PLAN!!! In my experience, I find travelers leaning toward one style of travel or the other. One style is to plan. I mean, a rigid plan followed to the detail. Little flexibility. Plan! Know where you are going, what your are doing next, having transportation and details all arranged. I don’t think or flow like this but understand some people need the comfort of this style. However, it feels limiting to me. And certainly, if a person never steps outside the comfort of this approach to travel, they will never grow any other comfort.
FLOW!!! Basic essential planning with lots of room to adjust, adapt to the moment and opportunity, listening and feeling for what feels right in the moment and having space for magic to happen. I had to learn this! And traveling this way has brought me such rich rewards, I can’t imagine any other way of traveling! Certainly, some parts of trips or places to travel take much more planning than others. But after I’ve planned, I let plans go and see what comes up!
Planning! If course planning is important! However, planning to the degree of attempting to control every little single detail is nuts. At least to me! sFrom years of working with corporate clients, some with over 50,000 international employees, I’ve paid careful attention to key concepts CEO’s have expressed. In many different ways, with different types of clients in different industries, this is one thing I have heard over and over.
“The planning process is invaluable. The plan is useless!” People with military experience talk about the moment boots hit the ground and something unexpected shows up that you hadn’t planned for. Corporate leaders talk about similar issues like when you have come up with a brilliant plan but something like COVID 19 knocks everything off balance. What they suggest! Careful, deliberate and thorough planning essentially allows you to be capable of quickly adapting and adjusting to surprises!
When I first started facilitation work, I was so nervous I found comfort in PLANNING! But what I found was I was more focused on following the plan than meeting the needs of the people in the room! After a training program, I would have all sorts of ideas for what I could have done differently, ways to respond and engage people around their questions, etc. But, it was too late! So I took classes in improvisational comedy to help me learn to be more present, responsive and adaptable IN THE MOMENT! Everything changed! I started planning “chunks” or key principles to cover and mapping out general ideas of how to get there. Then, I trusted the group to tell me what was most valuable and we would adapt together.
Hours of planning for a team session with Microsoft, as good as it felt at the time, didn’t tap the clearly different needs of the team. If I didn’t adapt to them, our time would have been wasted. So, I chucked the plan and headed in a direction they clearly had a lot of energy and concern around.
Travel: I do the same thing! What are key pieced I have to have in place! First night lodging, passport, travel insurance, idea of transportation from the airport, etc. I do a lot of reading and information gathering. A LOT! But then, I let it go. I’ve spend a ton of time planning an upcoming trip to Costa Rica and wanted to see everything! After exploring regions, unique environments, transportation options, what is available for the season I’ll be there, etc, I stopped reading and planning. Instead, I refocused on what two or three priorities I want to experience during the time I have available. Wildlife! Jungle experience soaking up the natural energy. Relaxing time on the Caribbean coast. One day in San Jose to experience the city center and get my COVID test. DONE!
From the clarity of those few things, all the essential details fell into place….with time to be spontaneous and adaptable!
FLOW! Life doesn’t follow a controllable path! The best we can do is become more effective at adapting to what shows up. Being present! Quieting the mind! Being aware of what energy or emotion I am under the influence of what I am about to make a decision. Those perspectives all help me flow more gently through life!
I’ve seen people look like they were going into a spasm or having an attack when I describe my mode of travel! It terrifies them! It delights me! When I took my first improv class, my instructor defined improv as: “jumping off a cliff, designing your wings on the way down”. That description both terrified and delighted me. If you never learn to let go, you’ll exhaust yourself trying to control things that are beyond your ability to influence!
My practice is this! I remember the three “non’s” Eckhart Toll spoke about decades ago: 1.) non-resistance; 2.) non-attachment and 3.) non-judgment! When I feel stuck and unable to make a decision, it’s often because I’m not practicing one or more of those “non’s”.
Next, after I’ve done what feels like necessary research, I stop thinking and tune into feeling. My essential question is feeling whether a decision comes with a feeling of lightness, of ease and flow with it, it it carries a sense of relief. A feeling clearly tangible in my abdomen!!
If I don’t have that feeling, I don’t move or make a decision. Forcing anything to happen never works out very well.
On the beach in Southern Oaxaca, I told all my friends good bye one night before a planned early morning departure. The next morning, I didn’t feel like leaving. So I went walking on the beach listening to my feeling and sure enough, I felt a sense of relief choosing to stay one more day. One of my friends, an engineer (not to be picking on engineers) told me he didn’t think he could do what I did! Tell everyone good bye and then change plans!
At a hotel in Livingston, Guatemala as I was checking in I overheard two people talking about a “cascades calientes”, a hot waterfall. I introduced myself, asked if I heard them correctly, cancelled checking into the hotel and headed off with them so find some hot waterfalls.
Listening has provided many magical experiences for me in my travels I could not have possibly planned.
CHOOSE! Everything in nature operates with a natural sense of rhythm, cycle and season. We can tap into that. When I do, all sorts of magical things happen. It’s like that idea Joseph Campbell spoke of. “When you follow your bliss, it’s as if invisible hands come out of nowhere to help you. Doors will open where there were only walls.” I believe and welcome that!