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How Small Habit Shifts Enhance Our Family's Travel Experience | Day 317 of my 2023 Journal

Cecilie Conrad·Nov 14, 2023· 3 minutes

Small habits changing.

One peaceful day follows just after another. It is interesting how my peace arises from small habit changes. Jesper and I usually talk while we drive. We drive a lot, so we get enough time to talk about everything we need to talk about while driving long distances. We spend our evenings with our teenagers and our days with our projects and adventures, so we rarely sit down together to work on the things that need our attention.

It is clear this needs to change. Staying in Mexico without a van and not renting a car starved us so much that we started the process of change. Change is not easy. And it does not happen overnight. Therefore, it is important to choose the changes we want in life with great care.

We have just interviewed Dean Bokhari for the podcast, and he had clever things to say about this: "Success is sequential, and habits are built one by one." And we discussed how clear values are essential to steer the focus of change in the right direction.

We KNOW we need to spend more time, NOT driving, together where we can work on the many things that need our joint attention, and now, finally, we are building the habit.

I am grateful this has happened, and I am also grateful we both can switch from effective strategies to get things done to a state of just being. In my case, on this day, just being part was going for a long and “stupid” walk with Silke, collecting life advice from t-shirts, laughing about beachwear, and enjoying the sunset over Playa; meanwhile, my sons embarked on a grand adventure on their computer together.

Silke and I especially enjoyed the fashionable Nordic line through the O seen on many a t-shirt design, changing the word LOVE to the Danish word for lion. Haha. Unbelievably, we also saw a mural we had not seen yet; hard to believe at this point, but true.

And Jesper's crucial driver's license arrived from Europe, putting us in a much better place when planning further logistics!

With love

Cecilie-Underskrift-300x133

Cecilie Conrad

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Unschooling and Parent consulting, conversations, blogposts, and podcasts on family life and learning

Hi, I'm Cecilie Conrad. I'm a trained psychologist, mother of four, radical unschooler and full-time traveller. I have lived with unschooling for over a decade and help other families find their own path – whether it is about homeschooling, unschooling, or the bigger question of how you want to live as a family.

I offer guidance, conversations and talks. I call my work grandmothering – not coaching in the traditional sense, but presence, professional insight and concrete help navigating motherhood and finding your way home to your own values.

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