Getting help with travel

A few months ago I needed to fly out for a few trips, back to back. I was anxious about them; more so than normal. There was a lot to get done, and my brain worked overtime to try and make sure it would all go smoothly. Life—of course—doesn’t really work that way, but you try telling my brain that. 

Flying has always been a bit of a drag for me. There’s all the uncertainty of travel, airports, security; figuring out all the pieces. 

So I tried something new this year to see if it’d help. Yes, flying and travel stresses me out. But not every time.

Back when I worker at XWP, we were helping Beachbody with a massive launch. The goal was to take their DVD system and get it online. This required the coordination of a bunch of teams, and the team I was on traveled down to California once every six weeks to meetup onsite. 

This lasted for about a year and a half. And it seemed like I was traveling down about every six weeks. 

Around half way through the engagement, I realized something. I wasn’t stressed out anymore with the travel.

I knew how to get to my local airport, I generally parked in the same spot each time, and was familiar with the TSA lines. The trip was the same, flying over the same mountains. All the pieces were familiar. 

When I landed in LA I knew where to go, how to find the rental cars, which hotel I’d stay in, and sometimes I’d even land in the same room. 

All this sameness worked to my advantage. I didn’t need novel. I had plenty of that in the work environment and what were trying to accomplish. When it came to travel logistics, it helped to be treading the same ground time and again.

So, at some point in that project I went on auto pilot. I stopped stressing about all the little stages, and was mostly able to relax. 

It was such a relief. Travel wasn’t the massive 10/10 stressor I thought it had to be. Instead it was somewhere around 3/10. Even my bags—I knew what to throw in them, and it didn’t take me a half day to get sorted.

But that’s hard to replicate. 

I can’t just fly to a place six times in a row in order to make the seventh time more relaxing. 

So earlier this year I needed to try another strategy. 

I’ve never been one to meditate. I’ve tried. I’m probably just doing it wrong—or maybe that’s the whole point. But either way, a bunch of things I’ve tested to try and make life a little easier didn’t do it. Running helps, diet helps, sleep is a big part of it. But those are elements that I can’t always control easily when life is disrupted by a trip.

So I reached out to my doctor and asked to try some medicine to help with anxiety. I knew I could keep white knuckling it and just make it work.¹

She prescribed an anxiety medication, and because I’m very good at managing todo lists and tasks, I’ve been taking it faithfully ever since.

The change has been massive.

Instead of feeling a 10/10 for stress with travel, I’m probably a 6/10 leading up a trip—especially if it’s one I haven’t done before. 

That’s a big deal. I can just feel the years adding back onto my life. I’m not at a full run-from-a-lion freakout the whole time. Instead I’m more like at the it’s-probably-a-raccoon-about-to-spook-me stage. Not quite where I hoped, with all stress removed. But more than worth it. 

I can sense the rest of the tension floating somewhere in my subconscious. But it’s at bay, not all encompassing and overpowering.

And it’s had positive benefits I wasn’t expecting. Recently, for a church event, I helped out with a handful of skits and activites from the front. Normally I do everything in my life to avoid such possibilities—I’m not generally interested in presenting to hundreds of people at once. I can do it, but the stress leading up to and during the event has a cost.

This past weekend my stress was around a 4/10. It was fine. My hands only shook once, and I had fun doing the activities.

The negative side effect, so to speak, is that I’m less driven to over achieve in every possible area of life. But that was a 11/10 before, and is probably an 8/10 now. 

I say all this to try and remove a bit of stigma around getting additional help. Sometimes you can do it with alternate methods. But sometimes it’s ok to see if something more powerful will do it.

1. And I didn’t even mention the motion sickness. I get sick on planes. Not generally to the point of needing to do something about it, but just enough to feel miserable most of the trip—and a few hours afterword. I’m at the point now where I look absolutely ridiculous wearing motion sickness goggles, an anti-nasea shock band, a neck fan, drammamine and gum, and ginger. I try it all. And sometimes it works. That’s probably why I get a bit stressed, frankly.