Post Holiday Blues

This is the time of year when you are likely to have recently come back from a holiday or will be returning home after one over the next few weeks.

I’m sure I’m not alone from returning from a holiday feeling all fresh and relaxed and brimming with good intentions.  Eating fresh food, rising early, being active, taking time out, spending time with loved ones all seem so easy on holiday and you come back determined to keep up this way of life.

Within a couple of weeks you can find yourself back to normal feeling like all those good habits you wanted to stick to have fallen by the wayside.  In a way it’s a bit like New Year Resolutions.  Post holiday is one of those times where you feel like it’s an opportunity for a fresh start so you create all these good intentions.

But actually, just like the first week of January (when you’ve still got left over Christmas chocolates, are skint and it’s cold and dark) post holiday is a really tough time to put new habits into place.

You come back and will have lots of washing to do, no food in and probably have to go back to work within a day or two.  You’ve just had a long journey and are a little bit knackered.  You go back into work to 5 million emails and a weeks worth of work to catch up on.  You probably caught a cold on the plane.

I, no word of a lie, came back and within a week had around 25 infected gnat bites and was on antibiotics and steroid cream!

The result is the first week back ends up being a bit of blur and keeping up those lovely habits seems like a second thought.  Days turn into weeks an before long you’ve forgotten about all those positive habits and feel a bit like you’ve failed in keeping up those holiday feelings.

How do we get around this?

I said the same in January and will say the same frequently throughout the year.  It’s about changing your attitude to change from ‘I must transform myself’ to ‘I can develop and nurture some good habits’.  Several small habits formed over time can add up to positive changes in how you feel in yourself and, more importantly, last, even being maintained during times of stress.

You could take the things you enjoyed from your holiday and make them the small habits you develop, in fact I did just that when I got back from holiday recently.

So if you vowed to keep up several things after your holiday and are annoyed with yourself, let that go and think about one small thing you could change now and just do that.