Why everyone should take vacation

Posted on August 9, 2014

What if taking vacation not only made you healthier and happier, as a number of studies have shown, but everyone around you? And what if everybody took vacation at the same time? Would life be better, not just for you, but for the entire society?

Yes, argues Terry Hartig, an environmental psychologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. Yes, indeed.

When people go on a relaxing vacation, they tend to return happier and more relaxed. (The operative word here being relaxing, not frenzied whirlwind.) Traffic? A smile and nod instead of flipping the bird. An upset at the office? A deep breath and a focus, not on the drama, but on the task at hand.

And those mellow, good vibes, he said, spread "like a contagion" to everyone you come in contact with. "Even people you don’t know personally," he said. Send everyone away on vacation at the same time, and that contagion takes off through the population like a viral happiness pandemic.

Hartig calls it "collective restoration."

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Category(s):Happiness, Stress Management

Source material from Washington Post