Returning from Vacation & New Perspectives

August 19th, 2007 by Silke

We have just returned from several weeks of great holiday and isn’t it amazing how one always feels so disoriented in the first days back. Having lived a completely different routine (if one !) and lived those holiday habits (getting up late some days and hopping out of bed early morning on others).

I could not remember anymore what I used to do in my house, my office. I asked myself “what where my routines my habits ?”…. STOP ! Breathe, think. Don’t remember the old routines, old habits, old ways of living, thinking… This is plain delicious opportunity to establish new habits, new routines that suit me better, fit better with my values, my priorities and life purpose. I got all excited and started journaling how I would like my new life to be. And so before I could even remember the old ones, I got clear about how I wanted it to be from now on. Isn’t that a great opportunity ?

I have to say that the traditional recreational benefits of vacation are well known (and felt) and need no further exploration here but I discovered another benefit of vacation this summer: the power of discovering new perspectives through new location. During my 5 week absence in Europe, I changed location about 7 times: a team coaching training in London, stays with the family on 2 different occasions , 2 different stays with friends, family holiday on a pony farm and a city break to Munich (yes, you are right, this is a bit mad but hold your judgement !).

During the whole time I carried a few big life questions with me (metaphorically speaking :-), one of which I had already been pondering on for quite a while back in Dubai. Everytime I changed location (and that included changing weather !, landscape, people around me, sleeping arrangements etc etc) I came up with new thoughts on the old topic. You need to know that I journal every day, so I consciously spend time on the big questions in my life. It was really astonishing how different I felt about the same question depending on where I was. I started tracking my thought process and at the end of the vacation I realized, that - without planning it - I had done what we coaches call perspective work: finding new possibilities by trying out several new perspectives on one and the same topic.

Instead of doing this just as an intellectual exercise, I had done it physically moving my whole self around from location to location. At the end of the process you get to choose which perspective feels most resourceful and resonant and from that one you work out possibilities for your big question. I must say, I am overwhelmed as I have found my answer to MY big question and it is a big scary and risky decision I took, and I am proud of it. On hindsight, I realize how much the location changes and the different perspectives have helped me (and of course the daily time I spent thinking) to not just THINK about different ways of looking at my issue but to really feel into each new perspective and “really TRYING IT ON to see whether it fits”.

Posted on Sunday, August 19th, 2007 at 8:57 am and is filed under Choice, Perspectives & Reframes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.