“Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”

~ Dolly Parton

I’m back from holidays! It was a great two weeks in Scotland, and while I’m happy to be back, my return hasn’t been without its hiccups.

Summer holidays and time away from work can be blissful and stressful at the same time, and they’re still important to fit in. In this week’s video I talk about the challenges of time away from work (and what happened to us while we were gone), share 4 reasons why you should embrace your summer holidays, and ask 4 powerful questions to help you appreciate Summer 2018.

Watch the video below, or read the transcript that follows and say #CarpeFreakinDiem to what remains of this summer!

Hey, Michelle Cederberg here, fresh from two weeks of holidays in lovely Scotland visiting my in-laws. We arrived home less than a week ago with a little bit of craziness going on. And I don’t know about you, but holidays for me are a mixture of bliss and stress.

There’s so much to do before you go, there’s often things you have to deal with while you’re away, and then you come home and life just kind of hits you. Well, this holiday was no different for me.

We came back to news that my bike – my beloved mountain bike – had been stolen from our garage (GAH!), and news that our very good friends had to put down their dog Nahanni, who we also love. So, my heart is broken. And, of course you can hear the demolition noises going on in our back alley for promises to be a lengthy construction project of a condo development (UG.), plus there’s a lot of work piling up, plus I’m jet-lagged…

And so, I come home and it seems like the vacation Zen is gone before the vacation laundry is even done.

Can you relate?

Now despite the fight between bliss and stress that we get from vacations I want to give you a little bit of perspective around that. It’s really not about having that delicate work-life balance. There is no such thing as work-life balance. It’s all life!

So no matter how stressful it is before you go – getting someone to water your garden, care for your pet, take in your mail…or letting your clients know you’re gone and who they can talk to in your absence, and no matter how busy it is and how hard it feels to get back to the routine when you get home, take your holiday time and fully embrace it!

It’s important not to skip your vacation (and many, many people do). But, when you go away there are a few worthwhile benefits:

• You get that much needed rest and relaxation. Your body needs that time to restore, your brain needs that time to get off all of that work stuff. It’s how your body works.
• You get to have new experiences, which provides such valuable perspective about what’s important…in work and life.
• You get to connect with family and friends, which I hope is something that’s important.
• And it also gives you the chance to miss work a little bit. Which is not a bad thing, because you come back to work firing on all cylinders.

The time away, for us, definitely helped us cope with the unexpected upon our return. My bike is replaceable – there’s a little perspective. We’ll deal with the construction across our alley as it comes. We were able to connect with our friends this past weekend and share a toast to Nahanni, and we’ll always have the memory of her, plus I’m refreshed and super-stoked about what I’ve got coming up with work, right now and in the months to come.

No matter what comes at us, whether it’s the wonderful vacation time or the crap that meets you when you get home, it’s all life, and it’s worth living big.

So, in the next couple of weeks before ‘back to school’, here are a few questions to ponder so you end this summer on a high note:

What are you celebrating?

What are you grateful for?

What have you enjoyed most about your summer so far?

What can you do to really put an exclamation mark on summer 2018?