Grow A Career: travel

Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts

5.12.2014

How to Bring an Island Home with You

The crazy thing about staying on an island is that you discover the beauty of space. Especially when you are on a particularly small island.

That may sound paradoxical, but it makes perfect sense to me, perhaps because I'm a woman who:
1. loves islands
2. discovered she needed some space.

Now, I always knew that I loved islands, especially the tropical ones.

But what I didn't know- at least not until I stayed on Sanibel Island for 10 glorious days- was that I sought space. I know that now because when I came back home, I immediately began missing that space.

Surprisingly, I didn't find I missed the physical space I'd inhabited- the warm, sandy beaches, the gentle waves of the Gulf, the salty air that felt so good on my skin- as much as I missed the mental space.

In fact, the morning after we returned home, I immediately felt squeezed for that space. I had no room to think and to just concentrate on one thing to its completion. I began to feel stressed and overwhelmed with equally pressing tasks, wondering where that "purity of intention" disappeared to, as Anne Morrow Lindbergh referred to in Gift From the Sea.

And, most importantly, how about that "enough" mindset that I myself wrote about just a couple of weeks before we left? Where did that go? I knew that coming back from vacation was always tough- for everyone- but I thought this time would be different somehow, since I'd really felt centered when I left for Sanibel. But apparently it wasn't to be. The Monday After Vacation was kicking my behind.

And I hate losing, especially to a Monday.

But after a couple of days of putting out fires and spinning my wheels with junk that all seemed to be equally important, I realized that I'd forgotten the subtraction part of the equation. I realized that this piece of the puzzle, the heavy-handed, almost ruthless prioritizing, has to come first or there's no room for mental space to exist.

It just took me 'til Thursday to realize that, which is not bad, I suppose. But hopefully next time Monday will be easier to tackle.

(If someone could just remind me that would be great.)

Vacation Space

Going on vacation- a good vacation, that is- automatically subtracts all of the non-essential details from our lives for us, limiting distractions and igniting our ability to be fully present. After all, on vacation we possess only the bare minimum of things we need, all of which can fit in the space of a suitcase. (Granted mine was rather large, but still....)

We give ourselves permission to linger instead, and notice what our family is doing, what nature is doing,

and, ideally, we even notice how we ourselves are doing, physically, mentally and spiritually.

But what happens when we come back from this vacation? That suitcase of bare essentials gets unpacked, and is matriculated back into a world filled with too many non-essential distractions. Which is why most of us dread that Monday After Vacation: we become acutely aware of all of those distractions that had been pronouncedly absent when we were living fully and simply on our little island.

Creating Space

Not being one to give up a good fight, I decided to battle that Return-From-Paradise onslaught head-on. I was determined to bring some of that "vacay" mentality home with me.

So, in order to recapture my less-is-plenty mindset, I started subtracting. I ruthlessly unsubscribed to insignificant email lists, promotional garbage and arbitrary social media updates (there were far too many to count.) I postponed some non-pressing activities to a time when I could better prepare for them. I deleted all of the little STUFF (a better four letter word exists but I won't use it) that had been building up in my day-to-day living but which had gone unnoticed until it disappeared for 10 days. Then, with all of this build-up gone, I again re-focused on the most important goals in my business and in my personal life.

And, you know, it felt really good! Almost as good as a day at the beach.

So, What Truly Belongs In Your Suitcase?

Why not create your own mental island of intentional, peaceful living? You could start by subtracting those trivial things that are big on distraction and little on payoff. I'm not talking about the challenging, important responsibilities critical to your livelihood, family and health. I'm talking about those meaningless distractions that hinder rather than propel your work or life forward.

And what will you do with all that mental space that's now freed up?

Here are some ideas I came up with while lingering a bit:

Relish sweet moments.

Stare at a bird.

Reflect.

And notice reflections.

Find inspiration

in color

and interesting textures.

Find shapes in cloud formations...

and watch the sun melt into the horizon.

Island Time

It's not easy, cutting back or saying "no" or ditching things you aren't absolutely sure about ditching. But I think it's essential. We need mental space or our bodies and brains start to revolt. And the only way to guard and protect this space is to set up protective barriers, and build in margins of time that surround our most treasured activities. Otherwise, our priorities get washed away with the tide of daily living.

I urge you to try it: build in "island time" to your life and discover the great things that happen.

This dude's definitely built in some island time.

5.03.2014

Island Wisdom

My family and I recently returned from a fantastic vacation spent on Sanibel Island. More pictures shall soon follow, but I thought it appropriate to first share a quote from Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, a book I return to year after year when I want to reclaim a sense of serenity.

A little background: Ms. Lindbergh wrote this book while she was staying in a tiny beachfront cottage on Captiva Island (which neighbors Sanibel Island) back in the 1950's. I love the book's simplicity and, of course, its inspiration: a sea that almost magically washes millions of intricate shells to shore. Lindbergh eloquently uses these shells as metaphors to describe the varied phases of a woman's life.

Decades after this book was originally published, the little islands of Captiva and Sanibel, I'm happy to report, remain wonderful places to go shelling. Most importantly, however, Ms. Lindbergh's insights into life, solitude and relationships are still incredibly relevant in 2014.

Here is one of my favorite quotations:

“...I want first of all... to be at peace with myself.

I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can.

I want, in fact - to borrow from the language of the saints -to live 'in grace' as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony...”

-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Gift from the Sea

Photo: Creative Commons via Flickr.

8.28.2013

The Wild Wild West

Hellooooo road trip!

Cody, Wyoming

My family and I recently made a big ole sight seeing trip around the Mountain States of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana a few weeks ago.

And what a switch from Italy! We went from "ciao!" to "howdy!"

But, even in comparison to the beauty of The Amalfi Coast, the terrain out here was absolutely magnificent in its own right.

I can certainly see how the centuries-old romance of The American West lives on today.

View from the car

But here's the crazy part. We could've flown straight into Billings, Montana for a cousin's wedding; however, we opted instead to fly into Denver and drive to Billings- an eight hour trip.

And then drive to Cody, Wyoming, through Yellowstone National Park, and on to Jackson, Wyoming.

Oh, and then back to Denver. Which totaled about 1700 miles in all.

Are we are nuts?

Yoooouuuuuu betcha! (Just ask the kiddies, they'll tell you.)

But they'll also tell you we had a blast.

A colorful outdoor wedding reception

From the Grand Tetons of Jackson Hole to Cody Night Rodeos to Native American Festivals, we covered some major Wild West territory. We learned about Buffalo Bill (showman/entrepreneur/marketing genius), Annie Oakley (sharpshooter/fierce competitor) and fascinating Native Americans like Sitting Bull.

Talk about some intriguing career paths!

Our Own Rough Riders

I must say that at the start of the trip I was pretty nervous about so much road time with the kids. How can we prevent endless hours of whining, I worried. (Of course, it didn't help that members of our extended family were quite dubious about our travel choices.)

But all that worrying about whining made me go into "Whatever It Takes" mode. My husband and I strategized how many miles at a time we could reasonably ask the kids to go. We must have searched Distance Between Cities a thousand times. I also researched fun towns like Cheyenne, Wyoming to see along the way, found some cool festivals to attend, made up games to play (some were admittedly lamer than others) and made sure we made lots of stops for stretching. We even made scrapbooks out of brochures, postcards and other memorabilia.

And you know what? All that creative planning actually worked! Yes, whining happened, but hardly at all. Fortunately, I was still channeling my new travel mindset courtesy of Peter Jon Lindberg, who says we must make a great traveling experience happen for ourselves. So when things got rough, we switched gears, re-routed, and adjusted. (Not unlike managing your career, right?)

And when things got desperate, we stopped at Dairy Queen and had

The Great American Blizzard.

Most importantly, the kids were really psyched about seeing and experiencing so many new things. And it was so freeing to know that we've reached a new stage in the life of our little family: one that involves more travel.

(For a wanderlust gal, that's very exciting news.)

Here are some more pictures from our adventures.
-Enjoy!