It’s September which means the end of the summer holidays for us. Whether you’ve managed to get away or you’re planning a break later on in the year, a holiday is a great time to reflect, and crucially, reset. A lot of reflections happen quite naturally when we are away from our screens with the chance to have days that look a bit different, whether that’s sitting on a beach, getting on your walking boots or enjoying some lovely French cheese (three of my favourite holiday activities.)

Oooh isn’t it refreshing to be away from email for a bit!

And reflections are great, and sometimes they are energising in of themselves. No need for any changes, all is well.

And sometimes they act as a bit of a nudge to do something differently. It’s time for a reset.

Sometimes we don’t even realise it’s time for a change until we return to work.

I was out with a friend recently whose aches and pains disappeared during her lovely week away. Guess what, a week back at work and they are creeping back. She’s in a very high stress job. There are no prizes for joining the dots.

For me, my skin breaks out when I’m under stress. The end of term was full on here, PTA madness, school strikes, about 801,000 end of term performances, team away days to deliver, workshops to run. I was run ragged by the end of term. But a week later and by 1st August I had perfect skin and I positively glowed (OK, well not quite perfect, but significantly less awful.)

Here’s some reflection points to support you to make the most of your time away?

What did I notice about myself, how I felt, what I was thinking about, when I was on holiday?

What’s going on behind that?

And what else?

My suggestion is to just take paper and pen and without censoring yourself or worrying about punctuation or grammar, just write whatever comes to your mind.

And then reflect on these three questions:

What opportunity is there for me to do something different?

What do I need in order to make that happen?

Who’s going to hold me to account?

Time away, either in holiday form, or simply time away from our desks to free write – as I’ve described above – is one way to access our creativity. So much gets in the way of us feeling creative, doesn’t it? Not least the endless ping of the Teams message.

Sometimes time away is the space we need to realise we need to leave a role, or a boss, which is not working out for us. Even after we’ve gone, sometimes the impact of that less-than-ideal situation can stay with us – in the form of lowered confidence, or aches and pains we carry with us.

EFT (or tapping) is absolutely amazing for helping you let go and move on. I do so much of this work in my coaching practice, (as well as helping folk navigate the awfulness when they are in the thick of it, too.) If you’d like a couple of sessions to lift the ghost of a current, or past, work awfulness, you can read all about EFT here.