87: The Vacation Test: How Do You Like Your Life?

Ellen:00:00:00

Welcome back to Make More Love. I'm your host, Ellen Dorian. This show looks at the connection between relationships and business ownership, especially for men who want straight talk, useful frameworks, and practical ways to solve relationship problems. If this is your first time here, hit follow or subscribe so you don't miss anything. Now let's get into it. In the last episode, I talked about using vacation strategically to get out of your day-to-day routine. When you spend too much time with your head down, you miss opportunities and possibilities both in your business and in your relationship. And today, I'm gonna follow a different line of thought. Once vacation is over, how do you like your life? So as you know, I just got back from a retreat in Greece. I went on the retreat looking for something or probably several things because as I mentioned last time, this year really hasn't gone according to plan. Some of what I found was obvious, some of it surprised me, and I'll admit that some of it has been hard to hold onto now that I'm back to my real life I've been to quite a few countries in Europe, and I've loved them all, but none of them have been quite as magnetic for me as Greece. Honestly, every time I've been there, I've questioned why I would ever wanna leave. Of course, my husband is here, and I definitely wanna get back to him. My family is here, my stuff is here, my life is here. But there's a different way of living in Greece that's hard to ignore. Roberta and Apollonas Kapssalis are the creators of Greek Goes Keto, and they designed the retreat around nutrition, stress management, and longevity with a lot of influence from Greek culture and traditions. Now, I've always thought of myself as a great host, but I gotta say, Roberta is next level and then some when it comes to making people feel cared for. And Apollonas has encyclopedic knowledge of nutrition, health, physiology, and philosophy, not to mention Greek culture and history. These are two extraordinary people. Now, if you're interested in this sort of thing, you should really check them out. I will put their information in the show notes. Being away from my day-to-day life gave me a better perspective on my current reality Unfortunately, we all have one of those, right? There were several things I noticed. The first thing was that I was carrying too much baggage, and I don't just mean overpacking, which I also did. A couple of very important people in my life are dealing with some serious health issues, so of course I was worried about them. But from that distance, I got a clearer picture of how much of myself I had invested in their well-being at the expense of my own. One of my favorite sayings is, "In a ham and egg breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed." And I was definitely the pig in this scenario. I had let other people's problems become my problems, and I was putting my own priorities aside. It sounds obvious now, but apparently I needed to leave the country to see it clearly. Also, It was surprising how much freedom I felt when I let other people take the lead. The retreat was full of people I'd describe as natural nurturers. They'd make me coffee, they'd clear away dishes, and do really whatever needed doing. And I let them. It was hard not to jump up and say, "No, no, no, I've got it." Everything in my personality, in my values, and my upbringing was screaming to do exactly that, and I certainly did my share, but I didn't have to take on more, because we were all taking care of each other. The next thing I wanted to point out is about the food. When it comes to food, the Mediterranean keto approach is not super complicated, as long as you happen to live in the Mediterranean. Farm to table and sea to table are dining trends for us here in the States, but for a lot of Greeks, that's just food. Real, unprocessed food is just easier to come by in Greece. You get your produce and your dairy at the farm. We had mostly sheep and goat milk dairy, which is way better than you can imagine. You get your meat from the butcher, who got it from the farm. And you get your seafood from the boats at the pier. We had a few meals out that were spectacular. My favorite dinner out was at the Seafood Taverna, and there was a meat feast later in the week. But the best meals were the ones that we made together at home. Roberta is an incredibly creative and skilled cook, making delicious dishes that you would never believe are keto-friendly. We all helped prepare meals, and then we sat down and ate together There's just something different about a meal at home. At a restaurant, a table for 12 people means you probably don't really talk to more than four people all evening. At home, the same table, the same 12 people, and it's a conversational free-for-all. Dinners lasted for hours. The conversation was the entertainment. And then one by one, people would peel off and go to bed, and whoever was left would just keep talking late into the night. Since COVID, I've gotten away from entertaining at home. Most of my social meals happen in restaurants, and it's lovely to get out of the house, but it's different than dinner at home with friends. And that brings me to my next observation, which is really the biggest one, and that is the people. I'll start with one of those natural nurturers I mentioned. His name is Thodoris or Theo. When I say the words Greek psychiatrist to you, you might have a picture in your head, but I guarantee, your imagination would not match up with Theo. He is the third generation of a family of psychiatrists. He's an expert in neuro self-mastery. He's also super charismatic, charming, energetic, fun, and incredibly caring. By the end of the first day, Lucy and Leo, the two teenagers at the retreat, were calling him Uncle Theo, and by the end of the second day, everyone was calling him Uncle Theo. One of the highlights of the week for me was riding in Theo's car with Lucy and Leo and my friend Lindsay, passing around a tub of sheep's milk ice cream and singing along to Whitesnake. That was three generations of people from four different countries all singing the same song. You just can't make this stuff up. I learned so much from the people I was with. It made me think about the different relationships we have to our environment, to each other, and to ourselves. There's something that my own coach has said over the years and that really came through here. He said, "It's a lot easier to design your life to suit you than it is to be constantly trying to change yourself to deal with your life." At the retreat, I saw examples of both approaches. There was Juliet, an athlete and a model, very independent and very disciplined. I mean she had to be. Her livelihood depends on it And she came to the retreat with a highly structured routine, including getting up at 5:00 every morning to go for a run. Except it was August in Greece, and even at 5:00 in the morning, it was too hot to run. So she switched to walking, but she still did her best to stay true to her plan. On the other hand, some of us just went along with the flow of things. We woke up later, we ate later, we stayed up later. Some of the things that we planned didn't happen because it was too hot, and so we did other things. We spent more time at the beachside cafes, swimming and drinking Freddo Espressos. Let me tell you, the Greeks really know how to make an iced coffee. And talking. I don't think either approach is right or wrong. It just made me think, when do I wanna make my world suit me, and when do I want to allow the world to change me? So that's something to think about. Now, here's a question for you. How do our assumptions about people limit our connection with them? Ilias was the strength trainer for our group. He was tall and lean and muscular and very quiet. He had a beautiful black German shepherd named Thor and a very fancy sports car. When I first met him, I quickly made some assumptions about who I thought he was. Nothing bad, just assumptions. Then we started talking. It turned out that we shared a lot of the same ideas about life, even though we came to them from very different paths. Ilias had a philosophy that strength comes first from the inside, and our conversations went places I really never expected them to. We talked about persistence and love and what people need from each other and what success actually means. He has a very insightful Instagram diary called Rise Stronger. I'll put that in the show notes for you to check out. Even his taste in music surprised me. He preferred quiet, emotionally charged music. Oh, and I got to ride in the very fancy sports car. We did not listen to Whitesnake on the stereo though. Next, I want to tell you about the Unwins. Jen Unwin is a clinical health psychologist and one of the leading voices in the UK on food and sugar addiction. I'm reading her book Fork in the Road right now, and it's very, very interesting. Jen's husband, David Unwin, is one of the pioneers in the UK for using low-carb nutrition in primary care to treat type 2 diabetes. The Unwins And Theo too introduced me to the fascinating and growing field of metabolic psychiatry I'm very interested to learn more about this, and I've got a reading list for myself that I'll be sharing with you later. David also said something that led me to think about how we relate to ourselves. He mentioned that a lot of the coaches he has spoken to don't really know the philosophical foundations and schools of thought that underlie their work. I do, in fact, know the roots of my coaching approach. My background in philosophy and my training in transformational systems shaped how I see people and relationships, and they are what's behind the Make More Love method that I created. If you wanna know more about that, it's on my website. I'll put the link in the show notes along with the information on all the other things I've talked about today. So those are my observations, and then I came home. I'm still figuring out how much of what I loved about Greece I can bring into my normal life, and I don't think it's really about recreating Greece. I've gotten used to living at a pace that isn't particularly good for me. It's not unusual for me to schedule myself back to back, to rush from one thing to the next, and then to climb into bed at the end of the night thinking about everything else that is gonna have to happen tomorrow. I really don't wanna keep doing this. Instead, I wanna focus on healthy nutrition, better mental health. I want more meals around a table with friends. I want more room in my schedule. And I wanna spend more time around people who are smart and curious and interested in things I don't know a lot about. Those are some of my goals. They have nothing to do with business. Now, remember the strategic planning I talked about in the last episode? My challenge is how to build my plan around these goals. Now that I think about it, that pulls me back to what my coach was saying about shaping the environment around your needs. Maybe he was right after all. So what is the vacation test? I don't wanna have to leave the country to access parts of myself that vanish as soon as I get back. I want every aspect of myself to have a place of belonging here in my home. So I'll leave you with this. Maybe the best test of a vacation is how you feel when you return. How much do you like the life you come home to? Alright. I hope today's episode got you thinking, but there's really only so much we can do in an open forum like this. If you wanna look at your specific situation, go to relationshipresetcall.com and book a time to talk with me. It's free, it's quick and it's private. We'll figure out the next best move for you and get you on track. And if you know someone who's struggling in their relationship, please pass this episode along. I've also included links to additional resources in the show notes so you can keep building on your relationship skills. I believe you had good reasons for choosing your partner. My mission is to help you reconnect with those reasons and discover new ways to Make More Love with your wife and in your life. I'm Ellen Dorian, and that's what I've got for you today.