I’m not the best traveler.
When it comes to transitions + interruptions to my daily routine, I’m basically a toddler.
For me, that liminal space between time-zones, schedules, and realities asks a lot -- it feels disorienting + brings up feelings.
Still, I know transitions, interruptions, and travels are necessary.
Having adventures, making journeys, changing + growing, moving through grief, and stepping into our dreams all ask us to step into transition (+ all its inconvenient discomforts).
So here's some of what I do to make it through:
1. Give myself permission to feel all the feelings.
This is the first step for me always.
But I sometimes forget + do the opposite.
I beat myself up for feeling anxious about traveling (like why can't I just be grateful for the freedom + opportunity like a normal person?)
Or I freak out when I hit a rough patch of change (working toward a goal or processing grief) + think it will feel this way forever.
But nothing has gone wrong when transition is hard -- when we feel the chaos + mayhem of change.
It's normal to feel all kinds of feelings, and letting ourselves have + feel these emotions goes a long way toward creating more spaciousness + peace for the journey.
2. Use the interruption.
One of the things I hate most about transition is the interruption.
It can feel like I'm going along just fine in life -- and then all of the sudden, I have to stop.
An adventure, a happening, or the plans I made months in advance, interrupt me + ask me to stop what I'm doing + change course.
And I feel thwarted + frustrated.
But maybe there's another way to look at interruption.
Maybe I could see it instead as an invitation to step back, check in, and reset -- a tiny space to look deeper, get grounded, and take a breath.
When I see it this way, I spend less time resisting the interruption and more time being curious about what's available for me in the tiny space of possibility it opens.
What might these interruptions make room for + illuminate + open for you?
3. Tend to imagination
When I'm struggling with a transition, what's often happening is that I'm imagining some negative outcome.
I'm thinking: Now I'll never get this creative project finished. I'll lose all my good habits + have to start from zero. I won't be able to get any of my needs met on this journey.
But this is just what happens in anxiety mode -- our imaginations tend to go into catastrophe autopilot.
But happily, we can choose to pick up the controls + manually steer our minds in another direction.
A lot of my own self-coaching work is simply about this: directing my imagination toward possibility instead of catastrophe.
It's a practice of asking myself: what if goodness were both possible + available? What then?
This isn't about forcing myself to believe that all the circumstances of the journey will be perfect.
It's simply a matter of not closing down possibility ahead of time -- and remembering my own abilities to direct attention, feel + process my feelings, create experience for myself, and manage my mind in the moment.
What might it look like to guide your own imagination toward possibility? To remember the power + skill you bring with you on any journey, through any transition?