Think you have to be successful to take a vacation?

When this post goes live I will be on vacation in London! I’ve had a lot of people wonder why it’s necessary for me to take a vacation while I’m traveling the world. Let me tell you. I’ve been working while traveling. No matter I excited I get to travel to the next country I am aware of how my mind and body need to disconnect. This girl is absolutely ready for vacation!

If you work from home or remote location as a virtual assistant people may not realize you’re really working. They cling to an old-fashioned mentality of taking a vacation from the office and a commute, which is still true for many. Since 55 percent of Americans had unused vacation days last year you can bet taking time off when you’re already working virtually seems odd. I encourage you to be the odd one!

Average and successful are not synonymous. You’re going to have pick whom you want to be. I’ll give you three reasons to take a vacation before you think you are successful enough to do so.

1. Taking a vacation gives you a successful mindset.

My vacations didn’t always include international travel. Most of them included staying with family to save on hotel costs. When I first started my business it often seemed counterintuitive to take a vacation. On paper, I wasn’t making enough money to take time off. Everything I read told me to suffer through the first two years and make sacrifices. However, it didn’t seem right. Turned out I was reading the wrong things.

Reading my own advice to potential clients not taking a vacation was hypocritical. I couldn’t tell someone to do something I was not. Benjamin Hardy wrote an article, The 2 Mental Shifts Highly Successful People Make. The first shift is The Power of Choice. He writes, “The foundation of the first shift is the sublime power of choice and individual responsibility. Once you make this shift, you are empowered to pull yourself from poverty of time, finances and relationships. In other words, the first shift allows you to create a happy and prosperous life, where, for the most part, you control how and in what you invest your time.” 

Not taking a vacation is a choice. You are choosing to tell yourself you are not worthy of a much-needed break. If you keep telling yourself this you won’t ever escape from the poverty thinking. Instead, it will become true.

If you're not making enough money yet (YET!) to take the vacation of your dreams, I understand. Save, plan, and still take a vacation this year. You don’t have to go far away to disconnect. Do a Google search to find every free attraction in a 50-mile radius. Enjoy a picnic or hike. Read a book or create movie nights. Find out if you have any friends or family leaving town and offer to house sit so you can be in different surroundings. Vacation isn’t merely a destination it’s a mindset. A choice.

2. Take a summer vacation to be successful in the fall.

In a Forbes article, 10 Reasons You Cannot Afford Not To Take A Vacation, we learn “Whereas summer is a quiet period for most companies, autumn is a power session. Together with spring it's the most important sales period…” If you were running a race tomorrow you wouldn’t stay out all night. You’d make sure you were well rested so you could do your best. Vacationing in the summer is the same. ”So rather than thinking of a break as something you do for yourself, then do it for the sake of your company's future productivity.”

Many virtual assistants think they can't take a vacation if they don't have a full client load. In fact, vacationing before you have a lot of clients is best. You'll learn how to plan, automate, and manage the time while you're gone. If you aren't able to do this with a few clients you won't be able to do it with many.

3. Taking a vacation makes you more productive and positions you for success.

Our brains, like our bodies, need a break to perform better. You would never train for a marathon by running 26.2 miles every single day. Your body would not have time to recover and injury, causing major setbacks, could not be avoided. Well, you might not feel mental fatigue as fast as physical but it’s there and happens sooner, “Since almost all of us are doing mental work these days, managing cognitive resources is not a nice thing to be able to do; it’s essential.” You can read the full article, The Secret to Increased Productivity: Taking Time Off, in Entrepreneur.

As virtual assistants it is so extremely important we take vacations. When we don’t we’re not taking our own advice. If your business isn’t set up to run without you, you're not creating anything sustainable. Vacation isn’t something you wait to do until be you become successful it’s what you do because you’re already thinking like a successful person.

Being successful is a mindset. If you don’t think you’re successful enough to take a vacation you probably won’t ever be. This isn’t fake it until you make it. I’m telling you to put good and best practices in place now so you can build and grow from a solid foundation. In life and business, you can’t help or serve anyone if you aren’t already helping and serving yourself.

Because you can't do it all yourself.....Melissa Smith, The PVA is the bestselling author of Hire the Right Virtual Assistant and host of the Admin to VA Summit. Want to receive notices of clients looking for a VA just like you? Contact Melissa here.