Summer Vacation: Leave Your Stress Behind

July 23, 2011— -- I achieved complete disengagement on the fourth fairway at the Pacific Dunes golf course in Bandon, Oregon. To my right, roaring surf. In front of me, 180 yards distant, the flagstick. In my hands, a 3-iron. Which I cannot hit to save my life. But this time I did, and as the ball hung splendidly in the blue morning sky, nothing else mattered. Not the pile of work back at the office 2,400 miles away, not my son's pending college applications, not the potholed driveway at home, not my crippled car that barely reached the airport. None of it. Psychologists call this experience disengagement, or detachment, and it's what you want in a vacation. If reducing stress is the primary goal of a getaway (and for busy American men it should be), then you must detach yourself from work. And that means far more than yanking the recharge cord out of the BlackBerry. Believe me, it'll feel good.

Researchers who study vacations take their work seriously, because modern medicine and modern business take the subject of stress seriously. One study found that the fewer vacations a man takes, the higher his risk of having a heart attack. Nothing less than a healthy, productive workforce is at stake. Not to mention the happiness of those workers. I've sifted through much of their research and talked to Ph.D.'s from Tel Aviv to Vienna to Arizona. (I could use another vacation, maybe in one of those places.)

But first, let's look at some of the experts' peer-reviewed conclusions on "respite effects." You want to take a vacation that replenishes your psychological resources, and to find ways to make that vacation afterglow last. We're talking about the psychology of summer.

See those happy faces of children on summer vacation? Let's bottle it and mark it with an Rx. Here's a prescription for downtime that will extend your lifetime.

Think Differently

A vacation should use a part of your brain that you don't use at work. This is a path to detachment. "The more different your vacation activities are from what you normally do, the easier it is to stop thinking about work," says Charlotte Fritz, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University. Need more suggestions on how to detach? Read these 10 steps to a hassle-free vacation so you can have the relaxing getaway you hoped for.

My most memorable recent vacations—to London, Alaska, and Oregon—were about as different from my workaday, deadline-shadowed world in small-town eastern Pennsylvania as I could reasonably afford."You're recharging yourself, body and soul," says Tel Aviv University's Dov Eden, Ph.D., a pioneer in vacation research. One of Fritz's studies revealed that people who take on a challenge while on vacation feel less exhaustion back on the job and perform their jobs more efficiently. "A challenge boosts your self-esteem and your self-efficacy," she says.

That's important for overachievers, says Gerhard Blasche, Ph.D., of the Medical University of Vienna. "If you are used to being challenged, it will be difficult for you to disengage unless you are challenged in a different way."

You can master a skill (painting, say, or a language) or challenge yourself physically. "I always wanted to climb that mountain," Fritz says. And sometimes a new skill is a true lifestyle shift—as specific as learning to meditate or as general as adopting healthy eating habits. "Doing something creative may also change your approach to things in everyday life," Blasche says.

Try this: Maybe you've been resisting the spa vacation your wife has been pushing on you. Give it a shot—if there are plenty of activity options for you at her spa of choice. In one study, Blasche found that people sustained several quality-of-life improvements for a full year after taking a 3-week spa vacation.

"It's important to have a pattern of rest and activity," he says. "Not too much or too little of anything. At a spa you have treatments, and you have a lot of rest. If you combine these cleverly, you'll feel occupied, you won't feel bored, and you'll certainly have enough rest time." The Canyon Ranch spas (in Arizona and Massachusetts) offer plenty of healthy challenges—no need to fear a fortnight of cucumbers pressed onto your eyelids. (canyonranch.com) And there's no better time than now: Check out these 16 Things To Do Better This Summer for a how-to list of your own.

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