How Vacations Affect Your Happiness

A recent blog article in the New York Times addressed How Vacations Affect Your Happiness which is such an appropriate topic for Caldwell Travel.

The article asks: “Vacations are a chance to take a break from work, see the world and enjoy time with family. But do they make you happier?”

The post explores the findings of a study in the Netherlands that set out to measure the effect that vacations have on overall happiness. Some of the of 1,530 Dutch adults had vacationed and others had not. The study found that:

The largest boost in happiness comes from the simple act of planning a vacation. In the study, the effect of vacation anticipation boosted happiness for EIGHT WEEKS.

And vacationers who reported feeling “very relaxed” on their vacation experienced an increase in happiness after the trip that lasted for TWO entire weeks!

“Vacations do make people happy,”

The study didn’t find any relationship between the length of the vacation and overall happiness. Since most of the happiness boost comes from planning and anticipating a vacation, the study suggests that people may get more out of several small trips a year than one big vacation, Mr. Nawijn said.

“The practical lesson for an individual is that you derive most of your happiness from anticipating the holiday trip,” he said. “What you can do is try to increase that by taking more trips per year. If you have a two week holiday you can split it up and have two one week holidays. You could try to increase the anticipation effect by talking about it more and maybe discussing it online.”