Travel With Momentum

I'm Alex Charfen and this is The Momentum podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trail blazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules but only so that we can bend them, break them and rewrite them around our own will.

We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future. Instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we enjoy the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be.

Welcome to this episode of The Momentum podcast, Travel with Momentum. I think this is appropriate. I'm up in Aspen right now with my wife, Cadey and our daughters, Kennedy and Reagan. Coming to an amazing place like this requires travel. For so many of us who are going to travel, especially in the holiday season, or that go out and have to go to different places for business, traveling can take it out of you. It can be exhausting. It can be one of the most exciting things that we ever do and it can also just take all of our energy away. I want to give you three travel trips and then one massive game changer for when you're traveling. I'm going to just share three things that for me have changed traveling.

Cadey and I travel a lot. We've done hundreds of thousands of miles together. We've done, I'm sure it's now hundreds of thousands of miles with the kids. They were traveling since like six months old, both of them know how to get on a plane, get off of a plane. They're excited about the day they can travel by themselves. We've been doing this a lot. There's three things that I do every time I travel to make sure that it's a good trip, that I don't have stress, that I don't get over accelerated, that I don't get into that place when you're traveling where you just feel like everything's overwhelming.

The first one is, this might seem simple, it might seem basic, but it's imp ortant. It's just having an awareness of how stressful travel is. When we go to the airport, everyone there is stressed or accelerated or frustrated or confused. All you have to do is see somebody get bad news from a gate agent and you can see how everyone's walking around on a hair trigger, ready to explode. They're having a hard time. Just airports. There's a level of stress and tension in the atmosphere that we have to be aware of. I create this awareness early. I let myself know it's coming. I make sure that I'm taking care of myself, I'm working out. I go into travel as healthy as I possibly can because I don't want it to take it out of me.

Oftentimes if you travel when you're not in peak condition, when you're not taking care of yourself, you go out on the road and you get sick. That's the first one, just having an awareness of how stressful travel is and how stressed out the people around you are and giving yourself some grace. Like saying, "Hey, I feel accelerated right now because everyone else is. I need to allow for a little more time so I'm not running around like everybody else." Just be aware of how travel effects you.

The second tip, and this one you hear me talk about it all the time but I just can't talk about it enough and when you're traveling it is crucial, hydration. One of the biggest issues is when we travel we don't drink as much water, especially when we get on a plane. It is an absolute, it's like double jeopardy, it's absolute double jeopardy because you get on a plane and the plane in and of itself will dehydrate you, radiate you because you're up like way off of the earth, you're up at an altitude where you're getting higher levels of radiation. You're getting dehydrated. You're breathing recirculated air. You're in incredibly dry condition. If you're not hydrating as you travel, it will slow you down.

A lot of people talk about getting headaches or getting tired or getting worn out when they're traveling. All of that can be due to dehydration. Here's the key, when you travel take a water bottle with you. I travel with a 50 ounce water bottle, so does Cadey. We fill it up, in any given travel day, probably 10 times because we are constantly drinking water. Now, I always get the question what if you have to pee a bunch when you're on the plane? Well, you know it's indelicate to talk ... I know it's indelicate to talk about peeing, but it's a fact of life. You drink water, you're going to pee more. Here's something I want all of you to know. If you're on a plane and sitting, it's recommended you get up every hour and walk around the cabin of the plane.

Your body can actually develop cramps, you can develop all types of blockages, of clots. Being on a plane, it's not likely, but it can happen. When we're sitting, whether we're on a plane or not, we're constraining our upper half of the body from the lower half of the body where we're in a very unnatural position. Even though sitting feels natural, it's not a natural position. It cuts off the upper and lower halves of the body, reduces circulation, reduces lymphatic circulation. If you get up every hour while you're on a plane, you're going to feel better while you travel. Drinking a lot of water and hydrating has the natural side effect of reminding you not to stay seated on a plane too long and deal with all of the side effects that can absolutely crush you while you're traveling.

First is awareness, second is hydration and then here's the third one. This is probably the biggest one and the one that has changed the most for Cadey and I. We actually plan ahead for food. We never leave the airport anymore without having enough food for us and the kids on the plane. If I'm traveling by myself, I do the same thing. I go and get the foods that I know I can eat, that I know will be good for me, that I know won't hurt me and we make sure that not only that, not only do we take foods with us, sometimes we pack foods into the suitcase if we're going to an area where we don't really know what's there. But we also do research on where we're going. We find out, is there a Whole Foods or a healthy supermarket? Here we're in Aspen right across from the airport is a supermarket that has a lot of the foods we're used to, a specialty place, Roxy's that has what we need.

We know, like yesterday, this is our MO. Anytime we get to a new place when we're traveling, especially like this when we're here for a week, we land, we don't even go to the hotel. We go to Roxy's. We load up on all the foods we need, the stuff that the kids like, so that we can stay nutritiously supported, so that we can have the foods that we want, so we can feel good while we're traveling. Because here's what happens to so many people. Here's what happens, no awareness of traveling. They go out, they travel and almost instantly they feel agitated and irritated and frustrated. Well, any type of agitation, frustration, irritation is going to push us away from water. Remember, when we go even into the early stages of fight or flight, we don't drink as much water. No animals do.

When we're in fight or flight, our body says, "Don't drink as much water." It pushes away from water, it pushes away from food. It actually slows down digestion. It slows down our need for anything because we are in a fight or flight situation where we might have to run or engage in battle. That's what our body's preparing for. You knock it out of that situation by drinking the water, by hydrating and then eating the right foods. Because if you get out there and you don't have the awareness, you don't hydrate and you eat foods you're not used to, this is why so many people go on vacation and say things like, "I wish I had a vacation from my vacation," or why so many people go on vacation and end up coming back sick or worn out or don't feel well.

If you create awareness and hydrate and plan ahead for what you're going to eat and take the right foods with you, you are ahead of 99% of the people in the airport. I want to share with you the game changing strategy that our family started using probably five years ago to get through any trip with a minimum of heartache and heartburn. When you're traveling with two kids, Kennedy and Reagan today are eight and Reagan's almost 11, but we've been traveling with them since they were toddlers, both of them since they were infants. Both of them. Here's the game changer. When we're traveling, on the day we're leaving our home, we all get together and we set an intention. It's almost like a travel prayer, but our family sets the intention. We say, "Our intention is to ..." Kennedy starts it and she always say, "Our intention is to get to our destination safely." Then each person shares a part of the intention.

For us, it's our intention is to get to the destination safely, to get there without fighting, without challenges and protect and support each other and to make sure that we have fun along the way and we have a good experience and that we get to where we want to go and we're excited about being there. Then the kids always throw some extra stuff in there, Cadey and I will throw some extra stuff in there. We all hold hands while we say the intention. It's a little ritual we have. We have a little four way handhold. Then when we're done, my kids count one, two, three and we all yell, "Charfen," our last name.

That ritual is amazing. I encourage you to try it no matter how hokey it sounds because when Cadey and I started having the kids set an intention with us and we took it seriously with them and they saw in our eyes that we were serious and we spoke about it seriously, that has changed travel for us. I can't remember how long ago it was but in the past year we went on a trip and we remember it was like the trip from heck. I would say the other word but I'm trying not to cuss for the new ... I'm trying to clean up my language significantly for the new year, which is interesting. We had a trip that was just terrible. Sorry, yeah. We had a trip that was awful. The kids were fighting. We got to the airport, we weren't together as a family. We kept separating by accident. Everybody was pulling in a different direction.

We were on a layover somewhere and I turned to Cadey and said, "I don't think we set an intention this morning," and she looked at me and she's like, "You're right. We didn't set an intention." We got the kids together on the layover. We're like, "Okay kids, we missed. We didn't set an intention this morning." I don't remember if it was Reagan or Kennedy but one of them was like, "You're right. That's why it's been so hard today." We set the intention on the layover and took it seriously, did our little cheer and the rest of the trip was infinitely better. Wayne Dyer says that the power of intention will change your life. We doesn't share a lot of tactics about how to use the power of intention, but I think this is one that really works, especially when you're traveling.

The next time you and your family or anyone you love is going on a trip, or maybe it's just you, remember these things. One, an awareness of how difficult travel is. Give yourself grace. Give yourself extra time. Don't push 'til the last minute. It's already stressful. You don't need the pressure and noise. Two, hydrate like crazy, more than you normally would. Bring a water bottle with you. Make the flight attendant irritated by asking for so much water. You should stay hydrated because that will change your physiology by the time you get to where you're going. Then the last one, plan ahead for food. Make sure you bring some with you. Make sure you know where you're going to eat when you get off. That is a game changer.

The biggest travel hack I know for traveling by yourself, or with other people, is to sit down, set the intention of what you really want from the day. What do you intend from that travel day? What are you asking for from the universe? It is shocking how if you put that intention out there, your travel day will change dramatically. If you are ready to dramatically change all areas of your life, upscale and optimize who you are, what you do and you want a wholistic approach to becoming a more successful entrepreneur, regardless of what you're doing right now and what level of growth your business is at, if you're just starting out, if you're building a team, if you're expanding the team, if you're going international, whatever it is, you as an entrepreneur are the most important part of that business.

That's why I talk so much about things like awareness and hydration and planning ahead for food and setting your intention. I want to show you so much more that you can do to up level and optimize all areas of your life. Go to MomentumWebClass.Com. MomentumWebClass.Com. Check out my Momentum Master Class, I'd love to have you as a member. It is a game changer. People are in this class. We had one person lose five pounds in the first week. We've had other people lose dozens of pounds by going through the exercises in the course. Other people have ... [Galidado 00:12:58], a friend of mine who's in the course, Momentum Master Class, applied the principles and left me a message that he had over $70,000 in sales. Guys, this is a totally different way of looking at being an entrepreneur and you should check it out. MomentumWebClass.Com. Thanks for being here with me today and I'll talk to you again tomorrow.