You've lost that vacation feeling

I have a question. Have you unwittingly designed a life you want to escape from?

I know a lot of people who start each week complaining that it's Monday and counting down to Friday, dragging through daily routines that feel soul crushing and commonly claim to be tired/stressed/too busy with a roll of the eyes and puffing of cheeks. In fact, I've been there too.

Some seem to enjoy the pain, but I don't believe that is the majority.  I think that they have unconsciously built a life that they want to escape from but don't know how, akin to Stockholm syndrome, only they are their own captor.

Then, they take a vacation or enjoy a weekend and find that it takes a couple days just to detach from things, have some fun and then experience this new phenomenon of "Sunday Night Blues" (read about it here).  It just doesn't seem right.

I've started to think of life like those stipple paintings, where the artist creates a whole picture one tiny dot at a time (hang in here with me). They have a bigger vision so they design the color, shape and spacing of each dot to create the larger piece but you have to have distance from it to see what it is.

So, what if, instead of believing that we have to make huge, dramatic (impossible) changes to have a life we love all the time, we just took it one dot at a time, rather than trying to cram it all into those scant 2 weeks a year and then losing the second we realize it's over?

One choice, one action and one thought at a time.

Then, maybe not tomorrow but a little while from now, we could look back and see the bigger picture and be pleased with it?

I know it's possible, simple even. All it takes is conscious intention and a habit to follow that intention.

For example, I currently intend to enjoy my life to the extreme, so I consider the prospect of enjoyment in everything I do.

Of course, I don't enjoy everything I do (cleaning bathrooms comes to mind) so the question sometimes is: how can I appreciate this?  

At first I didn't remember my intention because I was so busy with my old habit of just getting stuff done like a zombie and life still sucked, a lot.  I needed to remind myself so I started small with notes and items around my house, like a note on the fridge or a lipstick I love on my vanity to trigger that thought.  It only took a few days before I had an automatic, silent mantra: Do I enjoy this?  Sure, some of my choices haven't met the test and I'm not 100% blissed out all the time but when I look back, I can truly say the grand picture pleases me. I don't want to escape from it at all, I want to be tethered to it as it just keeps getting better and better.

I've moved on to bigger things as I gain more confidence and unlearn the concept of "no pain, no gain" and I'm living a life now where there are no more Sunday night blues or vacation withdrawal.  Each dot on my canvas gets me closer to a masterpiece - to my bigger vision, rather than just leading down a chaotic maze.  Do you want that too?

I have a second question for you now. What do you want your life to feel like? 

That is the secret sauce in this formula. To paraphrase Tim Ferriss:  "You don't want a million dollars, you want the life you think a million dollars will give you." Swap out "dollars" for friends/fame/belongings/career/etc. and it still stands. 

So, my advice is to remind yourself of the feeling and try to experience it as often as possible (set up reminders) and I think one day you'll look back and see that you have tossed away the life you wanted to escape and you're living one designed exactly how you like.