Grounded Travel
Grounded Travel Design Principles
There are four design principles in this guide. Each one is a way of thinking about travel that actually fits the season you're in, not a rulebook to follow.
Here's the one I come back to most.
You Don’t Have to Match the Itinerary
The plan is a suggestion. This is your permission to do your own thing.
This one matters whether you planned the trip yourself or you're on a tour someone else designed. The itinerary is not a contract. Skipping the optional excursion, taking a slow morning while the group moves ahead, choosing the quiet restaurant over the recommended one, sitting in a garden instead of visiting the fourth museum…or the opposite and adding more when you are called to. Changing the plan is not a failure of nerves. It’s a good decision made by someone who knows what she needs.
Grounded Travel is not about doing less. It's about doing what's right for you, even when the itinerary suggests otherwise.
Journal prompt: Is there a trip coming up, or one you're imagining, where something already feels like too much or not enough? Name the specific thing. What would it look like to do your own thing?
A note from Tracy
I'm not going to walk you through all four of these. Instead, I want to share the one that's most alive for me right now, and why I think of these as filters rather than instructions.
Inside the full guide: three more design principles, three experience experiments, a space for discernment with the Grounded Travel Compass, and the Grounded Travel Map, seven ways Grounded Travel might look for you right now.