Transcript
Alicia: Any the idea where I should start, how about that?
Brett: Traveling can be turbulent then.
Alicia: Traveling can be turbulent and your expectations are always excited.
Brett: Welcome to the Discover Your Wilderness Podcast.
Brett: Alicia, you just got back from traveling. So let’s take this episode to go over how well you practice what you preach.
Alicia: Oh, I did a fantastic job at all of the things that we’ve been talking about. I was the perfect example of intentional wilderness discovery.
Brett: Right, so one by one, let’s go through the framework, expectations. What did you expect from this trip before you went on it?
Alicia: That’s such an interesting question because for as much as I’ve traveled in my life, I’ve never traveled during a pandemic. And so my expectations, even for the airport situation of the beginning, all the way up through what it would be like in Ohio and what the experiences would be in different spaces were very, very flexible, which meant that I had a great trip at the airport once I got there and thank you again for giving me right. And I had a great experience navigating all the changes. In fact, I quite enjoyed the COVID travel experience just because there were fewer people and that was really nice for me to not have to fight them off as much as far as being there with our parents traveling with them. I know our mom well enough to know what she is going to do. She had sent me a long list of experiences that we could potentially participate in while I was there. And so I knew going into it that we would never be bored. There would be a lot going on. So I actually had that conversation with her before I got there. I said, “let’s aim for a few things and then we can fill in some stuff around that. But let’s set very realistic expectations up front as to what this trip is going to look like.”
Brett: Gotcha. And oftentimes you have assumptions that you don’t realize are assumptions until afterwards. Did you find opportunity or were you successful in being able to check those assumptions and address those, mitigate those, verbalize those prior to going to help in the setting expectations?
Alicia: I think so. A lot of it came from that space of talking through plans with mom. I had some assumptions about our schedule that I didn’t realize I’d had until she said, “we’re going to do this this day and this this other day.” And I said, “okay, I do need to do some work while I’m there.” And so I didn’t realize that I assumed we were on the same page with this. So it was good that we were communicating a lot to make me aware of those assumptions so that I could mitigate them early enough that they weren’t a huge issue both before the trip. And then throughout the trip, as we were preparing to go on little adventures, we could pause and say, hold up, you just said something that didn’t fit with what I thought this was going to look like. Where are we actually going with this?
Brett: It seems almost like a subset of the skill of checking your assumptions is that proactive communication, right? And the ability to communicate and not jump to conclusions, not say, oh, hey, don’t get defensive. Oh, hey, I wasn’t expecting this or whatever. So how did you, how well did you navigate that, was it with using this framework and having this in the back of your mind helpful for you to say, oh, I’m, I have an assumption or how did that look in practice?
Alicia: It was very much relevant to what we’ve been doing here. In fact, I think you and I had just recorded the expectations and assumptions episode when she first sent me a big long list of here’s what we could do. And so I was able to pause and say, big rocks, little ox sand, let’s talk through those. And it’s nice when you’re in a smaller group, obviously the larger your group gets, the more complex that communication is going to be. But it was so much based on very open, generous communication that allowed us to say, “here’s what I’m thinking, check my assumptions. If that doesn’t align with your vision for this.”
Brett: Sure, sure. There’s two parts to this. You were visiting someone. So it’s not like a family trip where everyone went somewhere new. And as you bring up, there are multiple parties involved. So you do have your expectations, your assumptions, but then our mom had her expectations, assumptions, and the things that she valued. So the step three, we’ve talked to expectations, we’ve talked assumptions. Now number three, priorities. How did you go about deciding what was of high value? What was of low value that if you didn’t have time would be okay if you didn’t get around to?
Alicia: I have to admit, I was a little spoiled in this regard because the fact that it was my vacation and their home made them obviously much more willing to do what I wanted to do. And so mom and dad are foodies. They love going out to restaurants. They love exploring food experiences in their area, especially local, unique food things. I love food as well, but I also love other activities, other adventures. And that’s something we had to talk through is, yes, we can go do this food thing. But I’d kind of rather just go home and go on a walk or go swimming or go do something a little more active and less consumption. And so it was an interesting experience in saying, “absolutely, let’s go do some of the stuff you want to do because I will find value in that as well. But occasionally I’m going to push back on that and say, that doesn’t sound as fun. That doesn’t sound as valuable to me right now.” And they were very flexible in saying, “great, that’s totally fine. We can go do that later. Let’s do this instead.”
Brett: Nice. So you can see now from this, and I’m speaking more to the audience than to Alicia why the framework is set up the way that it is. You have expectations and with those expectations are underlying assumptions. Those expectations and assumptions have already in your mind created priorities and values, which might not have been quantifiable or definable until this third stage when you’ve said, Oh, these are my expectations from this trip. I guess I’m looking for this kind of adventure. I want an energy packed, highly packed thing, or I want something a little bit more laid back. And that’s where we get into should we over plan? Should we under plan? How do we do we want to have more than we have time for or do we want to allow more lead empty space that we can just be able to decompress from? So did you find that you personally had over plan or under plan? You mentioned that our mom gave maybe more activities than there was time for and you countered with that. Did you find balance or what did that look like?
Alicia: I would say it was a pretty good balance. I would push back when I felt like it was too much and she was very flexible and willing to drop things. We were able to get probably more things than I had expected to do and fewer things than she had wanted to do. So I think it was a nice in between, you know, I was pushed a little bit and she was pushed a little bit and we found a happy medium between that over planning and under planning. And some days were more one thing and some days were more another and that kind of balance it out as well.
Brett: Awesome. That gets me to the FOMO JOMO and I’ll define those before we move on FOMO. Most people in today’s day and age probably recognize fear of missing out. But the counter to FOMO is JOMO or the joy of missing out and that’s saying maybe recognizing in yourself eye overplan or maybe recognizing in travel partners that they overplan and to say let’s enjoy missing out on some of these things because not all of the benefit that I’m going to get from that is going to be worth the stress of fitting that in. So sounds like in your balance you were able to enjoy getting more stuff than you expected. Did you find that you also were able to find joy in the things that were you allowed to fall off the priorities list that you didn’t let yourself get to?
Alicia: Yeah, especially because when she sent me a list I picked a couple things and I said, “these are my priorities. These are the things I really want to hit and we did those.” We made time for those. We put them in the schedule with intention and then the other things that came along. I was able to enjoy them very tranquilly because it wasn’t high pressure for me. We also kind of would front load our days and then the last part of the day was a little bit more tranquil and so we were able to get a lot of things in and get some quantity and then later relax and enjoy doing something with more depth.
Brett: Awesome. So the framework expectations were set prior ideally, assumptions were checked or discussed, priorities were put in priority order and so as to avoid either over planning or under planning because they both have pros and cons to them. You were able to find, joy in the journey, were you able to come back refreshed? Do you feel like this vacation was fulfilling the purpose of coming back refreshed or were you as compressed as when you left?
Alicia: I was definitely refreshed. In fact it was interesting. We talked way, way back at the beginning about PTO. I obviously had to use several days of PTO for this trip but it was amazing to me as I flew across the Rocky Mountains coming back into Utah looking down as the sun was setting. It just felt like such a beautiful moment of closure and resetting and okay, my mind is rested, my body is rested and I’m ready to jump back into things. In fact, I feel like I was away just long enough that I was more excited to get back to work. I was more excited to get back to the things that usually drain us of energy, but in this case I was excited for them and ready for them and brought all of the energy and experiences that I just had with me into this moment.
Brett: That’s awesome. Alright. Well, then before we head out, do you have any secret travel tips that you’ve learned any, what is what is it called when like life hacker,
Alicia: Life hacks? Pro-tips?
Brett: Pro-tips that you can bring back and share with everyone?
Alicia: Carry-ons.
Brett: Only traveling with carry-ons?
Alicia: I live by carry-ons.
Brett: You never lose your luggage that way unless they make you check it.
Alicia: No, I have a nice small little duffle thing that I can get everything in and then a little backpack that goes under the seat. So I had everything I needed. No waiting front end or back end of this lane. I love that.
Brett: I love traveling carry-on only. Yeah, get a good carry-on. We’re also posting our email address if you want to contact us, send questions, send us your travel stories or if you want any insider advice as to how you can come back decompressed. We’ll talk next week about discovering your wilderness, what that means. We wanted to apply the framework that we’d set here, but we’ll get into what we mean by wilderness.
Alicia: Yeah, what is your wilderness?
Brett: Until then, travel safe and something witty inserted here. Maybe we should just leave that part.
Alicia: I like it, it’s perfect.
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Did you have fun on Alicia’s adventure? Discover what Alicia thinks about “wilderness.”