Back when I used to work at Subway in high school, I had a friend that was working there as a second job with a very interesting guiding principle – he promised himself that he would learn one new skill per year and take at least one trip to a new location per year. I think I was around 17 or so when he shared this insight with me. I really thought this was a ground breaking idea.
Lifelong learning and travel, intentionally.
So I adopted this thinking for a few years, and in the next year I found myself taking a train by myself down to Washington, DC to hang with a new bud from college. It had been years since I had taken a solo trip like that, and this mindset was the inspiration for it.
Then life began to take hold with the trips / new experiences largely being tied to familial commitments that were many times negotiations. I still managed to get a bunch of trips in, and I can tell stories of some incredible locations that I was blessed to have visited. In the past year, I’ve restarted this idea of taking trips to new locations as a way to learn and grow. These trips are now averaging once a quarter, and they are largely focused here in Texas and the surrounding states.
The adventures sometimes involve my family, and many times the adventures do not. These trips are serving as a series of mini retreats that have proven to be huge in terms of my clarity when I return to ‘normal life.’ I’ve increasingly adopted this notion of long weekends away to pursue the given goals for that quarter for myself.
Sometimes these weekends are focused on knocking out a bunch of deliverables for project at work.
Sometimes these weekends are focused on getting some rest, real rest physically and mentally.
Sometimes this weekends are focused on crushing myself physically and testing my mental and physical limits.
Sometimes, it is an incredible concert and great times – pure fun and joy. Like watching a parade at Mardi Gras like a 4 year old…
Regardless there are a couple of things that I hold dear that must be kept intact for these mini retreats to really be valuable:
- It must be away from home, physically in a new location.
- I must have a focus for the time away, and in some cases the focus has been to not have a focus and to spend the time with zero pressure on myself. (self induced stress is another topic for another day)
- The weekend, sometimes an extended weekend, is non negotiable for anyone. This is my time – unless a family emergency hits, then of course it gets rescheduled.
The benefits of these weekends have been multifaceted and spanning multiple dimensions of my life. I have come back from these cocoon-weekends with a few new ways of playing into my life at work and at home. I have a mentor that lives on an island off the coast of Venezuela that told me a long time ago a revolutionary concept.
Life is life.
I’ll dig into that concept in more detail in a bit – the point my friend John has is this – your weekends are to be used as you do the rest of your time. Intentionally, and the time should be building you up, not drawing you down. This truth took me a solid 15 years or so to internalize. I guess you could say, I’ve been stubborn in keeping walls up. Back to this notion of weekends away…
This practice of weekend retreats:
- has made me a more interesting guy that is increasingly clear on where I am taking this all.
- has made me a much better father.
- has made me much more effective at work.
- has made me a better partner with so many in my life across so many relationships
- and damn, I have been apart of some truly memorable events in the past two years as a result of this practice.
If you are interested in how I manage to pull off a weekend off the grid every 12 weeks while balancing all of the familial commitments of raising three boys, social and romantic commitments, professional commitments, and how to do so without it being a stressor – hit me up. I’ll share in more detail I manage to pull this off in a bit.
My bud Steve from Barre was in many ways, an older brother back in the day, and this notion of one trip per year and lifelong learning has in many ways served as an inspiration for dusting off and then amping up the guiding principle he gave to me so many days back when we were executing the perfect ‘U cut’ on those sandwiches that Subway no longer employs.
79 to go.