How to Stay Grounded While Traveling
I’ve done my fair share of traveling in the past few years and as I am sitting at the Minneapolis Airport waiting to embark on my next overseas adventure, I am thinking about how hard it can be to stay grounded while traveling (or anytime your external world isn’t consistent). When I travel, I like to integrate the new experiences into my usual routine rather than completely turn my life upside down for a week or so.
When I moved to Belgium for my Junior Year of college, I had a wake-up call and realized that although traveling to a new country ever weekend seemed glamorous, it’s not. It’s actually extremely exhausting and can be an easy way to get burnt out and even lose sight of yourself. In the first few months of acclimating to the European culture, I quickly realized that I needed to change something in my life or else I feared I would just float away because I was so ungrounded.
Maybe it’s just a “me” thing but in the beginning of a new change or transition in my life, I find it easy to get wrapped up in the world around me. I often put my own needs aside for the sake of fully immersing myself in my surroundings. While full immersion is good and I highly recommend it, especially when traveling, I’m also someone who needs a sense of stability to keep me feeling 100%.
Traveling and learning how to befriend the uncertainty that it so often brings is a good lesson to learn in life. We can never control how life is going to pan out. There will always be things that happen each day that we can’t expect or control. While these are practices that I use while traveling to bring a little stability back to my life, they are also things I use in my daily life to maintain peace throughout my life. When my inner being is strong, I am able to adapt more quickly and manage the uncertainty of the external world with a little more grace.
Make your space your own sanctuary (even if it’s a hotel room)
This might just be another “me” thing but when I travel for long periods of time, I bring things like picture of my loved ones, crystals, and mini travel candles to make the space I am staying in feel more like home. I’m very much someone who is all about the atmosphere of a place and having these little pieces of home help me to find home in wherever I travel to.
Meditate
Of course I had to add meditation to this list. If you take one thing away from this post, let it be that 10 minutes of meditation when you wake up and before you go to sleep will create the biggest difference in your overall wellbeing. Even a few deep breaths while I’m on a flight, am in an unfamiliar place, or feel overwhelmed by the chaos of a big city can help to slow my mind down and ground back down into myself. Meditation is a daily practice that keeps me grounded no matter what my outer life looks like. Breathing really is one of the easiest, and cheapest forms of self care!
Create a small morning/night routine
Along with making your space a sanctuary, having a daily routine that you do every single day in the morning or night (or both!) can help bring more routine and structure into your days while you are traveling. This routine doesn’t have to be very detailed or long but it should be something that you enjoy. It could be a simple as bringing a book along with you and reading a chapter each night before you go to sleep.
Prioritize rest and keeping yourself healthy
It’s easy to throw your health goals and priorities out the window when you are traveling. I am all for indulging on a few extra sweets and not working out while on vacay but as I learned the hard way, our bodies like to be taken care of. I have found that finding a balance of prioritizing my health and also enjoying the place that I am visiting helps me to feel more balanced within myself. This can look like doing a short yoga flow in the morning or walking instead of taking Ubers or eating breakfast or lunch at home while leaving dinner for restaurants in the city. Especially if you are traveling long term, it is really important to learn your limits because it is easy to overextend yourself when you are traveling. I had mono while i was in Belgium and continued to travel each weekend even though my body was screaming out for rest...I survived but I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone.
Do the things you usually do that make you feel better
What are the things that you do when you aren’t feeling yourself? Sit at a cafe and people watch? Take a bubble bath? Go to a yoga class? Whatever it is, take note and see if you can do that thing while you are traveling. In the past, I have taken a Soul Cycle like class in Amsterdam, spent all day people watching in a town square in Bologna, and went to various contemporary art museums throughout Europe. These are the things that make me feel good but also sometimes just a simple walk through a park does the trick. One thing that I’ve learned while traveling is you can almost always find things that feel more at home.
For me, being grounded is a feeling of ease or of being at home within myself. I’ve often found that while traveling, I hardly take any time to slow down and really take in my surroundings. Because I am so busy moving from one place to another, life seems to be moving in fast forward. Prioritizing slowing down, savoring the moment, and these few simple practices allow me to really be where I am rather than just moving through it.