“My holiday is stressing me out”

How hustle culture is affecting our travels

Overthinking and feeling anxious is something most of us will experience in some kind of scenario. But this and a holiday should never be found in the same sentence. Yet sometimes we find ourselves overwhelmed by pre-trip planning and doing a thousand things at the same time to ensure we will be able to “relax” after, that the whole experience becomes stressful. Here’s how I almost messed up my most needed holiday, how hustle culture is affecting our travels, and how I managed to finally set back and actually relax.

Here’s what I did wrong and how I learned to overcome the unnecessary stress from a most needed and wonderful short holiday.

By Little Chilean

@gaby.o

Having some time off, especially when it’s a short one, should be nothing more than a time to relax and disconnect. But, at a time when everything seems to move faster, and we try to fit as much as possible in shorter times, it’s no surprise that we have taken the fun away from the mindful and peaceful moment that is a holiday. I know I did. 

During a recent 3-day trip (yes, only 3 days!) I put myself one step away from an anxiety attack. 

“I need to book that train”, “I need to find a hotel”, “I need to finish XY and Z before the trip”, and so on. There was a time not long ago when booking and planning a trip was as exciting as going on it. It didn’t matter the length, just the excitement of the newness and the adventures to come was enough. 

Now, under this overwhelming hustle culture where we are always on the go, always doing extra, and always stretching our time as much as possible, the excitement is easily eclipsed, messing up with not just the trip itself but even the planning side of it. 

Just weeks before my upcoming short holiday I felt like there was always something else I “needed” to be doing, during a probably impossibly short period of time, that it took all the fun away. And that “I need to finish this, and then I’ll relax” mode started to show up as anxiety crippling my moves weeks before the trip.

I felt overwhelmed and stressed about going on that “break” that I took all the fun away from the planning session. And even worse, it was also stopping me from actually finishing what I was so stressed about finishing in the first place. Does it make sense? Yes, I’m aware of how insane it all sounds. 

But, in a glass-half-full kind of attitude, I’m taking that already as a win. Just because being aware of the problem means you’re on your way to solving it, I’d like to believe. And because, as they say, “the first step is to admit we have a problem”. So I must be doing something right? Right? 

Yes! Because this is hopefully far from a depressing story about how I did not enjoy my limited time away, but more of a “what not to do” one where I’ll tell you what I learned, what I now know I should have avoided, and how I managed to overcome the stress and actually enjoy the trip. Here we go!

3 signs that you’re adding unnecessary stress to your upcoming travel

1. Catch yourself saying “need” instead of want

Something as simple as noticing how you’re wording your actions can say a lot about what you’re feeling. 

In my case, I noticed I wasn’t talking to my friends and family about how excited I was about having time off or the exciting options of hotels I had found. Instead, I saw myself making all the faces when I was asked, sighing, before adding that I still hadn’t decided or that I hadn’t had time to deal with it. 

I’m not exaggerating when I say that I changed cities and dates 3 times during my searching and planning “hour” –more like days– before even making a decision. And it’s just for a 3-day trip! It all felt like a burden I couldn’t deal with, something I “had to do” and didn’t want to. 

And the more I allowed myself to keep going with that speech, the more I believed it was too much hassle to even take time off. Needless to say, I was wrong.

2. Having no time

When I started meditating –not a practice I do as much as I’d like to– I remember thinking I wanted to do it every day. Then, as “life got in the way” I found myself saying I didn’t have time to do it. But, I once heard this amazing woman and teacher saying, “Those that say they don’t have time to meditate are the ones that need it the most”.

That quote hit me right when I was acting like a “I’m too busy to rest” type of woman. The more I felt that planning my short trip involved time I didn’t have, the more I knew I needed it. But making it out of the hustle culture mindset was the hardest part.

3. Being too hard on yourself

As I progressed in my awareness of being guilty of my own stress, the more I was feeling (yes, you guessed it) guilty. Then I started a new season of spiralling down on self-blame and self-shame. 

How could I be “this person” and create such a hard time for myself –crying at random hours in front of the computer might have been seen one or two times.

I blamed myself for not having time to book the damned train ride, then got angrier when the ticket prices when up, and then blamed myself for allowing that to happen. All while not really finishing anything work-related I was supposed to be focusing on to be able to really go on a fully disconnected holiday the week after. Then, (yes, you can see the pattern now) I blamed myself for not finishing the tasks on time.

I don’t need to tell you how unproductive this blaming cycle is and how it was all simply complementing the full picture of just pretravel anxiety and hustle-culture burnout.

Tips to avoid feeling anxious before going on a most-needed short-holiday

Now that you get the picture and realize how silly this all was –believe me, I felt even sillier about it all just as I was writing this– and know that I did end up going on my planned holiday, I can tell you how I managed to slap myself in the face, see things clearer and actually book everything on time to enjoy it.

1. Make a list and prioritize

I strongly believe lists are the n°1 enemy of overwhelm. Yet, some days I don’t even know where my notebook is and end up scribbling mental reminders on every piece of paper I find around –not proud of that one.

But anyway, a list saved me. So, I sat down to try to juggle my thoughts and understand why booking anything was feeling so hard. Realized my indecisiveness was linked to putting so much pressure on finding the perfect combination for my short trip.

I wanted to find the right spot, the best money-worth train/bus combination, the most comfortable place with the most fascinating distractions and with the shortest journey time. All while having a view, so I can relax around nature, while also going for a walk safely, and remotely enough that I would actually disconnect.

Wait, is that a real place?

Actually, yes, there are many many places that will have all of that. And that’s just what I was prioritizing. But the thing is that I didn’t know it. Or at least, I didn’t know in what order I prioritized them, to know which city option, for example, to focus on. Because yeah, it can be very hard to look for a good affordable hotel to stay in when you haven’t even decided on the city, as you can imagine.

2. Talk it out

As much as this was a solo trip that I wanted to take for myself, the importance of sharing what is important to you with your loved ones is unmatchable. And even though my friends knew that I wasn’t inviting anyone along they all wanted to participate in my decision. 

So I dare to feel less silly about struggling to make a decision and just said all of this out loud. And as simple as that, it all started making sense. Others will see perks from one city other than the other in a way that your overwhelmed brain will not allow you to.

3. Book the damn thing!

They say indecisiveness is the thief of opportunity, as being afraid of missing out on one or the other will eventually make you miss out on both. And this could not apply more wisely to planning a trip.

As you know, the more you let time pass, the higher prices will get or the less availability you’ll have. And so it happened to me. I ended up having fewer and fewer choices with each day, which directly interfered with my perfect list of priorities.

At the end of the day, I was “waiting” for some external confirmation or some kind of “wow, that looks amazing” reaction from someone else. But I had already decided and loved the idea of spending my short break in a specific town and in that specific hotel, so there was no real need to way.

So, when I went back to booking.com, put down the same filter, and chose the same location, and the place I’d been eyeing for days popped up, I just booked it! Ah! And it felt good! That “it’s done” feel, took such a huge burden from my unnecessarily overwhelmed brain.

Now, to hopefully help you a bit more, and as I’m a bit guilty (yes, I know I should stop even using that word) that I did not think of this when I was spiralling down, there are remarkable tips to help with anxiety that we can use in everyday scenarios. 

And, a few magazines back, we featured a great article by our amazing writer Daniela Barría, to deal with just that. So, here are 7-day habits to help with travel anxiety:

7-day habits to help travel anxiety

Day 1: Make a list of how you feel today and what you would like to work on. Choose 3 that you can do in the short term.

Day 2: Dedicate 10 minutes of your day to meditate and observe how you feel during your day.

Day 3: Disconnect from your phone, turn it off in the evening until the next day, and enjoy your sleep!

Day 4: Find something entirely new to do that you have always wanted to try.

Day 5: Practice breathing exercises when you wake up, and before going to sleep, try to relax and connect with this moment.

Day 6: Give yourself 1 hour of an activity that you really enjoy doing. Today it’s our turn to pamper ourselves.

Day 7: Take a moment and write down your progress. How do you feel? Write it down and celebrate working on yourself. 

Happy travels!

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