge our batteries, not money. None of us would dream of driving our cars non-stop 24/7, and yet many of us don’t think twice about working almost 24/7 for most of the year. Surely our bodies and minds are more precious than our cars?

Break the monotony of routine
Try something new. What have you longed to do but always put off? One person I know learns something new every year. He’s involved in the world of finance – so he seeks out courses that use his practical skills such as upholstery and carpentry. Learning languages is one of my passions, and as a young teenager, I decided I wanted to speak seven languages, like an archaeologist I happened to be reading about. I already have four languages, other than English, under my belt. I decided to learn Spanish through Continuing Education at Auckland University. It was such fun to do something that I hadn’t done in years. And just one more language to go! My husband started learning the guitar as a complete novice a couple of years ago. He’s now quite the musician, and the guitar has become almost as important a stress buster for him as exercise. So what would you secretly love to do? Find out how to, and get out there and make this year the year you do it! You’ll be amazed at how energizing that can be.

Clear out the clutter
We’re all energetic beings. Think about a time when you’ve had a good old clear out, and how wonderful it feels to have thrown away unwanted clutter. Surrounding ourselves with lots of clutter just slows us down and exacerbates a feeling of heaviness. So, take the time now, before the work year gets into full swing, to clear out and throw away all those articles you clipped to read but didn’t get round to, and all those journals and magazines and other pieces of paper that are littering your desk, office floor, and cupboards. On your computer, consider clearing out your inbox of anything that predates 1 January 2010 – and watch how your computer flies. (You can save the important old emails in your archive folders, in case you need to refer back to them.)

Remember to give thanks generously
It’s so easy to forget this step. And yet gratitude is the cornerstone of our happiness. Many religions and philosophies have long embraced the concept of gratitude as an essential component of health and well-being. And now, scientific research is showing that people who keep gratitude journals on a weekly basis also exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical ailments, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events.

Focus on the positive
Again, this is something that many religions and philosophies have told us for centuries, and many of us, in our scientific, evidence-based, technological world have dismissed as ‘happy clappy’ nonsense for hippies and other simple-minded folk. Well, the scientific research (especially neuro-scientific research) in recent years has shown that our thought patterns do indeed shape our lives, because our thought patterns alter our brain’s biochemistry and wiring. Depending on what we focus on, we can develop new circuits in our brain that will alter our performance. So focusing on positive outcomes, rather than fearing the negative, regularly through the practice of visualization and affirmations has now been proven to actually change what we do to make things happen in our lives.

Learn to let go
One final step… Why not take a regular short ‘holiday’ every day? Fourteen years ago, shortly after joining Microsoft, I was in an acute state of being overwhelmed – I had so much to do and insufficient hours in the day to do it all. I was introduced to the idea of meditation by a consultant. He suggested that as a stress-relieving technique I might want to consider learning to meditate. Fourteen years on, after meditating regularly over the years, I can truly say that was the best piece of well-being advice anyone has ever given me. I have coped on tiny amounts of sleep and still gone to work and functioned well, when my children were babies. I gained a reputation, in a high-stress work environment, as being ‘an oasis of calm’. Last year, after suffering a minor head injury, the neurologist recommended meditation as a means of helping the brain repair itself. And, surprise, surprise, I found that my daily practice, that I upped to twice a day, had a significant positive impact on the speed of my recovery. These days, the practice of mindfulness is far more mainstream and widely accepted, and there are many options for learning meditation and the practice of mindfulness. So, what’s stopping you?

Remember your perception is your reality. You can choose to stay in holiday mode and enjoy your return to work. It’s all down to you.

© 2009 and 2010 Yvonne McLean, Strategic Direction Consulting Limited.