How long has it been since you did something for the first time? When was the last time you took a time-out for yourself or as a couple? Many people long for variety and vitality, without wanting to turn their whole life upside down or take unreasonable risks. This post is dedicated to questions around new impulses and lively experiences for a fulfilled life:

• What could I do to have more variety in my life?
• What can I do to escape monotonous working days?
• How can I get more out of my work–life balance?
• What can I do so that I’m no longer bored?
• What do others do to escape everyday life?

In the middle of a regulated workday, clear procedures and familiar surroundings, a quiet sense of lack can gradually become noticeable: variety is missing. Not necessarily on a grand scale, but in the small things. The desire for “more from life” is often not a call for adventure, but for meaningfulness. Seeing something new, feeling something different, breathing easier inwardly, experiencing a power spot amid nature – this can gently break up routines:

Variety doesn’t begin in the calendar but in the mind. Those who allow themselves to question routines create space for the new.

• Vary daily structures: Instead of a planned daily routine, try consciously structuring your weekend day differently for once.
• Stimulate the senses: Gather impressions on hikes or cycling tours in an unfamiliar area. This doesn’t have to be on another continent. Austria also has overwhelming natural regions that can be reached without much effort.
• Do you enjoy sport? As a gravel biker, e-biker, swimmer or runner, you tend to develop routines in choosing your route. For training this can be useful. Discovering new routes, however, provides variety and renewed motivation.
• Change on a small scale: The favourite route to work doesn’t have to stay the same forever. Detours can also enrich.
• Mindful experiencing: Try to consciously put your phone in airplane mode on a walk or cycling tour. Perhaps you can manage a Sunday a month entirely without your mobile. You may be amazed at how much more intensely you experience your surroundings.
• A small reunion with yourself: Do something you haven’t done in a long time: spontaneously book a break with a short trip, attend a concert or treat yourself to a pleasurable break with a stylish dinner.

Ideal is a mix of variety in everyday routines and short breaks in which you consciously travel alone or as a couple. You don’t need to book a long-distance flight for this. Places like Abbey St. Georgen directly on Lake Längsee offer the ideal setting to take a pleasurable break from everyday life.

If you are fundamentally satisfied with your profession, that doesn’t mean you can’t make everything around it more varied.

• Create transitions: Use the time between the end of work and after-hours consciously. Take a daily walk, play a special “after-work playlist”, treat yourself to firmly anchored 15 minutes of doing nothing after work. Create a ritual. Often it helps the transition into after-hours to consciously cycle home.
• Micro-breaks: Against monotony, a moment in the day that falls outside the grid often helps. That can be a chapter of a book during the lunch break, or an unplanned stop on the way home.

• New impulses in leisure time: Creative impulses help. If you perceive your everyday work as rather monotonous, it can help to experience something new in your leisure time. On a short trip, simply step out of everyday life and find your ideal balance between nature, activities, calm and excellent cuisine. At Abbey St. Georgen, you enjoy real deceleration between water, forest and long-distance views. With a 1,000-year-old tradition, it offers a special power spot amid Carinthia’s pristine nature. Here you can also experience new things: Have you ever played golf? On the golf course, you learn something new, train concentration as well as body awareness and enjoy nature. Discover nature on a gravel bike or rediscover the childlike joy of a carefree swimming day at Lake Längsee.

Escaping doesn’t mean fleeing, but consciously delimiting yourself. A place where you may simply be, entirely at your own pace, supports deceleration and mindful pleasure. The special atmosphere at Abbey St. Georgen on Lake Längsee is made for finding your centre and celebrating pleasurable breaks.

Balance is not a static state, but a movable equilibrium. Those who believe it lies in perfect time management miss the core. Work-life balance succeeds when both sides are taken seriously. And when “life” too is allowed to be planned.

Work-life balance begins with questions to yourself:

• What gives me energy? This question is central. What recharges you? Where do you feel alive? Is it what you do out of habit in your leisure time?
• Where do I set boundaries? Clearly separating work and leisure is not old-fashioned, but wise. This also includes: rethinking priorities. Does everything have to be done? Or can something be left undone so there’s time for what does you good?
• How do I design mindful breaks? Scrolling smartphone feeds in idle isn’t a break that gives energy. Treat yourself to mindful breaks as a real interruption from everyday life.
• What is good for me and my body? Spend leisure time and holidays with activities that bring you joy. Be open to new things. You think yoga isn’t for you? Perhaps you’d particularly benefit from its techniques for switching off and mindful experiencing. Mindful nutrition doesn’t have to mean deprivation. Sophisticated and honest Slow Kitchen® instead of all-you-can-eat makes pleasure a mindful experience again. A good glass of wine with a long view and lake panorama can move you more deeply than the hectic bustle of overcrowded entertainment strips.
• Am I creating unnecessary leisure stress? Long-distance trips, party nights and action-packed activities are supposed to bring balance, yet often cause even more stress. New experiences can also be found at wonderful holiday spots in Central Europe. On holiday too, experience and pleasure should of course not fall short. But this doesn’t have to take place in hectic all-inclusive hotels. Atmospherically special places like Abbey Sankt Georgen act as a power spot amid nature: fine lake access, dreamlike gardens, honest cuisine and architecture with soul provide real deceleration that resonates lastingly. If holiday planning, arrival and stay are uncomplicated, more space remains for exciting impressions.

Give yourself the chance to break out of bucket-list tourism and discover what is valuable in individual pleasure. – Abbey Sankt Georgen on Lake Längsee warmly invites you to do so.

Boredom can be a gift if you don’t immediately drive it away. It can become an impulse giver if you endure it. Sometimes a thought you would never otherwise have had arises precisely then. It also helps not to dramatize boredom. It’s not an expression of failure but a sign of an open field. The question is: what do I fill it with? Perhaps it needs less activity than attention. Those who look closely often discover new paths in the silence.

Finally, boredom gives impulses for new projects: Have you always wanted to do more sport? Enjoy a break in nature? Engage more intensively with what is good for you and your body? Use the potential of calm to fathom what fulfils and satisfies you.

People find their escapes very differently and yet there are patterns:

• Change of place: Many people receive new impulses through a few days in a place where nature, mindful pleasure and inspiring architecture take centre stage.
• Movement: Many find their way back to themselves through cycling, hiking or swimming. Rediscovering the childlike joy of movement in nature, decoupled from schedules, can release maximum feelings of happiness.
• Experience culture: A concert, a reading or a spiritual impulse stimulates the mind.
• Seek silence: Some consciously withdraw to be able to listen more to their own thoughts again. Entirely at your own pace and in an architecturally appealing ambience, this is particularly easy and feels good.
• Encounter: Often, exchange with people pursuing the same goal is particularly fruitful. This can be combined with pleasurable leisure activities. All it takes is the right place and the right offer to bring “like-minded people” together.

Often it’s precisely the simple, quiet paths that have a particularly lasting effect. People report that they found new strength through a weekend in nature or a hike alone with themselves. Or that an unexpected conversation over a glass of wine in beautiful surroundings triggered more than an entire course. Some hike, others indulge in idleness by the water – the path to one’s inner centre is as individual as we humans are.

This text is not meant to give you instructions, but to create resonance. If you’ve recognized yourself in one place or another, that’s already the first step: you sense that change and new impulses are important! The goal is not a “better life” in the outer sense, but a life that feels more like you again. Fresh momentum doesn’t come from outside, but from within, when we make space for it.

The right place for new impulses can help: Abbey St. Georgen on picturesque Lake Längsee in Carinthia offers you the perfect setting for a break entirely at your own pace, to draw new energy and develop new perspectives on life.