Adventure is a State of Mind
Are you hoping to have the perfect travel adventure with your next trip? Well, I hate to disappoint you, but it’s not going to happen.
What?! I can hear you yelling at me now. Aren’t I supposed to be the enthusiastic travel writer encouraging everyone to be brave and take on challenges so as to reach the adventure goals they’ve always dreamed of? Well, yes and no.
Why Do We Need to Plan for Imperfection?
I absolutely want everyone to develop the courage and skills they need to take the trip they’ve been dreaming of. And I want everyone to do everything they can to make their travel adventures memorable. I think travel has the potential to enrich all of our lives, and I don’t want anyone to miss out on that.
But I also know that life doesn’t always go exactly as we planned, and that is even more true for travel. Just as no person is perfect, no travel adventure is perfect (and if you’ve been following along, no bag is perfect, either). And it’s important to accept that this is part of the process of travel.
We can’t predict everything that will happen in the future, but there are some potential problems that we can anticipate and plan for. It usually doesn’t take much time to have a plan for what you will do if certain things go sideways. And a little planning can often prevent small problems from turning into larger ones.
What About Positive Thinking?
Many self-help gurus encourage their followers to visualize their goals and focus on their success in reaching those goals. It’s the concept behind vision boards… and maybe Pinterest.
To plan something, you have to imagine it. By all means, visualize what you want to experience during your travel adventure. Letting yourself dream of where you want to go is half of the fun. Visualizing all of the fun things you want to enjoy is the initial step in planning your adventure.
But positive visualization will only take you so far.
Research has demonstrated that individuals are more likely to be successful if they combine positive thinking with worst-case scenario thinking (referred to as “mental contrasting” in the research).
In other words, visualizing your goal, combined with thinking through what could get in the way of you attaining that goal, will actually improve your chances of attaining that goal.
Thinking It Through
Some basic research can go a long way toward anticipating trouble. For example, read the guidebooks and travel blogs about the area you will be visiting. Read the reviews with an eye toward the specific types of complaints people made about an area. All of these can give you some ideas of particular difficulties you might encounter.
Every plan and location has its own, unique difficulties, so it’s impossible to anticipate everything we might encounter during our adventures. But we can anticipate some potential problems – namely, the kind that can occur anywhere, whether we are abroad or in our home town. The following is an example of how to think through a possible problem and develop a plan.
Getting Separated and an Example of Planning Ahead
What is a common worst-case scenario when traveling with others? Getting separated from each other, of course!
If you will be traveling in a crowded area where there is any possibility of getting separated from your travel companions, make sure to agree on a meeting place in case you get separated. This could be a landmark, a specific entrance/exit to a building, a cafe, or the next place you were planning to visit, if it is nearby.
When using public transportation, such as a metro, it is possible to sometimes become separated during the busiest times because one or more in your group isn’t able to push onto a crowded metro car before the doors close. I usually suggest to my companions that, if separated, the plan is to exit at our destination station. Of course, this means you need to make sure that everyone in your group knows which stop that is before attempting to board.
If I’m traveling with children or with someone who might feel panicked at the idea of traveling on their own, even for just a short while on the metro, I will instead suggest that everyone exit at the next stop after being separated in order to regroup.
As scary as it was to once watch the metro doors close as my niece, Jordan, was still standing on the platform, I didn’t panic (although I did have a brief thought of how I would explain to my sister-in-law that I lost her daughter in London) because I knew we had a plan that we would meet up at the next station if we were separated.
Many people don’t think they need to plan a meeting place because they have cell phones, but I think it is still a good idea because phones are not always 100% reliable. There are still areas where cell coverage is spotty to nonexistent, and this includes being underground in a metro tunnel. Also, many people choose not to pay extra for cell service when traveling abroad… or forget to activate it before they leave home… so cell phones may not be an option when you are traveling outside of your home country.
Even if you have cell coverage, it never hurts to have a Plan B… just in case.
Expect the Unexpected
“The only constant in life is change.”
This is a very ancient truth, attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (535-475 BCE). It was as true back then as it is now, and it will continue to be true in the future.
When it comes to travel, change is the number one rule. I’ve recommended reading about the places you plan to visit as a way to prepare, but with this, anticipate that any and all of that information can change.
Sometimes the passage of time is the culprit. Guidebooks, and even information on the internet, can be out of date. Restaurants close. Hotels come under new management.
Sometimes things just happen. We can’t anticipate everything, so we have to accept some uncertainty. Weather. Illness. Road construction.
If we expect the unexpected, we are less likely to let one negative experience ruin the entire voyage. After all, if we didn’t expect everything to turn out the way we planned, we can still feel at least somewhat prepared when it doesn’t. In fact, the best things in life are often just a little bit outside of our control and push us outside of our comfort zone and into the unexpected.
And that can be a good thing! But accepting the unexpected will occur doesn’t mean we can’t plan for it too. Use the weather as an example. None of us can control the weather, but we can still do some things to make it easier to manage. For example, we can do our research as to what weather we are most likely to encounter, and we can adjust our plans and our wardrobe accordingly.
Create a Margin of Safety
Even though we can’t anticipate every possible problem we might encounter, we can create a “margin of safety” to help us cope with the unexpected.
Some ways to do this are to leave extra time in our schedule in case our travel plans are disrupted. Often what turns an inconvenience – such as a traffic jam – into a crisis – missing a flight, for example – is not having enough time built into the schedule to help us manage unexpected difficulties.
Another example of creating a margin of safety is carrying an extra credit card or cash in case we run into an unexpected problem, such as the bank putting a hold on our credit card because we forgot to notify them we will be traveling outside of the country. (Yes, I learned this one the hard way!)
We can also create a margin of safety by leaving a copy of our passport with a trusted friend or family member back home in case ours is lost. And by having paper copies of our flight and hotel reservations in addition to the digital copies on our phones, just in case our battery dies.
Maintain a margin of safety. If your life is designed only to handle the expected challenges, then it will fall apart as soon as something unexpected happens to you. Always be stronger than you need to be. Leave room for the unexpected.
James Clear
Be Flexible and Learn on the Fly
As I’ve made very clear by now, no one can anticipate or plan for every possible problem they might face. Even the most experienced of travelers will repeatedly be faced with well-I-didn’t-see-that-one-coming situations.
The key to maneuvering successfully through those troubles, however, is being able to learn on the fly.
In case you’re not familiar with the term “learning on the fly,” it means to learn something quickly and in the moment, and adjusting to the situation in real time without prior preparation.
Learning on the fly is not necessarily something that can be taught, but it is a skill that all of us can learn and grow through experience and practice. The primary way we learn to do this is through trial and error and learning from our mistakes.
We also can improve our ability to learn on the fly by observing others. When trouble arises, take a few seconds to notice how others are handling the situation and assess whether there is anything you can learn from their responses.
Similarly, don’t be afraid to ask for help. None of us knows everything, and often just a little nudge in the right direction from someone else is all it takes for us to figure out what we need to do to solve the problem.
Look for the Potential in the Problem
Not every problem is really a problem. Just because something doesn’t go the way you planned, that doesn’t mean it’s bad.
A popular financial podcaster, Roger Whitney, is fond of saying, “When things go wrong, ask, ‘What does this make possible?’”
Sometimes when things don’t go as planned, it actually creates opportunities to do things that we didn’t previously consider. Maybe we didn’t even know the other options existed! For example, a museum being closed on the day you planned to visit might ultimately result in you spending time in a beautiful park that you’ve never heard of, or spending time with your travel companions in a cafe that makes the best soup you’ve ever tasted.
One time my husband, Greg, and I got lost in Tokyo while searching for a knife store he wanted to visit. Not only could we not find the store, but neither of us spoke any Japanese other than a couple of polite phrases, and we couldn’t find anyone who spoke English. I’m still a little confused as to how everything happened, but in the process of trying to get directions, we ended up with free tickets to a nearby museum. We definitely couldn’t have planned that!
Trust Yourself
Trust that whatever happens, you’re probably going to figure it out. After all, you’ve obviously found a way to handle everything life has thrown at you up to this point, haven’t you?
Most of the time, things work out. We learn from our mistakes. We move on. Often, we remember the things that went wrong with some fondness and humor. And recounting how we got ourselves out of an unexpected mess is often the most entertaining story from the entire travel adventure.
Remember that part of trusting yourself is also trusting that you don’t need to control everything. The author, Oliver Burkeman, says that too much control squeezes out that which makes life worth living. Going with the flow sometimes is the absolute best response we can have to the unexpected.
Stop Worrying
And finally, don’t dwell on what can go wrong.
Huh? Did I just contradict everything I just wrote? Well, not exactly.
What I’m recommending is once you’ve thought through the problems you can anticipate, have come up with a plan, and know you’re as prepared as possible to cope with the unexpected troubles that might arise, stop thinking about it. This is the benefit of knowing you have a plan and trusting yourself.
I grew up in Kansas where every school had to have at least one tornado drill every school year. Since I spent Kindergarten through 8th grade in the same building, that meant I experienced that same drill in the same location at least nine times. If there had ever been a tornado in my hometown during school hours, I (and every other student) knew exactly what to do and where to go.
And for that reason, we didn’t have to think about it at any other time.
There is an old saying – “You can’t cross a bridge until you come to it.” (Also alternatively phrased as, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”)
Your travel adventure is the bridge, and beyond having some basic plans of how to handle problems, you can’t do anything about them until they actually happen.
Worrying (which isn’t the same thing as planning) won’t prevent troubles from occurring, and worrying won’t help you to handle situations any better. Worrying just drains your anticipation and takes a toll on the enjoyment of your upcoming adventures.
So, once you’ve planned for what you can, the best thing you can do is stop thinking about it and go back to imagining all of the things you’re going to enjoy.
Are there any possible troubles you can anticipate with your next travel adventure? If so, what can you do to plan for them? And if there’s nothing you can plan for right now, how can you remind yourself to stop worrying?
Author
