It can be way too easy to just go along in life and keep your head and eyes straight forward, just plowing ahead. But when we do that we often miss out on the importance of the experience’s life offers us along the way. Wouldn’t it be great if these experiences could make our journey simpler, more enjoyable, easier…and best of all, more fulfilling?

Well, that’s exactly what we want to touch on today. We want to go over some of our recent travel experiences from our summer trip to highlight 3 specific takeaways for us, and hopefully, you too! Specifically, we’d like to share some perspective in 3 areas. How:

• Sharing your story is important to help you & others grow

• The simple things in life are the most satisfying

• Capturing “lessons learned” sparks continuous improvement

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Hayes Family Adventures and Tapping Into Lessons Learned

When we picked up our  rental camper and before we headed out, we were given specific instructions to share our stories in a journal (a journal that belonged with the rental camper). Specifically, we were not allowed to write about how awesome the camper was.  Instead, we were asked to share our adventures!

As we reflected on our adventures, it got us to thinking about how humans have been telling their stories and experiences for thousands of years and it’s the experiences we have…not the stuff that matters.  And it’s through our experiences…where we learn life lessons.

So…we wrote!  Below are some excerpts of the  journal entries we made on our 3-week camping trip along with some lessons we learned:

1. All Hooked Up And Ready To Go….Or Maybe Not

• On day one…our car battery died just as we hooked up the camper!

• Lesson: Don’t let a bad situation damper the rest of your plans.

• Lesson: It’s all about your attitude.

2. Menacing Mosquitos

• Mosquitos were vicious in Wisconsin, but we didn’t let it deter our attitude. At first we were miserable, but then we just had to adapt…MORE BUG SPRAY PLEASE!

• Lesson: Little things can make a big impact…but yet again…it’s all about your attitude!

3. Who Brought The Heat?

• We left Texas to get away from the heat but then found ourselves stuck in a heat wave in Western New York! The temperatures were no different than in San Antonio, but we were in a new element and still had fun!

• Lesson: Same type of  conditions but in a new place = different perspective. Sometimes you just need a new venue to give you a different attitude and perspective.

4. Simple Fun Tubing On The Lake

• Probably the best day of our entire trip!

• With family, enjoying the outdoors…everyone was having fun and working together from prepping the snacks and the boat…to encouraging cousins to take a jump off of a two-story dock…and teaching first-timer’s how to tube behind the boat…total teamwork!

• Lesson: Experiences vs Things will make you happier.

5. Jellystone and “Help…We’re Surrounded by McMansion RV’s!”

• Jellystone was a great RV park…but it had more than we needed.  As it turned out, we hardly spent anytime enjoying all the “extra” ammenities. We had more fun just running around and hanging by the campfire telling stories.

• We also experienced a lot of attention!  In a sea of huge RVs we got tons more attention with our little camper.  Matter of fact, a lot of the big RVers were drawn to the simplicity of the small trailer (they looked a little envious actually ;o)

• Lesson: Don’t be fooled by all the bells and whistles.

6. Flicks In The Sticks

• We brought along a little Pico projector and set up an outdoor movie screen. There’s something nostalgic and just plain cool about watching an outdoor movie (we used to love going to drive-in movies as kids).

• Funny thing is, the big RV kids wanted to join us instead of being inside their own RVs (with all the bells and whistles and probably 2-4 televisions)!

• Lesson: Again...don’t be fooled by all the bells and whistles.

7. How Not To Fly A Chinese Floating Lantern

• We watched a family try to float a lantern only to see it end up in a clump of trees and catch on fire!  It totally derailed their fun.

• Lesson: No plan and poor prep = potential for disaster 

8. Kissing a Fish

• We spent a day with Dan’s cousin Tim and his family who built their cabin and swimming/fishing pond with their own hands! There was no electricity on the property and no internet…just family and friends splashing in the water, fishing, eating and telling stories. It was good ole family fun!

• Lesson: Simple fun and your own piece of heaven can create memories for a lifetime.

9. Four-Wheelin’ with the Amish

• We didn’t really four-wheel with the Amish but we did go four-wheeling in a big Amish community!  The kids were excited to see horse-drawn carriages and a lot of men with long beards ;o)

• It was really neat to see how simply this community lived and although their lifestyle is very different than mainstream America’s, they are respected and valued in their communities for their hard work and craftsmanship.

• Lesson: Your simple lifestyle may be different but respected. We hope that’s how people feel about us.

10. Taste of Buffalo

• Dan and I had a date night but couldn’t decide where to eat.  Instead of getting “analysis paralysis”, we decided to do a food crawl and enjoy some small bites of comfort at each of our favorite food joints.  It was a brilliant idea!

• We got to taste a little bit of everything we wanted…and we didn’t overstuff ourselves!

• Lesson: Sometimes you don’t have to settle on just one thing…and…”everything in moderation” really is a good rule to live by!

11. What?  We Have To Check Out Today?

• Funny how you lose track of time when you’re on vacation and relaxing. We got caught off-guard when we were told we had to check out a day early.  Actually, it wasn’t early….we were late because we didn’t check our calendar! And for some reason, Dan had it set in his mind a different day that we were supposed to check out and totally disregarded his alerts and reminders.

• Lesson: Sometimes we get something or an idea locked in our heads and get tunnel vision which can cause us to stray from our routines.  Don’t forget your routines.

• Lesson: Trust but verify. (In this case, Dan trusted himself instead of his routines….but I should have verified ;o)

12. Rookie Move

• We forgot to follow our nightly “lock up” checklist and failed to put away our trash for the night.  We woke up with it scattered all over the campground!

• Lesson: Remember your routines and run your checklists…or face the wrath of the raccoons!

13. Bear Hugging An Old Friend

• Dan helped save an old high-school friend’s life. Dan found himself at the intersection of preparation and opportunity. It probably wasn’t the “opportunity” he was looking for, however his years of training and experience as a first responder in the military helped him in this situation.

• Lesson: Don’t discount your past training and experiences as a waste.

14. Podcasting In The Woods

• We really wanted to record a podcast while we were on our trip but it seemed like it would be too much effort.  So we faced our challenges and came up with some workarounds. We didn’t have all or our fancy equipment to record and our sound quality wasn’t as great as it normally is, but we were determined to make it work….and it did!

• Lesson: Don’t let small obstacles stop you. 

Question:

So, what stories can you share that will help others get to know you better? What are some simple things that bring you the most joy in life? And how about Lessons Learned…how do you capture those and use them to help better your life or someone else’s? We’d love to hear what works for you!

Thing Segment:

Dan’s Thing: Solving our audio hiss that has been bugging him for a while and busting out Occam’s razor to solve the problem.

Vanessa’s Thing: Getting some positive feedback from an audience member on a presentation that focused on priorities, boundaries and routines instead of “stuff.”

Announcements:

Podcast Awards:

• Dan was talking with some fellow podcasters and the subject of the annual Podcast Awards came up.
• Hadn’t given it too much thought but they said they were going to nominate Simple Life Together for the awards.
• So, how this works is:
  • There’s a “nomination phase” (now) and then in November there’s a “voting phase”.
  • First we need to collect a bunch of nominations and then the top nominated shows enter the voting phase.
• So…we figured, let’s go for it! We figured that, heck, we must have helped people simplify their lives enough by now that they can take 2 minutes to go to PodcastAwards.com and nominate Simple Life Together, right?
• If you’d like to help us out….just go to PodcastAwards.com and nominate Simple Life Together for the People’s Choice Award and in the Education Category.
• In the Podcast Name block, just type in Simple Life Together
• In the Podcast URL block, type in SimpleLifeTogether.com. Don’t worry about the “http://” part is already in there so you don’t have to worry about that.
• There’s also an orange pop out banner at the top of the site, too. You can click there to vote as well. While you’re there you can vote for other shows in other categories, too. It a great way to show your appreciation for podcasters who provide you with great, free content.

Shownotes:

You can download the full PDF of our show prep, too.

Resources and Links:

Podcast Awards

Pico Projector

CampInn Teardrop Camper (Use discount code SIMPLE to save some money on your teardrop)