The Holiday Break (Part 2)
The real gift of a holiday is not rest.
It is distance.
Distance from routine.
Distance from obligation.
Distance from the quiet momentum that carries a life forward without asking permission.
When that momentum pauses, something rare becomes possible.
Not improvement.
Not optimisation.
Orientation.
Most people never consciously choose the direction of their lives.
They inherit it slowly through habits, expectations, and daily accommodation.
This exercise exists to interrupt that process.
Do it once during the break.
Not quickly.
Not casually.
The Holiday Exercise
Sit alone.
No phone. No music. No intention to feel better.
Open a blank page.
Then begin.
1. Follow your life forward (honestly)
Write down the few things that currently occupy most of your days.
Not aspirations.
Not values.
Just facts.
Work.
Responsibilities.
Commitments.
Preoccupations.
Then write this sentence and complete it:
“If nothing changes, this is where my life is actually going.”
Do not soften the answer.
Do not add hope.
This is not pessimism.
It is accuracy.
Most people have never looked at their trajectory without imagination filling the gaps.
2. Remove time from the equation
Now write:
“If this were my life permanently, how would I feel?”
Not five years.
Not ten years.
Permanently.
This question dissolves false comfort.
Some things only feel acceptable because they are assumed to be temporary
even when no mechanism exists for them to change.
Notice what tightens when you write this.
That tightening is information.
3. Strip away justification
Next, write this sentence repeatedly until it stops producing answers:
“I continue this because…”
Do not judge what appears.
Just watch how often the reasons are:
-
habit
-
fear
-
convenience
-
approval
-
avoidance
This step exposes the difference between choice and continuation.
Most lives run on continuation.
4. Ask the irreversible question
Finally, write this at the top of the page:
“What would I quietly change if I trusted myself completely?”
Not what you would announce.
Not what you would defend.
What you would change quietly.
The real answers are subtle:
-
a boundary
-
a simplification
-
a truth acknowledged
-
a direction adjusted by a few degrees
Lives do not derail suddenly.
They drift and they are corrected the same way.
When you finish, stop.
Do not make a plan.
Do not decide anything.
A true holiday exercise does not demand action.
It restores clarity.
And clarity, once regained, moves a person naturally.
This is why sages valued retreat.
Not to escape life
but to see it without distortion.
Use the pause for that.
That alone is enough to change the year ahead.
