#40: There And Back Again 🌊 ⛰️ 🏠

Shifting Perspectives Between Home & Away

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I'm writing this from my hotel room in Lisbon 🇵🇹

In ~10 hours I fly back to Toronto after 18 days away.

Travel is one of my favourite activities and the best way that I find flow (aside from reading perhaps, but that's a very different kind of flow).

As sad as I am that my vacation is coming to an end, I'm also very much looking forward to returning home. To stability, familiarity, & the comforts I've built up there.

In theme with my last few entries, I am reflecting on the nature of life, of its ebbs and flows.

Of being away and returning home.

Of the contrast life provides and the many opportunities we have to begin again.

For me, this contrast is quite stark given that I am still in Europe, preparing to return home.

The lessons I've learned and will discuss in this entry apply to more than just travel, though that is the example I will use.

They apply every time you try something new.

Every time you explore the unknown ✨

Whenever you seek flow 🌊

Recalibrating Recap

Welcome to Recalibrating! My name is Callum (@_wanderloots)

Join me each week as I learn to better life in every way possible, reflecting and recalibrating along the way to keep from getting too lost.

Thanks for sharing the journey with me ✨

Last week, I shared a few architectural photos from my time in Spain, along with my musings of the importance of allowing for rest between flows. Of making room to ebb.

The week before, I shared about my time on the coast of Portugal, seeking flow as I watched the waves (including a relaxing video I made of the drone footage).

This week, I am going to continue by reflecting on travel as an analogy for the exploration of the unknown and the importance of thinking in cycles.

Travel & Clarity

I think travel has a large impact on the lives of so many people because of the contrast to normal life and clarity it provides.

We are knocked out of the routines and habits of daily life, forced to explore the unknown far more often than we do at home.

This exploration and constant uncertainty sharpens our awareness of what is going on around us, helping to be more mindful in each moment.

Awareness allows us to reflect and observe our past self (home self) and the life that version of self is living.

It's a chance to try out new versions of ourselves while we're out in the unknown already, testing new activities and behaviours.

We become more aware of how these different versions of our selfs fit in with the greater gestalt whole of who we are.

We see the bigger picture of ourselves.

But how do we hold onto it?

Home & Routine

It's so easy to get caught in the routines of life, mindlessly moving through each moment out of habit, rather than with intentionality.

Travel knocks us out of that routine for a while, but then, as with most things in life, the cycle completes and we return back to the ordinary world.

We complete our adventure and return home.

We feel changed, having undergone a transformation while away.

A complete journey, a full cycle.

But, over time, the feeling fades, and we return back to the routines of ordinary life.

We get caught in the wheel of life, slipping back to the way we were before, until the transformed version of ourselves is nothing but a memory.

We are unable to retain the change we sustained while in the unknown, travelling, on an adventure.

Recalibrating & Retention

Time in the unknown leads to transformation of the self as we experience new ways of living.

We recalibrate who we are with many tiny transformations.

We experience thousands of opportunities to test out how this “explorer” version of ourselves would behave in a given situation.

We get to play life as a new character for a while.

It's exciting! It gives us a chance to experiment, to recalibrate our behaviours and worldviews.

To mix things up compared to the norms of ordinary life.

But how long does this new self last?

How can we retain the transformed version of our selves, the shift in perspective we gained while exploring the unknown?

This is a question I am pondering now, one I have been reflecting on regularly since I quit my job last June to begin my recalibration.

Once we change, how do we hold onto the change, without slipping back to the previous version of the self?

In my experience, the only way to retain the changed self is to maintain the pursuit of change in the first place.

Avoid stagnation and routine for the sake of routine. Avoid doing things just because "that's the way they've always been done".

After experiencing novelty, newness, exploration, adventure, hold onto that adventurous spirit in other aspects of your life.

Bring the shifted perspective home.

Now, I'm not saying that we should pursue novelty 100% of the time because that would remove all contrast with the ordinary.

Constant adventure becomes a new kind of normal in its own way.

Instead, we must learn to move back and forth between the unknown and the ordinary, completing cycles of the self.

We must both Ebb and Flow.

Ebb & Flow

Life is full of ebbs and flows.

In and out.
Up and down.
Light and dark.
Home and away.
There and back again.

Life is contrast, finding harmony as we move between different states of being.

The known becomes more relevant because it is in contrast to the unknown. But the unknown is something we can begin to forget over time if all we do is remain in the known.

It's a balance of going forward to explore the new (flow) and returning with the knowledge we have gained from that new experience to shape the way we behave in the known (ebb).

We can use the rest phase, the ebb, to build stability into our lives while leveraging the skills we gained in the active phase (flow).

It's a perpetual state of recalibration, of going there and back again, there and back again.

Ebb flow. Ebb flow. Ebb flow.

If we begin to forget entirely what it was like to be in the unknown in the first place, it's a good sign that it's probably time to go on an adventure again.

Recalibrating Flow

The point of Recalibrating is to become comfortable with the ever-changing nature of reality.

With change being the only constant in life, recalibrating becomes the greatest skill.

But it is important to recognize that the change does not (and should not) be entirely based on our external circumstances.

We must take time to internalize the change, to allow for the recalibration to stabilize before disrupting it again.

I’ve talked a lot about travel in this entry, but travel is merely an analogy for exploring the unknown.

The unknown can be anything you are not comfortable with, anything that falls out of the ordinary cadence of your life.

Flow is a way to explore the unknown, of pursuing change and uncertainty that is just out of your comfort level.

Flow is a comparison of your current skill level and the relative difficulty of the challenges you put yourself through.

If the “new” activity is too easy, it effectively falls within the known since there is not an element of exploration and challenge. There’s no adventure if you know what is going to happen next.

Failure is an essential part of finding flow, yet is something that most people shy from (or full on run away).

Failure leads to new understanding, of experimentation. Failure provides the data needed to recalibrate, so that we can work towards “success” (whatever that means).

It’s a recalibration flow, cycles of experimentation and exploration of the unknown.

A cyclic equation for finding fulfilment in daily life.

Try something new, fail, learn from the failure (recalibrate), try again, succeed.

The process of perpetual flow.

The Original Story

The concept of there and back again is not a new one.

You may recognize it as the title of Bilbo’s memoir in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien may have popularized the story, but it is far, far older than him.

The hero’s journey, exploration of the unknown and return to the ordinary world, is a common style of story that stretches back to the beginning of myth.

I’ve written on this topic several times and made a YouTube video that goes more in depth:

Self-awareness and Story (check out more of Level 3 of Maslow's Hierarchy here).

Each of us the hero of our own story, but most of us do not act like it.

It’s so easy to be swept into the rhthym of the stories of others, rather than leading our own.

A few weeks ago I gave you an assignment: monitor how you find flow throughout your days.

This is not a one-off exercise, but something to keep in mind every day for the rest of your life.

How do you find flow?

The more you can intentionally increase those flow activities, the more life begins to feel like your own story 📚

Next week

I’m in the process of my own recalibration with writing. Travel helps me to shift my perspective as I go there and back again. Away and home.

I am still working on figuring out my writing style, but more and more I realize it is a process that will forever be changing based on the cadence and rhythm of my life.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this reflective style of writing. I’m planning on sharing more of my photography with you in the future as well.

Next week, I’ll try to tie together a few projects I’ve been working on to continue helping you see the bigger picture of how the digital landscape is changing.

To continue guiding you on your own recalibration as you ebb and flow 🧭

Stay tuned ✨

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