Top 11 Travel Tips for maintaining your peak self
11 tips for maintaining your peak self while travelling for work
Travel doesn’t have to be an exhausting sequence of unhealthy choices, nor a reason to break good habits and routines. Like everything else, it’s simply a choice.
This story series shares my top eleven techniques I use for maintaining my mind and body while travelling.
For context, I’ve developed these techniques over years of domestic and international travel for work, leading missions, having adventures, and delivering talks and keynotes. They work for me, but I encourage you to experiment to find what works for you.
Tip #1: Choose a hotel that refuels your soul.
In my early days of travelling I used to select a hotel purely for convenience, such as proximity to the venues I would be frequenting, or by a price and feature analysis, only to later feel that the room was uninspiring, soulless, uncomfortable, noisey and even potentially stressful.
Now I have a new perspective: The purpose of a hotel room is to be my source of refuelling and active recovery — it exists to provide some quality time for my soul so that I can get the most from my trip.
Location. While proximity to the venue is very useful for ducking in and out of events and resetting and refreshing between meetings, I can actually draw more energy and pleasure from staying outside of town, near the beach, or near a river, in the mountains, or in a wildlife park or nature. Now I look for a location that will put me in my best mindset every morning when I wake up.
Exercise. Next, I like to make sure my hotel either has a great gym that is open very early in the morning, or that it is located close to somewhere where I can get out and exercise with a morning run, walk or swim (for you that could include yoga or meditation too).
Sensation. Lastly, I look for a hotel that speaks to my sensory desires — how does the visual appearance of the hotel make me feel? How will it smell? Is it likely to be noisey or quiet? Imagine for a moment the effect on your psychology each morning of waking up in a visually stunning room as opposed to a compact, plain, soulless box. Once you see this, you can’t unsee it.
Tip #2: Pack for a peak mindset.
When preparing for travel I pack my exercise clothes so that I can workout every day. I pack those colourful socks and underwear that make me smile every time I put them on. I pack my favourite aftershave. I pack my vitamins. I have friends who pack their favourite tea.
For long trips I take physical photos of my kids and loved ones to put up in my hotel room. I take a large capacity battery pack to keep my devices fully charged while on the move so I never lose touch with loved ones back home.
Even if it is a busy work trip, I pack casual clothes to change into at the end of each day as a mechanism for removing the stress of the day and switching into a relaxed mode of action. For similar reasons I sometimes pack a bluetooth speaker so that I can use music in my room to change my mood both before and after any work commitments.
The point is this: pack the things that bring you joy and make you smile, and that make you feel rockstar for when you need to perform.
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