Taking A Vacation From Work May Save Your Life
Andrea Goeglein, PhD
Success Catalyst | Knowledge Champion | Your Success is My Business
I was on a Zoom call yesterday with eight others. All of us commented on our upcoming vacation plans. I will be working and enjoying life remotely from the Napa Valley for the next month with my family. We had lived there from 1985-1998, and it is where our daughter calls "home". Now we get to return with her young family for a trip that was planned back in 2019 for the summer of 2020 so that my Mom could enjoy with us. Much changed in 2020. My Mom is no longer alive, we lost a son unexpectedly, and we have our newest grandson bringing us joy on a moment-by-moment basis.
All of the above and more, made me reflect on the science of why vacations are so important. If you want a free, downloadable copy of my first Don't Die book, Don't Die with Vacation Time on the Books, go to www.ServingSuccess.com For now, give some thought about how you feel about vacations.
In our modern world of constant connection and nonstop work, taking a vacation from work may save your life in the long run. An abrupt realization in adulthood is the shocking discovery that we turned out to be just like our mother’s, after all. This article may encourage you to reexamine your upbringing, the professional work habits you practice today and the negative impact of not taking vacations in your future. It turns out that perhaps, mother doesn’t always know best (but don’t tell her that.)
Take a moment and consider how you would respond to these questions and how they relate to your life choices.
● Did your mother hold a job outside of the home?
● Did your mother start a business from home?
● Do you remember your mother ever taking a vacation?
● How much does it cost to take a two-week vacation?
● Do you know how much it costs to spend two weeks in a hospital?
● Do you know how much it costs to see a licensed therapist regularly because it is the only way you allow yourself a break from your stress-induced daily schedule?
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Vacations, Health And Men. What’s Missing?
Those questions may seem completely unrelated but a forty-year Finnish study has proved otherwise with its findings on our work and the long-term benefits of a vacation and the negative impact of not taking vacations. The study, published in the Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging, discovered the startling results that individuals who took less than three weeks of annual vacation off work had a 37% higher death rate than those who took more than three weeks of leave. Yes, a vacation from work may save your life. Now before you call your boss to ask for time off and spout out the negative impact of not taking vacations, there’s more you should know. This study, initiated in 1964, was named the Helsinki Businessmen Study Intervention trial. Did you notice the gaping contextual shortcoming yet? This study was only conducted with men as the participants. The sixties are a far cry from our current evolution of women working in and dominating the corporate world. This era was a time significantly before the term “businesswoman” or the more modern gender-neutral term, “businessperson,” was ever uttered into our lexicon, let alone normalized.
Who’s The Role Model?
Connecting your mother’s work and vacation habits with that of your own is important because they reveal what you experienced and learned subconsciously from a young age. Whether you like it or not, the first generation of achievement-oriented women that worked outside of the home did not have the abundance of strong women role models that we have today. These women only had their male counterparts to emulate economic success when exiting their roles as dutiful homemakers and entering into their newfound career paths alongside the opposite sex. Only further proving that the Helsinki Businessmen Study was not the most inclusive model to follow since it only showed males’ health and professional trajectory connections.
Prolonged and Chronic Stress at Work
Whether your work is your passion or you hate it with a passion, it can take its toll. Driving a grueling commute to a high-pressure environment where you work excessively long hours and have a jam-packed schedule can quickly materialize into the perfect storm of prolonged and chronic stress. Prolonged stress is an insidiously silent but deadly enemy that creeps into every aspect of your daily waking and working life. It is that type of debilitating pressure that weighs you down the second your alarm goes off, as your mind rapidly begins running through your neverending “too much to-do list.” This cyclical pressure brings you to exhaustion and keeps you from the proper rest and rejuvenation that your body desperately needs (such as the benefits of a vacation). If you begin and end every day with this skyrocketing level of stress, it compounds, builds, and significantly weakens your resilience. This can result in sleepless nights, anxiety about the future, and the inability to ever completely relax. Additionally, the negative impact of not taking vacations or much-needed regular breaks can lead to even more serious long-term health problems.
It is possible to be wildly successful and accomplish your dreams while also preserving your health, mental wellbeing, and the longevity of your life. The Helsinki Businessmen Study highlights that without the regular benefits of a vacation (of a minimum of three weeks annually), you certainly have the potential to achieve your goals but may die before you get to reap the benefits of your hard work.
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