Why Vacation Is Good for Our Health?

We all live with some stress – our job, our financial situation, family responsibilities, health, can cause the great amount of stress. Even though we claim that do not feel stressed, our everyday routine takes insensibly and gradually our life juices. We need a break from established routine, from the things we do habitually, from uniformity and monotony. Whether we will find the switch that can move us from the monotonous cycle of everyday activities to more exciting and pleasurable events depends on us. People often think that destination is the most important factor that can bring us joy and excitement. According to experts, successful vacation has to fulfill our different needs – better social bonding, better family relationships, more outdoor activities, finding spiritual content, time for relaxation. Therefore, a good planning and awareness of our special needs can help us to organize our vacation as well as possible. Additionally, new research suggests that not every vacation raise our level of happiness and have a positive effect on our health. The excerpt from the article “How Vacations Affect Your Happiness” explores the effect of a vacation on happiness level.

Researchers from the Netherlands set out to measure the effect that vacations have on overall happiness and how long it lasts. They studied happiness levels among 1,530 Dutch adults, 974 of whom took a vacation during the 32-week study period.

The study, published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life, showed that the largest boost in happiness comes from the simple act of planning a vacation. In the study, the effect of vacation anticipation boosted happiness for eight weeks.

After the vacation, happiness quickly dropped back to baseline levels for most people. How much stress or relaxation a traveler experienced on the trip appeared to influence post-vacation happiness. There was no post-trip happiness benefit for travelers who said the vacation was “neutral” or stressful.”

Surprisingly, even those travelers who described the trip as “relaxing” showed no additional jump in happiness after the trip. “They were no happier than people who had not been on holiday,” said the lead author, Jeroen Nawijn, tourism research lecturer at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands.

The only vacationers who experienced an increase in happiness after the trip were those who reported feeling “very relaxed” on their vacation. Among those people, the vacation happiness effect lasted for just two weeks after the trip before returning to baseline levels.

Vacation, also, helps us to review our life from a distance and gain a better perspective on our problems. On vacation, we usually get a wider perspective that enables us to approach various problems objectively. Sometimes, we just need a little break and fresh air in order to refresh ourselves and continue with our everyday life completely renewed. For some people, vacation represents a good time to reflect on our life from a relaxed point of view when our pressure for accomplishments lowered. In that case, we can come back with more appreciation and gratefulness for our life than before. Understanding and observing different cultures from a closer perspective, enrich our lives, pull us out from limited and self-centered point of view and provide our personalities with more flexibility and tolerance for ourselves and others. Not to mention an importance to our health of the hedonistic dimension of vacation, time spent in nature, and experience we share with our relatives, friends, and families. All these aspects are necessary parts of a good and quality lifestyle, and our lifestyle is the strong base of our happiness and good health.