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Liliane Rausch

The Ultimate Self

The New Way Of Coaching

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The New Way Of Coaching

How To Avoid The After-Sabbatical Blues

We empathize and envy them: people who are able to go away on a vacation for a long time or take a one-year sabbatical. They are true adventurers: chasing their dreams, daring to step into the unknown. We say goodbye, enjoy their emails or blogs while they are out there in the world and pick them up at the airport after their return. The stories are thrilling, pictures are awesome and yes, we are glad they are back! But are they?

If you have the chance to take a sabbatical: go for it! It broadens your horizon and energizes, even vitalizes most of us. But be prepared for some degree of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Maybe not the entire disorder, but Stress may enter into your life after your return. Much like having the Monday-blues after a wonderful weekend, you can get the after-sabbatical blues!

Readjusting to your former life takes time and resilience to cope with daily life, where work, mail, alarm clocks, finances and taxes are common. Whereas your friends and family are happy you are back, you might suffer from what I call "The Five V's" which means: "Veel Verdriet om Verlies Van Vrijheid", a Dutch phrase meaning: " A lot of sadness about the loss of your freedom".

The first days, being back home from a sabbatical is fun. If you know your vacation is over and you know “you gotta go”, most enjoy going home. After all, it is fun to share our happenings with our friends, sleep in our own bed again and enjoy the comfort of our own home. But, soon the routine will come back. We need to live life as we were used to, but our heart might not be into it and we all know: home is where the heart is.

I once heard the advice to take some sand with you from the place you visited. The idea is, if you touch the sand, you are back to that lovely place you were at. Nonsense, if you ask me. It will only intensify your homesickness and it doesn't do anything to integrate your sabbatical experience into your daily life!

So, what can you do to cope with and even avoid after-sabbatical blues?

There are two things: tough it out and just wait until you get used to your former life again-and I guarantee you, that will happen! But what good will that do to you?

Or ... you can sit and write down what you miss about your sabbatical life style and try to find ways to incorporate parts of that life style into your current life.

Watch out however: Most of us tend to become immersed in our daily lives pretty quickly. The experiences of our sabbatical or long vacation become memories somewhere in the back of our minds and thus we miss out on improving our life!

Best advice I can give you if you are going on a long vacation is to write down before you go what you like, don't like and wish to improve in your life. Don't take this life-review with you however. Just evaluate your life before you go, stuff it at home in a drawer, reread it when you are back and homesick for your sabbatical life and add your sabbatical life-experiences to it.

In this way, you create a tangible way to compare your life before and after your sabbatical and help you select the best of two worlds! It will also help you cope with daily life. You will remember what you liked about your life before your sabbatical and - if you compare the dislikes in your life-review with your sabbatical life lessons - you might be able to use your sabbatical life experience to improve your daily life!

That is, if you don't opt for heading back straightaway or emigration!

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