3 Things I Learned On My Trip

It's been a month since I went on the trip of a lifetime to California. There were so many "firsts" for me, so many opportunities to be brave and step out of my comfort zone, and I learned several key lessons.

To fully appreciate these lessons, you need to know a bit about what I was like as a child. I hated change. I mean HATED it! I liked schedule and routine. Spontaneity and surprises were not a part of my life. Even now, doing things last-minute is hard for me. Over all, I am doing much better at rolling with things, and I was pleased to see how it played out on this trip.

Travel Requires Flexibility
My cousin was supposed to fly from NY to Detroit and then we would fly together to LA. I have hardly flow in my life and I don't like it at all, so she was kind enough to be willing to do this for me. Until the day we were leaving and she was not able to make the first flight and had to take a direct flight, leaving me to fly alone. There was nothing to do but roll with it. Flights got delayed, I had to wait at the airport for her for almost two hours, and the whole start of the trip was not what we had hoped, but we were flexible because we had to be. (I'll be honest, I did cry a bit at home over the flight plan changes but that was more because I was nervous about a lot of things and I just felt overwhelmed.)


Make A Loose Plan And Then Prepare To Shift
I'm a planner. Shocker, I know :) I like to know what is expected of me and what I'm doing. When I was younger, my plans getting upended really shook me. I've gotten more mellow at using my planner as a guide but being flexible to move things around as needed. For trips, I like to have a loose plan, rather than having to decide each morning what we will do. Thankfully, my cousins are like that too, so we picked a few things to do each day, thinking we might have to shift them around. Well, it wasn't shifting so much as completely remaking the plans. Almost nothing about the trip went as "planned" but that was okay and we still got to do a lot of great things!

Adaptability Is What Makes A Great Trip
If I/we had been too rigid to adapt to the curveballs that were thrown at us, we would have been miserable. Traveling with others means we had to cooperate and be flexible and gracious with each other. It really does not good to hold rigidly to a plan that cannot happen for one reason or another. To do so just makes your experience... well... miserable. I know, because I often was pretty miserable as an unadaptable little girl.


I guess these are all different takes on the same idea. I've just never quite experienced it like this before. This trip stretched me in so many ways and showed me that I am more flexible and adaptable than I thought! Although I still don't like change and would have preferred everything to go smoothly and according to plan :)

Have you noticed these principles in play in your own travels? Or maybe you have an experience where people weren't flexible and adaptable and you saw how that played out? I'd love to hear your thoughts!