Making Changes: Bringing what you love about one adventure into the next

Sometimes when change occurs it feels like we are starting over, or starting from a blank slate. Sometimes that feels freeing, while other times it brings up more fear than we bargained for. Change doesn’t have to mean that one part of your journey ends and the other begins; it’s an evolution of your story, your adventure, and you can bring parts that you love about one adventure into the next. Bringing forward the parts that you love, or the lessons that you’ve learned, helps the transition be smoother and filled with more joy.

I remember getting ready to go back to California after studying abroad in Sydney. Being in Sydney made me feel so alive, adventurous and confident. I honestly felt like I could do anything. Thinking about going back to California brought up fear, because I felt like those feelings of adventure and empowerment would go away as soon as I landed. I completely attributed everything that I had felt in Australia to being abroad. What I didn’t realize was that I had changed. I had transformed. I could take those lessons and feelings into the next situation, and that’s exactly what I did. When I went back to California, it was more fun and freeing than ever before. I followed my passions, went on day trips and met a ton of new people. Just because one journey ended, didn’t mean that the parts about living in Australia that I loved needed to.

Are there times in your life that you absolutely love, they might have even been life changing, but you feel like once they are over, you won’t be able to feel that same way in your next adventure? When we want to continue to create something that we have experienced before it can be tough because we have a vision of what it needs to look like. If we strip that away and focus on what it was about that situation that we loved, we can create experiences that we truly enjoy regardless of the situation.

One of the things that I loved most about being abroad was that I got to be myself. Because I knew that I would be going home, this gave me the permission to feel like I could be myself no matter where I was or who I was with. Being aware of this was one of the most important things I could have done when bringing that back to the states. Once I had experienced that freedom of just being me, I didn’t want to let that go just because I was going home, and so I looked around to see why it was that I felt like I could be myself. Yes, I was in a new country and no one knew me, but I had been to new places before and still wasn’t that grounded into being me. It was because I had surrounded myself with others who supported me to let loose, have fun and be myself. That was a huge part of my overall experience, and so when I went back to the states I took that lifestyle and sought out friendships that made me feel the same way that they did in Australia.

During my travels, I thought that those feelings from my friendships were because I was abroad, but by taking what I loved about that experience and bringing it into my life in the states, I realized that I could have been anywhere. It could have been any season. It could have been any day of the week. I attracted the fun ones, the free ones and the supportive ones in the states because I knew exactly how I wanted to feel within those friendships. We lifted each other up and encouraged each other to be our true selves no matter where we were or who we were with.

If you’re ready to go for something new, or are making a big change it’s helpful to get clear on what’s holding you back, what you like about your current situation, and what you need to do in order to bring that into your new experience. It helps to ask yourself the questions below:

What do I love about my current situation?

What is it about this change that scares me?

What is it about this change that excites me?

What do I need to create in my next adventure in order to feel _____?

How can I show up for myself and this situation in order to feel that way?

How can this change add value to my life?

Figure out what you love about an experience and you’re already in the process of allowing more of that into your life. When you take things that you love from different experiences, and combine them into a lifestyle it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, or what changes you are making, you can feel that way every day.

How can you bring what you love into your next adventure?