Could you afford to take a month off?

What do you think would happen to your life if you took an entire month of vacation time and left town?

Would your business survive?

Would your family be okay without you for a while?

How would you FEEL?

I've been sub-contracting as a Success Coach for T. Harv Eker's coaching program, SuccessTracs, since Feb '04. One of the goals of the program is to double your time off.

Since I began working with Harv, I've been taking every single Wednesday as my FREEDOM DAY. That's been working out well and I found I could actually be much more productive on my FOCUS DAYS because of this rest/play time.

(Read my Member of the Month success story here.)

However, I wasn't sure if/when I'd be taking a large chunk of time "off". I kept fooling myself into believing that if I just took on more commitments - more clients, more networking functions, more joint ventures, more projects - then I would surely "make it."

Well, thanks to the support of my husband, family, friends and clients, I am now officially on vacation for the entire month of August!

I must say it was much more difficult to do than I imagined. All my stuff about having to be productive and make a "proper living" came up. I noticed lots of resistance to slowing down and being away from the hub of social and business networking activity in San Diego. And fear around being "contactable enough"! (read: "self-important"!).

But I have a wonderful laptop computer with built-in WiFi (wireless) internet access and a cell phone. With a very portable business, I figured I could practically be anywhere.

And so I'm spending the first 10 days with a dear girlfriend and her fiance in Vancouver. Then I'll hook up with my sister, Fi, and her family who are over from Scotland, plus my mom and step-dad. We'll play, go siteseeing and have tons of fun together. Then sis and I will hop on over to Vancouver Island to hang with dad. I haven't seen several of my family members for a couple years now.

I realized that so much of what we do is a mental game. We trick ourselves into believing that if we are just "busy" enough, then we'll matter, we'll be important, we'll make a difference. Thing is, we can only give to others what we have left over after giving to ourselves.

By structuring our lives in alignment with our VALUES we can finally take time to slow down, be quiet and hear that still, small voice that is longing to just BE.

I'm reminded of a wonderful book, "Slowing Down to the Speed of Life" by Richard Carlson ("Don't Sweat the Small Stuff..." author). Make sure you read this book s-l-o-w-l-y! It's a wonderful reminder that we did not come to this planet to be ridiculously and endlessly BUSY!