Back

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

Thank you for reading
I would love to hear from you. Listen to your thoughts and reflections - or praise :) It is often emotional to share our lives like this, and we get very happy when we get your feedback. So feel free to share a comment below 😋 

See more images on Facebook

Visiting the David is garnished with masterpieces of Florentine art from the 15th and 16th centuries. We have seen a lot in this genre before, and it…Read more
We have to face our modern society and how consumerism is consuming us. And our world. It is extremely hard to stop. We keep buying stuff, we keep ac…Read more
Playing games with each other creates a space for confirming our codependence, our ethical stand, and in the end, our love for each other. It also cr…Read more
Walking the graveyard and memorial yesterday with my husband and children and with my sister and her children sparked good conversations and deep tho…Read more
Our psyche evolves, stabilizes, and thrives with other people. We are supposed to be close to our parents, siblings, children, spouses, cousins, and …Read more
Ten years ago, we visited Italy in our first van conversion; we went for one day to Cinque Terre. This time we wanted to come back to walk the trails…Read more
I believe teenage girls need their mothers much more than our society appreciates and that the way we raise children in institutions, pushing them t…Read more
One advantage of living in a van is the number of things that need fixing/maintenance is much smaller compared to living in a house. Another advantag…Read more
This is a general warning for everyone who loves Shakespeare. For everyone who loves literature. Maybe for everyone in general. Do not visit Juliet's…Read more