What taking a break from life taught me

Life has moved on pretty quickly since I got back from my trip around the world in March. I guess that’s how it is: life just pulls you in. I now feel it is imperative to take control so that I am in the driver’s seat and not someone/something else. This is my life, so how do I want to live it?

As a follow up on my previous story on updating my life plan and disconnecting for 2014, I’ve divided this post into two different stories: first are the lessons and take-aways from my trip and second, my thoughts about having a larger scope on my life plan to make it holistic and also include my business and its culture. This is what I call “My wise culture”.

The decision to travel

The decision to take a break from life and work did not come easy. I got the idea a few years ago, not exactly sure why or how, then after my grandmother passed away last year, I began to really think about how finite life is. Sadly, today all of my grandparents are now deceased. Looking back, I realise that they never said “my life lesson to you is to maximise working and/or do something before you build a family, when travelling and taking a break is more appreciated (instead of right after high school). Travelling for a bit after high school is pretty common in Sweden.

I love to work and believe this is an important part of my life. For seven years I worked hard to build a company. Although I always had tons of ideas from networking, reading, etc., I just never had enough energy to connect all the dots. Take the time to sit and ponder – who can realistically do that? I thought travelling would be a good way to disconnect from my fast-paced life. And I needed to break the creative rut I was in while building Mediapilot. Was I sure my trip would be the solution, absolutely not. I just knew I needed it.

I had allowed myself to become too dependent over the years on Mediapilot, which I guess is natural for an entrepreneur feeling very strongly about his or her first company. While I tried my best to prepare for my departure, there were tons of problems to solve beforehand. Not to mention all the admin with renting out my apartment, selling my car, etc. Leaving was a big decision for me, and even more so for the people I directly impact. The majority was positive, but that was mostly regarding my private life. From a career perspective, the feedback wasn’t as rosy. I couldn’t prove or promise that I would have the drive to develop new business ideas while out travelling, so the trip was decided to be strictly private, even if I envisioned it differently originally. It all worked out in the end, and yes, things came right down to the wire. I read countless around-the-world how-to’s and guides, but not one mentioned how stressful detaching from life it would be. Needless to say, while driving to the airport, I knew I absolutely earned this trip!

What I learned on my break

My first lesson from taking a break is how wonderful it is to have no strings attached and very few things taking up your time and energy. I made sure I cleared as much as possible in my life before I left. The general feeling I have looking back is that I pretty much eliminated 95% of my life as I knew it. Friends, family, work, chores, etc. This change was very tricky to deal with during the first month of my travels. Reading books, sightseeing and chatting with the locals is something I enjoy on holiday for a week or two. The weeks following that were a bit tough to deal with, as I was lacking conversations, both with myself and to some extent with my wife. But as time moved on I found myself easing into the quiet and new energy appeared. This was one of the more creative times I’ve had in my life. Ideas just came to me. I didn’t need the internet, just a pen and a paper and I was creating magic. One of my strongest memories of just this was on a beach somewhere in Thailand 6–7 weeks into the trip, when I sat on a fairly empty beach for a few hours doing nothing. I didn’t force myself to do anything, I just let my mind go free and after a while I wrote down a great business idea on a piece of paper.

Conversations changed from simple day-to-day chats about weather and food, to deeper topics; who knew this was just lying there waiting to be let out? I knew this trip would be an amazing experience for me and my wife, but had no idea in what way. Sure, you will have issues hanging out with someone 24/7 for this stretch of time. However, the arguments had a completely different tone then what I’m used to at home. Life doesn’t move in the same way, and because neither of us had a busy work week in front of us, we had tons of time to talk about emotions and feelings regarding a specific matter. Issues were worked through in a deeper sense. I think we both got to know each other a lot better during the trip, something that will hopefully help us out in the future.

This is my biggest take-away from the trip: excess time created an amazing feeling of freedom. Sure, being in the best shape of my life from almost daily workouts and eating super healthy (minus daily gin & tonics), plus a great tan is something I appreciated as well. I have since made a promise to myself that I will take a trip like this within five years. Looking back I feel as if it’s crazy going through life without taking creative breaks when you have a relatively demanding job.

I’m writing this post on a plane on my way back from San Francisco and I’m amazed by culture of people barely any vacation in the US, let alone any thoughts of going on creative breaks to seek new inspiration. One movement that is acting as a counter weight to this is the Wisdom 2.0 conference, started by Soren Gordhammer (Norwegian decent). A lot of leading entrepreneurs are catching up to this trend, so it will be interesting to see if it will ever go more main stream. My strong belief is that this would make the US (or any other country for that matter) excel to an even higher level and further increase productivity and happiness.

Going forward

Something I’m working on at the moment is how to preserve the creative feeling I have from my break. I have taken many small and big actions, but it is really hard when the world around you is constantly pulling you back; it takes massive personal stamina and control. Actions I’ve taken and added to my life plan are among others: adding one day a month spent fully by myself doing what I feel is inspiring, weekly yoga and pilates, fruit salad every morning, one perfect day a month with my wife (a day spent doing exactly what we imagine a dream day to be), and so on.

But my biggest challenge ahead is to tie this together with the bigger picture. My vision is to create a model that can be applied in my entrepreneurship as well. I envision spreading this to colleagues, customers, friends and family. This is what I call My wise culture.

https://notegraphy.com/m_wettergren/note/1017008