Note: Steven has written a fascinating book, Hidden Travel, in which he explains how we can create extraordinary experiences for ourselves and our companions no matter where we may go. I’m so glad to welcome him to LEA, as he has a spiritual and mindful approach to travel that gives him great insights to share.
by Steve Brock
When I was a kid growing up in Southern California, my family had a camper that we drove all over the western US.
Then, in high school, I went on a group tour with other students to Europe. I studied theater in Europe in college and then spent my junior year in Germany.
In grad school (MBA in International Management), I studied two semesters of Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan and traveled throughout Asia. After grad school, I taught a grad program in marketing and trade in China for a year.
Later, I worked for World Vision, the humanitarian NGO, and that took me to some of the hardest places around the world but showed me the beauty of people even in difficult circumstances.
For the last few decades (at least pre-COVID), I’ve been on a plane every other week for work and do one or two international trips each year with my family. In short, travel has been part of my life since I was a kid.
How to Create Magical Moments When You Travel
I’m indebted to Chip and Dan Heath for their book, The Power of Moments in which they talk about creating “defining moments,” ones that are both meaningful and memorable.
When Dan reached out about examples of applying their framework, I shared how I’d used it on trips and that became the basis for the chapter in my book, Hidden Travel, on magical moments.
The Heath’s framework is simple. They say that a defining (or magical) moment has four characteristics.
It is Elevated (not your normal day-to-day routine),
it involves a form of Connection (where you engage meaningfully with others, e.g. a wedding, funeral, family celebration, etc.),
it includes a moment of Insight (like an aha moment where you suddenly see things differently)
and it includes a sense of Accomplishment (or achievement, such as running your first 5K or riding a horse when you’ve always been afraid of big animals).
The example I give in the book of applying this was a trip to Italy and Slovenia with my wife, son and daughter-in-law where each person agreed to create a learning experience for the others.
My favorite was my wife’s. We were in Rabanov Kot, a tiny remote valley in northern Slovenia and found out they do a lot of felt work there. She found an English-speaking woman who specializes in felt making (sweaters, bags, slippers, jewelry, etc.) and my wife got her to do a workshop for the four of us.
None of us knew anything before about how wool becomes felt, but we all had an amazing time together learning something about the local culture while hitting on all four elements of elevation, connection, insight and accomplishment. (Read more on this experience.)
Once you understand the principles and how you can actually create (not just randomly experience) magical moments, you can do them anywhere. Both for people with whom you travel, but also those you meet along the way.
How to Develop New Ways of Seeing While On a Journey
Routine and habits regularly blind us to wonder.
We need habits because there is so much beauty and wonder all around us that if we noticed it all every day and at all times, our little brains would explode. So habit and routine are helpful in allowing us to get our work done.
But if you want to experience more wonder, you have to get away from the routines.
Travel does that for you. Everything in a new place is fresh and novel. But even there, we may limit how we experience that novelty to tried and conventional forms of perception.
So in the book, I explore different approaches such as ways to engage all your senses (e.g., ask yourself where you would go, even near home, to encounter the very best scents or sounds—most of us never pursue those sense intentionally), but also how to pay better attention by being more present or letting your personal passions/interests drive what you pursue and look for on a trip.
For example, just having a quest (e.g., find the best baguette in Paris) will cause you to see Paris in a whole new way. Quests and a clearer sense of purpose on a trip do amazing things for your ability to see new things.
It’s important for personal development because it stretches us and builds our storehouse of experiences and insights.
How Travel Can Inspire Creativity
The more new ideas you’re exposed to, the better you are at coming up with better ideas. It really is a quantity leads to quality scenario.
I’m currently writing the follow-up to Hidden Travel which is about how travel enhances your creativity and vice versa. And what I have found in the research is that while most people deny they are creative, we all are. Most of us just haven’t taken the time to find the medium or outlet that works for us.
But even in daily life and for personal growth, creativity is such a huge player. Everyone—EVERYONE—resonates to some creative urge and finds deep satisfaction and joy when they are engaging in something that has a creative aspect. If you’re human, you have the capacity for creativity.
And what travel does is expose you to new possibilities, new sparks. When you start paying attention to little details that move you or to how you respond to certain circumstances, you’re uncovering deep longings you may have ignored for years. And when those come to the surface, watch out. Because life suddenly becomes much more vibrant and exciting.
How to Use Travel to Find Out What Matters to You
Second, if you’re not really sure what you love, use your trip to find out.
Treat it as a giant scavenger hunt to uncover hidden desires. Most of believe we will think our way into our purpose and interests, that somehow, the answer will just come to us. But that rarely works.
Research shows a much better approach, for your hobbies or even your career direction, is experimentation. Try a lot of things and see what sticks.
Trips are amazing learning laboratories where you can try things you’d never pursue at home. There are guides and classes and experiences to try in just about any interest area you can think of.
There’s a reason a chapter in the book is called “Just a Bite.” The premise is that, as my mom told me as a kid, “You don’t have to like everything. But you do need to try it. Just a bite.”
Apply that to new experiences. Yes, they may be scary, but that’s how we grow. You never really grow inside your comfort zones and you’ll never find what truly delights you if you don’t get out and try new things.
How to Turn Travel Disasters Into Travel Triumphs
It’s a travel truism that the worst experiences on a trip become your best stories afterwards.
There’s a line in the travel and creativity book I’m writing to this effect: “Failure is only a matter of insufficient timeframes” meaning that what seems a disaster at the time may turn out to be the best part of your trip or at least lead you to a better experience.
But the example in Hidden Travel deals with the difference between traveling with expectations (where you expect a specific outcome) and traveling expectantly (where you hope to do certain things but are open to all sorts of possibilities).
I give the example of being in a beach resort on a day that gets rained out. Expectations says the day is ruined. Traveling expectantly says, “Great! What else can we do now?” and it opens the door to hanging out with locals in the town square you’d never have visited if you’d been on the beach or catching up on your journal or playing board games with other travelers who become life-long friends.
I was on a work trip last week that took 27 hours of transit time to get me to and from Seattle to Knoxville, TN. Was that fun? No. But I got to know a work colleague so much better, I got work done at the airport that actually saved me from having to work on the weekend at home, and I walked away with a greater appreciation for the times when flights go on schedule.
It wasn’t what I expected, but there were numerous benefits and blessing along the way.
What Determines Whether You Have Meaningful Experiences in Travel?
This one is tricky because there’s a line in the book that says, “You don’t get meaning from your trip. You bring meaning to your trip.”
So yes, it is like a spiritual quest and the impetus of the book (over a dozen years ago!) was this recognition that God can show up even on a vacation (as opposed to a pilgrimage or other more spiritually-minded trip) and that even the most seemingly simple of trips can be deeply meaningful.
The quote is based on this idea that meaning is a personal, relative concept. Go to any place—a cathedral in France, a temple in Myanmar, a Celtic “thin place” in Ireland—that is supposedly a deeply spiritual location and you’ll find just as many people on their phones as those who are moved to tears.
Many people try to find themselves or even lose themselves on a trip, but as the old line goes, “No matter where you go, there you are.” We bring all our baggage (mental, emotional and even spiritual) with us wherever we go.
So if you’re not able to find meaning in life at home, it’s doubtful a trip will solve that. However, (and it is a bit however), if you know what is meaningful to you or are open to exploring that, trips are incredible at revealing new aspects, avenues or expressions of things that are meaningful.
So for me, I have a sense of what moves me, what interests me. It’s usually tied to the old Platonic concepts of beauty, truth and goodness. I used to think that travel was an opportunity to pursue those. And it is.
But I have found far greater meaning and satisfaction in not just pursuing those on a trip, but bringing those on a trip and trying to share those with the people I meet. I’m actually an introvert, but I’ve found that the best, most meaningful trips and experiences involve others.
Not just receiving from them so as to make my experience there one I can brag about on Instagram. But to give, to hopefully encourage each person I meet so I leave the place—and the people there—better off than when I arrived.
If I was looking to them to somehow bestow a sense of meaning to me, then I’m only taking. But if I go to give and share and truly value and enjoy them, we all walk away with a more meaningful experience.
You Can Get More from Travel When You Think in Terms of Story
I run a branding agency that helps corporations and non-profits grasp that everything is about story and that telling theirs in clear and compelling ways is one of the most important things they can do.
Why?
Because we’re all motivated by and drawn to stories. Stories move us in ways that presentation of facts just can’t. We can speak deeper truths through stories because stories touch the heart, not just the head. And here’s the best part: When you learn to think in terms of stories or the elements of stories (plot, character, conflict and theme/moral), you can reframe your own experience and get more from it.
The two most rewarding aspects of a trip, what research shows to be the happiest parts of any trip, are anticipation before the trip and reflection afterwards.
And the reason for the latter happiness is that reflection lets us savor the experience and derive meaning (there’s that word again!) from it. And if you learn to think of your trip as a story, you’ll get even greater meaning from it because you’ll skip over the logistics and common elements and will identify the peak moments and the most compelling aspects of it.
You’ll also be a lot less boring to your friends when you tell them about your trip.
How to Get the Best Stories Out of Your Vacation
Stories don’t have to be long. Think of the six-word novel attributed to Hemingway: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”
It does take effort to think through what the key elements of your trip were so you can convert those into a story. But it is so worth it, both for you and those you tell.
One quick tip: If you want to turn your trip experience into a story, don’t be limited by the time sequence of it. The worst travel stories are, “I did this then I did this then I did this.” Start by identifying the main theme then show highlights that represent that.
For example, my wife and I were in the former East Germany two years ago and visited on the same day, an incredible library, the home of the poet Goethe and we encountered examples of the music, art, and literature of Germany that are world famous.
And then, hours later, we visited Buchenwald Concentration Camp. In one day, we witnessed the best and worst of Germany.
I don’t have to tell you all the details, though a longer version could. But in those few lines, you get a small sense of why that day was powerful.
Is it a full story? No. But the one in my head that helped me make sense of that day is.
There Is More to Travel than Most People Think
[What Steve hopes readers take away from his book:]
That there is more to travel than most people think.
That trips can be an amazing learning laboratory to explore the things that you care most about.
And that while some trips are great at being just about lying on a beach and relaxing, you’ll get more out of your trip and more out of life if you put just a little effort into making a trip that connects your inner life with the outer world you experience on that trip.
Oh, and that you don’t have to travel far to travel well. All the benefits of travel await you even on small trips or even at home.
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Writer, photographer and branding expert Stephen W. Brock is the author of Hidden Travel: The Secret to Extraordinary Trips and has written for National Geographic, Matador and many others, in addition to his popular website on the intersection of travel and creativity, www.ExploreYourWorlds.com.
He has traveled to over 50 countries in search of hidden places, unlikely encounters and great gelato. He helps travelers and explorers of all levels to think differently about travel by connecting the world around them with the world within them.
He lives near Seattle, Washington with his wife and favorite traveling companion (who fortunately is the same person).
For more information on Steve and his work, please see his website (above), and connect with him on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Hidden Travel: The Secret to Extraordinary Trips is “a different species of travel book.”
It doesn’t tell you where to go or what to do. It shows you how to travel.
Not in the ordinary way. But in an extraordinary manner that will help any traveler, from beginner to road warrior, get more out of each trip—and their life.
Whether on a trip around the world or just around the corner, Hidden Travel provides surprising insights, tips, resources and exercises to help you discover and experience fully what matters most to you, wherever you go, even at home.
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever books are sold.