It can be a struggle to actually turn off all your thoughts and truly relax at the end of a long day.  And is unfortunate as it may sound, that struggle can worsen when you’re on holiday.

There’s always that feeling that you’ve forgotten something or that there’s still more to do and not enough time. So if you’ve ever wondered why you’re possibly feeling stressed while on vacation, even while laying out on the beach in Hawaii, a recent study can help you understand why.

The research found that those feelings of stress can strike on vacation when you least expect them to, because many of us are pretty much always available to our phones to respond to our bosses, and co-workers.

The study found that what really stresses us out is not that there may be actual work that we need to do,  But rather, that we feel as though there’s a subtle, implicit expectation that we may receive an email that we may be expected to respond to.

What’s more, is that this stress can be passed over to those around us.  What can we do then?

We’ve got to set for ourselves very clear rules and boundaries of what’s expected of us during work and non-work hours. Even talk to your boss about these boundaries, because you deserve that beach time, completely worry free.