3 Tips For Sticking to New Habits When Traveling

There is a list of reasons why I love to travel but one of the main reason why I adore to exploring new places and revisiting old, familiar cities is that each time I come out learning something new about myself and my relationship with the external world.

Having just arrived in Colorado from a family wedding, the lessons learned this time around are still fresh in my mind. While I have been doing a ton of soul-searching over the past few years, this year I decided to take my commitments up a notch from so-so to serious.

I personally have been working on embodying more open-hearted qualities in my life. Anxiety and reactive behavior have been common unwanted companions in my life They have ruined interviews for me, relationships, and the joy of life itself many times. And I have finally reached a point in my life where I feel confident enough in my personal meditation practices and my inner work to take the next step towards releasing these old feelings and patterns for good. So I decided, a few weeks before the wedding, to begin practicing loving-kindness in my meditations.

And while I saw some progress in my overall state shortly after my meditation, I noticed the positive effects didn’t always last as long as I’d like. I recognized that if I wanted to see a larger shift in my personal life, I would have to become more disciplined in my approach.

Committing To Yourself

Before providing any advice on forming a lasting habit, I’d like to briefly address the concept of self-commitment. Because no new habit will ever last without a deep commitment to the cause.

Trust me. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s started a diet on a Monday only to have a fellow coworker bring in donuts and bagels (from that good local deli) and then decide to put my diet off for the following week. Or weekend. And so on and so forth until I recognize that it’s been 4 weeks and nothing has changed.

Thus, in order to successfully establish a newfound habit such as a cleaner diet, a meditation practice, or spending less time on social media, you must be willing and driven enough to commit to changing yourself. Half-assing doesn’t work. Maybe it helped you in college to get by in that class you hated, or that job you somehow found yourself in, but half-assing (or partially dipping in one foot) doesn’t work when you want to make a change in yourself.

Somehow, if even the tiniest part of you isn’t on board with taking on a new challenge, you will likely stumble a lot more than you’d like. And stumbling isn’t something we, as people, enjoy. So we tend to run back to our old selves instead.

Your willpower and desires must be greater than your innate resistance in order for real change to occur.

So if you want to eat clean that means no special passes for office parties or dates and when you travel that means eating out as well. If you want to meditate daily, for 10 minutes twice a day, then that means not using excuses to find reasons to skip.

Traveling With a New Habit

Incorporating a new habit into your everyday life is hard enough without the additional complications that traveling away from home may entail. Having just experienced this myself with my loving kindness practice I can not only relate but provide some realistic, actionable advice.

1. Turn A Habit Into a Ritual

The difference between a habit and a ritual?

The Sacredness.

For some reason, I’ve personally held onto this belief that habits are hard but rituals are special and mystical even. Prior to leaving for the family wedding, I had already created a special time and routine that prepped me for entering into my meditation with a calmer and more open heart. The entire routine became labeled as my morning ritual and because of the positive effects that rippled from doing this ritual, it became something I’d wake up and look forward to each and every day.

With this mindset, I approached the trip knowing that in order for me to find some balance with all of the varying plans I would need to adjust and cut down on my ritual. Instead of a 20 min yoga practice, journaling, and a 20 min meditation, I would cut that in half. Having a ritual that I enjoyed doing every single day made it easy for me to see my practice as a sacred space and a necessity- to work on myself and honor my personal development- instead of a habit I needed to check off on a list or app.

Prior to taking a trip, consider giving yourself plenty of time to make your habit a ritual in some way shape or form. If you’re going on a clean diet, consider having a special time in the morning where you brew some decadent tea and create a simple and healthy breakfast just for yourself. Or if you are adding exercise routine consider taking your morning run or time at the gym and switching to walking meditations or trail running without headphones so that you can immerse yourself in the present. If you’re looking to maintain a deep connection within yourself, as part of a journaling ritual grab a special pen and initiate each entry with a moment of gratitude.

2. Add It Into Your Schedule

As contradictory as this may sound, there are people out there in the world, like me, who benefit from scheduling their free time. Scheduling activities such as going to the gym may be hard when you come home at the end of the day, lay on the couch and then start thinking about dinner. New habits, since they aren’t hardwired into our minds and bodies, are easy to forget and brush off. And thus, if these activities/habits/rituals are scheduled in, you create less room for “not enough time” type of excuses. And, if you are able to create a ritual that you enjoy, scheduling time in your calendar will seem like a no brainer.

Just set out time in your calendar, create alerts and reminders to keep you on track, and do your best to stick to it. Perhaps try an experimental week, where you schedule in your new ritual at different times to see what works best. Maybe it may end up being at different times every other day. The most important takeaway is that, through committing more deeply to your own growth, you make yourself, and your new practices, a priority. By keeping your new habit at the forefront of your mind, you begin to create the space for new neural connections to form.

3. Stick to One Habit Only

It can be tempting to want to combine new habits into one- such as attempting a clean diet coming off eating lots of sweets or wanting to meditate 30 minutes a day without any previous training or journaling every day. But this can be a bad idea especially if you plan to travel.

I’m assuming that at minimum, while you’re traveling, your daily routine will change including waking up in a different bed, the room where you sleep, your surroundings and pace. I know when I travel, if I go by car, I bring my own pillow. If I travel by plane, I choose to risk sleeping on pillows that worsen my neck and back pain. Bad sleep? Then you’re less likely to do the newly established habit and fall back to your typical routine.

Being in a new, or at least different enough from your everyday life, environment means new triggers, distractions, and cravings. It’s much easier to fall out of step with newly formed rituals because we haven’t conditioned our bodies and formed memorized behaviors. Whether we like to believe it or not, but the majority of our days we move around the world unconsciously. For example, how else can you drive to the store while texting your mom and drinking that coffee? And do you even consciously recall doing all of those actions at the same time?

The answer is that you’re not consciously driving AND texting AND drinking coffee. You have performed the same behaviors and habits so many times that you’ve subconsciously programmed your body to memorize these actions. So when it comes to implementing that new habit when you’re away from home and you’re traveling- don’t be surprised if you fall back into your unconscious old ways of being.

Situations like this are VERY common and are good testing grounds for newly formed rituals, so adding more things to remember onto your already filled up list, is a no-go.

Instead, pick one ritual, schedule it, set an alarm, and repeat. If you’re further along and need some additional support to fully begin to embody your new habit and change, consider adding an intention into your daily practice. Choose a meaningful phrase that fully represents what you want to achieve and reignites the willpower in you to keep applying yourself. During moments of difficulty repeat your intention and allow it to realign you with the positive future of accomplishing your goals.