What is travel coaching? (part 2: mid-trip engagement)
Hello, and welcome back to the Compass Travel Coaching blog, where we explore all things transformational travel – the challenges, the learning and awareness created along the way, the beauty, the complexity, and the life-changing impact of it all.
Today, we’re continuing to explore what travel coaching is. Last week, we started with pre-trip preparation and how taking time to tap into our why can be so helpful not only in mindfully planning our trip and better understanding ourselves, but also in making sure we’re showing up in a way that feels meaningful and aligned as we travel.
So after we’ve taken this time to clarify our intentions and understand what we’re hoping to get out of our trip, what next? You’ve planned and embarked on your trip, and you’re likely experiencing a ton of new stimuli and feeling a lot of things. At Compass Travel Coaching, this is where we would shift focus to mid-trip engagement.
As you travel, you may notice that the reality of being in a new place, getting settled and building community, navigating culture shock or loneliness or homesickness can all be really overwhelming. And all of these things can make it really easy to forget that intention you set pre-trip and default back to old patterns that don’t actually serve you or align with what you want for your trip (or your life).
Or, perhaps you’re diving headfirst into your trip. You’re filling your days with activities, meeting a ton of new people and hardly thinking of home at all. You’re living on the novelty and adrenaline of it all. And in doing that, the process of slowing down, taking it all in, synthesizing what you’re learning and reconnecting with yourself may be getting pushed to the side.
In both instances, travel coaching can help support you in either addressing the challenges you’re experiencing or slowing down to actually consider what you’re noticing, learning and taking away from your time. It’s in this self-learning that new awareness is created and important information is gathered that helps create sustainable change in our lives.
Travel coaching not only offers accountability, thought partnership and someone to check-in with and process things with as you travel, but can also provide or help point you toward valuable resources (think meditations, breathing exercises, self-observation and reflection practices, daily check-ins, journaling prompts, books, articles, podcasts, etc.) to set you up for success and take some of the guesswork out of how to travel more mindfully.
Next up, we get to use all this juicy information you’re collecting to make meaningful change once you’re back home. Check in next week where we will explore part 3 of the “What is travel coaching” series on post-trip reintegration. Until then…
Happy traveling!
~Tiffany