Why you can’t sit still on holiday
Day two. That’s usually when it shows up.
You’ve made it — the leave was booked months ago, the out-of-office is on, the pool is right there. You’ve been telling everyone how much you need this. And by the second afternoon you’re restless. Shifting around on the sun lounger. Reaching for a phone that has nothing new on it, checking it anyway, checking it again eight minutes later. Reading the same paragraph of your book four times. Planning tomorrow’s itinerary — not because tomorrow needs one, but because planning is something to do.
There’s an itch in it. An urge to get up, sort something, achieve something, move. Sitting still doesn’t feel like rest. It feels like being switched on with nowhere to go.
And then, quietly, the guilt: you’re in a beautiful place, with the people you love, doing the thing you spent all year earning — and you’re not really in it. Part of you never got off the plane. You wonder what’s wrong with you. Everyone else seems to manage lying on a beach.
Here’s the first thing to know: nothing is wrong with you, and you’re not alone on that lounger. Far from it. But the explanation is different from the one you’ve been giving yourself.
You’ve probably blamed the phone, or work emails, or being “a doer.” That’s surface. The real reason sits deeper: your body has been running at one speed for years — braced, alert, on — and a plane ticket doesn’t change a body’s speed. Stillness isn’t something the body does automatically when the diary empties. Stillness is something a body has to feel safe enough to do. And a body that’s spent years in motion — chasing the to-do list, the inbox, the sense that everything depends on you — has quietly decided that moving is safe and stopping is not. To your body, doing nothing isn’t rest. It’s exposure.
There’s a deeper layer, and I say this with care because I lived it for years: a lot of the busyness was never about the tasks. We fill every gap because the running keeps us one step ahead of how we actually feel. The moment we stop, whatever we’ve been outrunning starts to catch up — and some part of us knows it. So we reach for the phone. Not for the content. For the exit.
None of this is a character flaw, and none of it is your fault. Nobody taught you how to be still — most of us were only taught how to be productive, and got praised for the running. You learned your speed honestly. It just doesn’t switch off on demand.
And that’s the reframe that changes everything: rest is not a decision. Rest is a skill. The holiday proves it every year — you decided, fully, and your body didn’t come. You can’t decide a skill into existence. You practise it, in small doses, until the body trusts it.
I remember the first time my own body truly let go — standing in a warm sea, thousands of miles from my old life, feeling something so unfamiliar I couldn’t name it at first. It was ease. My honest first thought was: is this how everyone lives? That morning, I’d have told you I didn’t know how to sit still either.
So don’t start with two weeks. Start with two minutes. Two minutes, today, of genuinely doing nothing — no phone, no plan. The itch will come. Let it. The itch isn’t a stop sign; it’s a fast body learning a slow thing. It fades with practice. And a body that learns stillness in two-minute doses at home is a body that can finally come with you on holiday.
That’s the real aim: not a better holiday. A speed you can live at — stillness that’s yours all year, so a lounger is just a lounger. If you’d like somewhere gentle to practise, my guided practices were made for exactly this.
— Adam