My partner and I consider ourselves are very lucky people. Not only have we found someone we love and cherish and want to spend our “forevers” with, but we have been given several opportunities to travel (among other things that we believe make us lucky).

Whether we are out of the state or out of the country, on a beach somewhere enjoying paradise or sitting by a fire after a day of snow-hitting mountain tops, we always experience the same thing: we always look forward to going home.

Initially, this frustrated me. “We have spent so much money on this trip, and all we want to do is go home”. This was the original thought that would pop up during every vacation we’ve ever taken together. However, as our lives have continued to develop, so too has my understanding of that experience. Wanting to go home, I’ve realized, is an incredible blessing.

It means that our life feels so comfortable and fulfilling, that there’s something almost unsettling about being away from it for too long. We are so content in our home and in our routine. What a huge accomplishment.

Now don’t get me wrong, we still love to travel and see the world and take breaks from our life, but there’s something incredibly beautiful to me about the notion that the best part of our vacation, often, is to return home. It’s a very humbling experience, and one that makes me change how I experience my life.

As a therapist, my ultimate challenge for my clients is to help them to live a life or get to a place in their life where they, too, want nothing more than to “go home”. Home, in this instance, is more about a mental state of being than a physical location. Home, as they say, is where the heart is.

If we can each locate where our heart is, and then make a commitment to ourselves to live in such a way that we are constantly in touch with that heart, we would have such a greater experience of our lives. This is true for geographical location as well as our profession and who we spend our time with.

So next time you travel, pay attention to your desires as the trip is coming to an end—are you wishing you could stay another week, or are you missing the life that you live? If your answer is not the latter, I suggest you figure out ways to make the life you live one that you miss when you are away from it. This is the key to making your entire life a vacation.