As glad as you are to see your pets when you return home from a trip, recovering from vacation and readjusting back to real life isn’t always easy!
You’re tired from traveling. Your vacation was either busier than you wanted or so relaxing that real life seems impossible now. Your kids’ sleep schedules might be completely off. Work, bills, dishes, and a million other things to do are still waiting for you when you get back…not to mention the inevitable unpacking and laundry that follow your return. It’s why people often say, “I need a vacation to recover from my vacation!”
We’re here to help with some tips to ease you back into life without the overwhelm and drudgery:
1. Be Kind to Your Body
Eating habits during vacation might not leave you feeling great by the end of the trip if you’ve had a lot of fast food and snacks you don’t normally indulge in during daily life. But don’t beat yourself up about it; you were on vacation! To help your system bounce back, you don’t have to go on a drastic diet. Start out with easy things like drinking some probiotic or lemon ginger tea, making sure you have enough water to stave off bloat and purge out excess salt intake, adding more fiber into your diet, consciously making sure to get enough sleep, and returning to your normal exercise routine in small bursts if needed to avoid quitting altogether.
2. Accentuate the Positive
Place a vacation souvenir or photo on your desk at work or a spot in your home to help remind you to take a moment every day to reflect on a positive feeling you had during that time and call back up the feeling. Rather than concentrating on being sad that you’re not back in that moment, just feel grateful you had the moment, and let it inspire you to inject a bit of that laid-back vacation mindset when you start to get too caught up in the “stuff” of life. Gratitude breeds more gratitude. Maybe you learned something about yourself on vacation or realized you wanted to change something in your life; let the vacation inspire you toward positivity.
3. Get Outside!
Vacations tend to involve nature or at least being outside a lot, which is one reason they’re so good for the soul. Most of us (except for us dog walkers!) spend too much time indoors working, watching TV, and staring at our phone screens. Make sure to work time into your life to get outside with your dogs, visit local parks and hiking spots, even walk around your office building a few times during your lunch break. Simply walking around a bit outside is often enough to help you clear your mind.
4. Prioritize Your To-Dos with Time Blocks
Pick one priority on your to-do list to address for each day of the week you return so you set clear intentions for how you’re going to get things done. This will keep you focused on each task at-hand and reduce the temptation to distract yourself with other things that aren’t urgent (like checking social media). Remember that you don’t HAVE to get to every single thing on your to-do list immediately. Some of the laundry can probably wait; so can some of the emails in your inbox. Schedule time blocks to address tasks in batches, starting with what’s most urgent.
Obviously, our primary focus for this blog is advice about pets, but you – their human counterparts – are just as important to us. You can rest assured that while you’re ON vacation, your pets in our care are getting lots of attention, and when you get home, they get the same from the humans they love the most in the world. Lots of playing and cuddling with your pets is bound to help ease you back into things too!
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