Stressed? Don’t Take a Vacation
Getting away may seem like the perfect solution to chronic stress, but the author of a new book says the counterintuitive truth is you're better off staying home.It's summer and the sun is shining outside your office window.Starting and running a business is hard work, so it's no surprise that you may register your stress, check out the weather, and conclude this is a great time to take a vacation.As sensible as this train of thought sounds, science suggests that the chronically stressed may be wrong in thinking that the best medicine is to get on a plane and see someplace new.That's according to John Coates, author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk-taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust. He took to Fast Company recently to explain that our hard-wired instincts when it comes to stress may actually often cause us to take actions that make the situation worse.Distinguishing between short-term fatigue brought on less than inspirational tasks and chronic stress, Coates goes on to suggest that when faced with the latter, our natural impulses often betray us. He writes:When we are mired in stress, what we desperately need to do is minimize the novelty in our lives.
