As you all know, I’ve developed quite the travel bug this year – traipsing around everywhere from Las Vegas, Portland, San Francisco, San Diego to Barcelona and Paris and…. I just found out I’m going to SHANGHAI the end of the month!!
Travel can be SO MUCH FUN but, let’s be honest, it can also be super exhausting and leave you feeling like you need a vacation after your trip. I’ve gotten a lot of travel-related questions the past couple months so I wanted to compile a list of my top ten tricks for you guys so you can use these babies to help you travel with ease and flow next time you’re hopping on a plane. Let’s dive right in!
1. RELEASE EXPECTATIONS. Before you leave and multiple times on the plane and when you arrive. When you completely surrender your pre-conceived notions about the trip is going to be, you save yourself from disappointment and allow yourself to be in the present moment. When you release your expectations and take it moment by moment, you actually get to be present where you are with who you are with and enjoy yourself more fully.
2. WELCOME IN THE ASSIGNMENTS. One of the reasons I absolutely love traveling is because of the epic amounts of self-growth that happen on my trips. Welcome in these assignments, allow whatever comes up to come up: that guy at the airport frustrating you? feeling lonely? one of your travel companions rubbing you the wrong way? Perfect! Where’s the lesson? Why are you being triggered? Use the wonderful little annoyances and bumps in your trip to be a space for learning about yourself.
3. COME PREPARED. On a more logistical note, do bring proper supplies! For me this means my aloha daily greens for airports and cities with out easy access to green juice, my favorite teas (yogi – detox tea and organic india – holy basil sweet rose), and my all natural tooth paste and toiletries because we all know most hotels aren’t providing the kind of stuff I use at home. I also bring my crystals, some cards from my alter and my “infinite love” flower essence spray so that I can make the hotel room a sacred space during my stay. I pack myself lots of snacks for the airplane like homemade chia seed pudding, nuts and berries because there is nothing worse than being starving on a plane with a bunch of food you couldn’t be paid to consume. Oh, and lastly, a few good books, because any wait in line or flight delay can be made a little sweeter when you have some great reading material.
4. LET YOUR DAILY RITUALS GROUND YOU. Yes, I do travel with that huge ACIM book and yes I do the same daily ritual regardless of where I am in the world and it is my saving grace. I wake up, make my tea (that I’ve brought), set out my special things and read my ACIM lesson of the day. I then do a twenty minute or so kundalini meditation. This has become a non negotiable for me, it grounds me and keeps me centered and connected to my highest self regardless of what chaos may be happening around me and I find is even more useful on the road!
5. OPTIMIZE YOUR PACKING FOR EASE. Okay back to the logical, make your life easy and avoid as many minor delays as possible. If you’re going someplace with a pool or beach, pack your bathing suit and beach stuff straight in your carry on so you can check your bag at the desk and enjoy the sun if you have to wait for your room. If you’re traveling internationally, do the research ahead of time and get all your power cord adapters so you don’t have to go to a bunch of little bodegas in a foreign city trying to find one on your first day. Buy a suitcase that has a unique pattern so that it’s easy to spot at baggage claim and you never have to worry about someone accidentally snatching your bag. I’m obsessed with my lesportsac suitcase because it literally looks like someone painted it and has cut my time at baggage claim in half, also, it’s pretty and who doesn’t love cheerful things while at the airport?!
6. DO WHAT YOU WANT, NOT WHAT YOU SHOULD. Learned this major lesson while visiting London by myself in my early twenties. I was running from museum to museum to show and exhausting myself and then I finally caught myself on the steps of yet another museum feeling super anxious and bummed out. A little voice said to me (helloooo inner-guide!) ” what do YOU really want to do?” Hmmph. I wanted to go get a cookie and sit in St. James park in a beautiful lawn chair and read my book. I was only running around to every tourist attraction imaginable because I thought that’s what I SHOULD be doing. Now I absolutely love traveling alone or in small groups because I don’t do the tourist thing. I listen to my intuition and I decide how I want to spend my trip. In Paris, this included many days sitting outside at cafes reading till the sun went down and I wouldn’t have had it any other way!
7. HYDRATE YOURSELF. Come on, even little miss holistic lifestyle coach over here needs to constantly reminded myself that I need to drink lots of water when I’m doing lots of flying. Yes, even if that means being the most annoying window seat passengers and having your row get up five times during a flight because you’ve drank a gallon of water. Better hydrated than not my friends! Also, when eating food that I’m not familiar with while traveling, water really helps me flush it through and keeps me feel good!
8. LEAVE TIME FOR REST. Another glorious lesson I learned the hard way, yes, you are on vacation and even if you are not on vacation – if you are traveling for work – it’s still incredibly necessary to make time for rest. When I was younger I used to be obsessed with soaking up every minute in a different city and felt like it was a sin to sleep in. Now I know that I’m in a better place to soak up my surroundings and be the best version of myself when I’m fully rested. Much better to sleep till noon your first morning in Paris than to ruin an entire week feeling sleep deprived, groggy and half awake in a beautiful place.
9. WRITE A RECAP. I’m so lucky to have a blog and an active journaling practice to really help me soak up every morsel of a foreign city. I love reflecting while I’m there about what’s coming up for me, what the experience is like, as well as writing on the airplane home or back in my bed about what I learned about myself during my trip. Even if no one is going to read you insights it’s a beautiful way to really cement the beautiful things you’ve learned in your subconscious.
10. GIVE YOURSELF TIME TO RECALIBRATE. I’ve messed this up enough times so that you don’t have to! G I V E Y O U R S E L F T I M E T O R E C A L I B R A T E, I repeat. You will, I promise, come crashing down in the next week or two if you don’t give yourself a bumper of a day or two when you get home to just relax and recalibrate. I went straight into client meetings after my San Diego trip and it took me a long weekend the following week to get myself back to normal. Sleep is sacred.
