xo,
Sunni
There are two types of trips that I go on, they are both extremely valuable to me and to my life journey and soul growth, but each in totally different ways.
The first type is camping and/or road trips and adventures. These ones are deeply restorative to me, and though they of course always have their challenges too, they mostly are harbingers of peace, calm and a deep relaxation into myself and life.
That is partially because I am a HUGE nature lover, nature is my teacher and my muse and I love the freedom and newness and ease that comes with these types of adventures. They are like a gust of wind into my soul and my sails, renewing me for the next leg of my life-path.
But that is not the only reason they feel that way, the other reason they feel easy to me is because they are not a stretch for me. I believe that I can have that, and have it relatively easily. This is because as a kid, our annual vacation was a 2 week long camping trip to Yosemite. My parents worked hard every other day of the year, and this was our big treat.
We would wake up before dawn and the whole extended family would caravan to our “spot” which was pretty private and quiet at that time (before everyone and their brother discovered it). We would get to stop at IHOP for breakfast when the sun rose on our way there, and I remembering thinking that was such a special treat!
This trip was the highlight of the year, I remember being so excited, it was my most favorite thing grabbing my pillow and getting in the back seat looking out the window and riding blissfully into a couple of weeks of time in the forest, swimming in the river, and hearing the adults laughing and seeming lighter in spirits.
So as a little girl I formed a belief around this, totally subconsciously of course, and my belief was that I could have freedom and adventures and time in beautiful nature, and I could have treats like restaurant stops… but I would never have a lot of money.
So taking these kinds of trips now feels easier to me in body and soul, because they do not require me to stretch my belief in myself. Now the TIME and MANNER with which I take these trips HAS been something that has stretched me (longer periods of time, with ease and not checking in on work, getting a beautiful RV a couple of years ago, etc.) but still it feels pretty doable, and at least within my comfort zone.
And because of that, it manifests really easily for me now. I still have to deal with all the guilt and shame that comes up telling me I don’t deserve it, but I know how to manage that now too, and it’s much less intense now with these kind of trips. Which brings me to the OTHER kind of trips that I take…
These ones are booking stays in beautiful (and therefor expensive) hotels, suites, or vacation rentals, and these ones serve a very different purpose. It SEEMS like they are to relax and luxuriate and delight in the beauty of well designed spaces — and they ARE about that — but mostly in my life, they’ve felt like stretch trips.
Meaning these ones were much less comfortable and “easy” feeling for me. They always forced me to grow into a new level, and stretch me to reach for something I didn’t think I could have, but really WANTED, and judged myself for wanting. They stretched me to get comfortable in something I wanted, but was not yet fully comfortable with. The prices, the upgrades, the luxury, the service—all of it.
It took me YEARS of doing this to do it with any level of comfort and not feeling like a total imposter. When I first started dragging Kenny to luxury boutique hotels or nice restaurants both of us had anxiety up to our ears feeling like we didn’t belong in such high-end places and were going to be discovered and dragged out to the curb by our ear lobes at any moment! I could have sworn someone was going to say “who let these two shabby kids in here and who the hell do they think they are?!”.
Back then I would stress about my clothes, and how I looked, and how I talked, and thought I had to be someone else to fit into this strange world I didn’t know. I would stress about Kenny’s clothes too, and I would be a total controlling bitch trying to “helpfully” and nicely suggest alternative outfits, which were just not him, and made his anxiety, and MY anxiety, even worse! He grew up much poorer than me, so this was even harder for him, but he always supported me because that’s the kind of total gem he is. He sees my wild dreamer, and he lets her fly.
So, anyway, these trips were definitely not “deeply relaxing” because of all this at first. You are not going to be deeply relaxed when you believe you have to be someone else to be somewhere, or you believe that you are an idiot for spending your money this way, and you should be doing something more practical and responsible with it instead, but regardless of that these trips are something I’ve felt deeply driven to do in my life.
And each time we do one of these trips, I up the ante. I upgrade the experience a little more, and a little more, and a little more. I do all the things I’m “not supposed to”. Like pick the room I want, not the one that’s more affordable. Like order the room service, even though everyone says it’s overpriced. Like get a half day spa treatment and not gasp at the price tag. Like trust myself and trust the flow of money, and trust life. Intending that it will all be covered and I will continue to save and grow my money too, that it doesn’t have to be either/or.
I started small with this, and have done this over the years, upping the ante a little more each time. Growing myself into a new kind of life. A life where it is safe for me to choose such things. A life where I can do such things… without any guilt, shame, fear, imposter syndrome, or gasping at prices or spending. A life where I can do such things with peace in my body and mind.
These types of trips are about embodying a different side of myself… a side of myself I have judged harshly and rejected in the past… the side who loves beauty and design, the side who loves to delight in thoughtful details and comforts. The side of myself who wants the best. Who picks the top package. The side of me who wants her freedom of choice. Who likes luxury. But this is the same side I’ve judged, and been judged for. Judged as “hoity toity”, spoiled, uppety, shallow, selfish, heartless, un-spiritual, wasteful of resources, and all kinds of other judgements.
The thing is, I don’t love doing those kind of trips more than the camping and road trips, I love them both for totally different reasons. They nurture and expand different sides of myself, and BOTH of those sides deserve nurturing. But it is much harder to nurture the ones that we feel ashamed about and judge ourselves for.
All the pretty expensive things and experiences don’t fill any holes in me—in fact they honestly just HIGHLIGHT the holes in me, but that is EXACTLY why I do it! To stretch my love and trust in myself into the places it has not been before. It highlights where I do not love and believe in myself, it highlights where I feel my limitations are, and what I think I’m allowed to be, do or have. It highlights my discomforts within myself, my judgements of myself and others, and I then get to process all of that, and grow a little more beyond that, each time.
As such, these trips have been a little more of a trigger-fest than a luxury-fest 😂😆, but each time my level of comfort grows, and my level of what I allow myself to have and to receive grows too, and my relationship with myself AND with Kenny grows.
We stretch ourselves into a new container. We put on our hotel robes and slippers and joke about calling Jeeves to pull the car around. We doodle stick figures on hotel note pads, and ask for them to please cook the steak longer instead of just eating a steak that makes us sick so we don’t feel like an asshole.
We laugh a lot, and sometimes we fight, because it’s bringing up secret pains and shame in both of us, which I unfortunately deal with by trying to control feelings and situations, and he deals with by trying to fix feelings and situations, and neither one of us is having it, so off we go into a painbody spiral.
But by the end there’s tears and laughter and we’ve both grown through something that we’d never faced before. It’s magic. Messy magic! But magic nonetheless.
And because we take that challenge on, and deal with all that it brings up in us, it gets better and more enjoyable each time. And each time we believe a little more that we belong wherever we damn well please and put ourselves, and that we don’t have to look or act like anyone but ourselves, in any place we want to be. People everywhere are just people. Same deal, different place, different clothes. (and if you really want to know the truth, they’re just mirrors of the different parts of you, but that’s another blog post. 😉)
Both these types of trips are just ways that I see what I can do—ways I expand what I’ve done, or where I’ve gone before—and that works well for me because I love growing. It’s the reason I love the wind, and being in motion, and going someplace new… it makes me happy. Discovering the new within myself and in the world.
What makes you happy? What makes you happy that you judge yourself for, and thus keep out? How would it feel to let that judgement go, and see that your desires are part of the special blueprint of your soul and vital to your journey in this life?
I’d love to know. Hit reply and tell me, I will hold your wishes safe and sacred, always.
P.S. If you’d like to work with me on creating more of what makes YOU happy in your life and business, check out my Feast or Famine No More Course, where we do exactly that every month of the year » Get started today »
