The Decisions That Build a Solo Traveler Aren't the Big Ones

The small decision on a Sunday morning, the park or the cafe or the hotel room, is building something that will help you for your solo trip.

I took myself on an overnight trip to Olomouc in the Czech Republic, a city about three hours from Prague, because I was tired and I knew from experience that if I stayed home with a free weekend I would work. What the trip made visible was this: between where you are now and the solo trip you haven't booked yet, there are lots of small decisions that have been waiting for you to make them.

I made a small decision to I leave the Museum of Modern Art in Olomouc after thirty minutes because I was done. There was judgment in that, the kind that asks whether you're cultured enough to stay longer. I noticed it, and I left anyway.. Psychologists call the relevant skill interoception: the ability to sense your own internal signals before you've reasoned your way to an answer. It's a skill, not a fixed trait, and it gets stronger the more you use it in low-stakes situations. Those situations, ordinary and small, are what build a solo traveler. That's the practice. Not the trip.

In this episode:

- Olomouc in late spring
- Thirty minutes in the museum
- Holy Trinity Column, covered
- Park, cafe, or hotel room
- Cognitive distance and the solo outing
- The evidence account

This episode is for you if:

• ou've named the trip, know roughly where and when, but you still haven't booked anything
• you're a woman over 40 who finds herself defaulting to the logical choice, and then wondering afterward why it didn't feel right
• you've felt the slight pull toward something and then reasoned your way out of it before you had a chance to follow through
• you're a solo female traveler who wants to understand what's actually building your capacity for bigger decisions, not just your ability to plan a trip

Resources mentioned:

• Go Alone guide: My free guide to taking yourself out alone, designed for step one of the process she describes in this episode. It walks you through how to design your solo outing, what to notice, and how to follow what surfaces. Free at freedomlookslikethis.com/goalone
• Free workshop, May 30th: a live online session with Damianne for women ready to take the next step toward solo travel. Details at freedomlookslikethis.com/training

About Freedom Looks Like This:

Freedom Looks Like This is a podcast for women over 40 who want to travel solo, or who already do, and want to go deeper. Host Damianne President explores self-trust, decision-making, and what it actually takes to stop waiting and start moving. New episodes every Wednesday.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you've named the trip, know roughly where you want to go or even have an idea of when, but still haven't booked anything, this episode is for you. Do you have any idea what's holding you back? Maybe you've worked through some conditions but are still overthinking or feeling overwhelmed. There's a small practice that makes the trip possible, and that's what we're talking about in this episode. Most women think solo travel is about being brave or fearless, but it's really about letting go of the expectations holding you in place. This show is about what changes when you stop waiting and take yourself seriously, starting with intentional travel. I'm Damianne and this is Freedom Looks Like This. Let's get started. You've been thinking about a trip for a while. Maybe you wrote it down, and if you did one of the exercises from the previous episodes, it's fine if you haven't listened. But if you did, you've got a specific place in mind and maybe even a specific month. But you still haven't moved. Something is holding you back. I think what's happening is this. Between where you are now and the trip you dream about, there are hundreds of small decisions. What to do with a free afternoon, whether to go somewhere alone or stay home. What you actually want when no one else is in the picture. And if your decision making muscles haven't been used in a while or haven't been used consistently for yourself, then a big trip feels enormous. And you're not wrong. The fact is that there are lots of decisions that you will have to make for yourself with no one else around to carry them with you. But what I want to offer today is something much smaller than a trip. It's a practice that comes before the trip, and it actually makes the trip possible. So I booked a night in Olomots, a city in the Czech Republic that's just about three hours from Prague. And I took that trip. Now a friend had planned to come with me, but she had report cards to write, and so she needed to stay home. So I went alone. I knew what I wanted from the trip a change of scenery, a bit of exploring, and enough quiet space and time to feel like myself again. That's all I was asking for. The train ride was beautiful in the way that the Czech countryside is in the late spring, with these wide open fields of bright yellow ripeseed going by outside the train's window. I was able to soak in the beauty and I felt my space expand as we left Prague behind. I arrived around 1 p.m. on a sunny day with bright blue skies, and I was able to go straight to the studio that I'd rented for a short rest. I hadn't made a plan before this trip. I don't make a plan when it's such a small trip unless there is something specific that I have in mind. So I just found a couple of blogs about the city and visited the local tourism site. And then I used Google Maps to make a walking path of the places I'd potentially visit. Not gonna lie, there were definitely some coffee stops on there, especially when I found out that there was a place selling frozen coconut coffee. Once I had that map in hand, it was time to go exploring. One of the things I actually found out from the tourism website is that there was a lot of street art in Olomots. And I love street art. I found an app about the street art in the city and was able to add several of them on my path. In fact, I'd already seen the first one from the tram as I was going from the train station to my hotel. And I walked right past it again because it was right beside the Museum of Modern Art, which was my first stop. There was an exhibition of a local sculptor whose work I found really interesting. I have to admit I did not read all the plaques. But I did walk through slowly enough to look, stopped in front of a few pieces, and thought about what they were showing, what they were trying to reveal about the world. And then I was done. I'd been in there maybe 30 minutes. I looked around and I noticed other people were moving much more slowly, staying longer at different pieces, and I felt the beginning of judgment coming on. This was judgment at myself, the way these things usually are. And it's the kind that says, you should want to stay longer. You should be able to sustain this. What's wrong with you? Are you not cultured enough to spend a longer time at the museum? But you know what? I know this about myself. I love to taste things. A museum, an opera, an exhibition. Sometimes all I want is an appetizer. I don't want the whole meal. And I know that about myself. And I can honor it. So I'll go and I'll stay just as long as I want to, and then I'll leave. But notice that judgment comes up. It's not a matter of whether or not you have those habits that show up, but it's what do you do with them. And for me, I left without guilt or a story about what it meant or needing to explain myself to anyone. I realized that this is actually a practice. Catching myself, noticing, and then leaving. What I did make time for was walking up to the attic and getting to see a view of the city. This is one of the things I really love walking through different cities in Czech Republic. Often you can find a church or a building that has an attic, and you can go outside on the top floor or the rooftop and get to see a view of the city below. Now, one of the things that a friend had mentioned about Olomots was the Holy Trinity Column. It's a 35-meter Baroque monument, and it's been added to the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2000. Apparently it's extraordinary, but I wouldn't know because when I got there, it was under restoration. There was scaffolding everywhere, and apparently that's going to be the case until the end of this year. So I stood there for a moment, looked at it, well, looked at the scaffolding around it, and thought, well, that's fine. I can come back at another time. Or not. The trip was already giving me what I actually came for. And it wasn't the Holy Trinity column that would have just been a bonus, dessert, if you will, going with the whole food metaphor. I was able to enjoy the moving and exploring and the feeling of being somewhere new with no fixed obligation. I also found out afterwards that Vaslav Havel is buried in the cemetery at the cathedral there, I believe. I did not know that before going. I did not look for it, and that's okay. This really demonstrates one of my beliefs about traveling. You don't have to see everything. You don't even have to see all of the things that other people deem is important. Sometimes you can leave things up to chance and just see what you see. Sometimes you can have an elaborate plan. Sometimes you can have a medium plan and see the highlight reel. There are so many different ways to explore a city. So Saturday was really my exploration day with lots of walking around. And then on Sunday, I woke up at 8. My train was at noon, so I had a few hours. The hotel didn't have any breakfast on weekends, so they gave me a voucher for a nearby cafe, and it was a lovely place. The chairs are upholstered in green and purple, and I immediately noticed that because I love the color purple. Of course, I chose a table with purple chairs. The whole vibe was friendly. The waitresses were young, a bit unhurried, but I felt like the energy of the city tended towards young. Maybe because it's a university town. Now, you may not know this about me, but I love brunch or breakfast food. And so I'm always excited to see what different places have on the menu. One of the things I noticed in the past year is that a lot of places started having what's called Turkish eggs. And I don't remember that being a thing before. But suddenly they're everywhere, and there are these poached eggs with a lot of yogurt around it. And it actually arrived a little cold because of all of the yogurt. So it wasn't my favorite, but the it came with focus, which is my favorite bread. Then I had a cafe latte, which was pretty generous in size, even though it wasn't the best coffee. And I'm not even a coffee drinker. I love a lot of milk in my coffee. So friends that sometimes make fun of me that I drink coffee-flavored milk. That's fine. So I had a quite leisurely breakfast, and then I was faced with a decision. I still had a few hours so I could stay and read, which I'd been looking forward to as part of the trip. Or I could walk through one of the parks I'd noticed. I knew that there would be spring flowers, and my head was immediately building an argument for the walk. Dimianne, you're going to be sitting on the train for three hours. It would be good to move first. But was that what I actually wanted? Or was it what I thought I should want because it made logical sense. There's a difference, right? And there was still also the library cafe that I noticed from the day before, which I thought was a very pretty space that I would love to sit and read at. So I had three real options walk, cafe, hotel room, or some combination that I hadn't worked out yet. And I noticed that I felt okay not knowing. This is something I've really cultivated because I can trust now that I can figure things out as I go. I also know that I can change my mind halfway through the walk, for example, and that would be fine. The decision in this case didn't need to be fixed. It just had to be made. And that's often the case here. We get bogged down in overthinking because we think that there has to be one specific right decision. But there doesn't. There has to be a decision that you choose and commit to, or a decision that you're curious about and going to play with. Make a decision, try it out, give yourself enough space for it to work, for you to see how you actually feel, and then change it if that's what you need to do. In this case, I ended up doing all three. I walked through the park, I stopped at the library cafe and sat for a while. I had my favorite cake, which is pound cake, because it always makes me think of my grandmother, and it's the first cake that she taught me how to make. And I read my book, not at the hotel, but at the train station. I had even more time than I thought because the train was delayed by 10 to 15 minutes. There was no way that I could have planned that, right? But it was also fine. So what was the experience like of visiting Olomotes for that overnight trip? I went on the trip because I needed a change. So rest was what I was looking for. But something else was also happening, which is something that I notice on every trip when I pay attention to it, which is always this tension between rest and curiosity. And for me, rest isn't just sitting on the couch. I get genuine pleasure from a Korean drama. And I get moved by what happens in a book when I'm reading it. I can laugh at something and feel it in my body. Those things do give me energy. But what makes me feel most alive is movement, being in nature, being in a new place exploring. And so on that Sunday morning, both of those pools were present at the same time. And I had to actually know what I wanted. Or I had to make a decision about what I was going to try. That's what being alone with a few hours to yourself allows. You can't pass the decision to someone else. Just follow along and let the troop decide itself. You have to hear yourself. You actually have to make space. Listen so that you can hear yourself. There's research behind why this is genuinely harder to do from inside your normal life. Psychologists talk about something called cognitive distance, and it's the idea that a perspective on a situation is hard to access when you're fully inside it. You can't see your whole house when you're inside of one room, for example. You need enough space, enough distance for you to be able to see it all. A solo outing creates that space. It's not through anything dramatic, but it's just enough different from your usual environment that the noise of your roles and your obligations quiets down enough for something else to come through. So this isn't just about rest, even though rest is real. Going on an outing is also giving yourself a chance to listen to yourself. Getting out is a tool that we're using. And listening is really the point. And it's amazing what begins to happen when you actually follow the thing you're drawn to rather than just overriding it always with the more responsible option. What I was doing at the breakfast table, looking at all of the options in front of me, is the practice of making a small decision for myself. Alone with no right answer. And then to follow through with it without guilt. Now, this is not as simple as it sounds. I know that. You know that. When there are no bad options, you have to actually know what you want. You can't use logic to eliminate choices. You can't create a matrix, a decision tree. You can't use somebody else's preferences as a shortcut. You have to listen to what you're drawn to and trust that this is enough information for you to act on it. I want you to start noticing when you're drawn to something, when you feel that slight pull. Sometimes it might be so quiet that you don't even hear it because you're not used to tuning in that way. Okay, this is not a life-changing decision, right? To go to the library cafe or the park or my hotel room. The stakes are low, but the muscle it requires is exactly the same ones you need when you're deciding whether to book the trip. It's the muscle of trusting your own knowing without needing to justify it to anyone, including yourself. There is something in psychology called interoception, which is the ability to sense your own internal signals, to feel what you're actually drawn towards before you've reasoned your way to an answer. It's a skill, not a fixed trait. And it gets stronger the more you use it in low stakes situations. So a Sunday morning going out for breakfast by yourself is low stakes. The consequences are small, but the muscles that you're building is the same one. There is some nuance here to be careful about. It has become easier for me to make decisions like this because I've stopped treating them as permanent. I don't have to be careful with the decision. I can just make it. And if the walk turns out to be wrong, I'm not enjoying it, I can stop walking. If the cafe isn't what I need, I can leave. Nothing is locked in. But sometimes that's different when you're spending money or when you have expectations. The stakes are a bit higher. But this opportunity, this openness is actually its own trap. If you're always leaving the door open for something better, if you're a maximizer, as they call it, it could be that you're not really deciding. It could be that you're just managing your options. You're keeping yourself available for the better thing that might be around the corner. And that has its own cost. Sometimes what you actually need for an experience to change you, for you to really feel the experience, is to be in it. Be in the walk, not thinking about the cafe. Be in the cafe, not monitoring whether the hotel room would have been a better option. So the balance I found, and I'm still finding it, is committing and also knowing that if it stops feeling right, I could change my mind. Both things are true at once. The commitment being in it makes the experience real. The permission to change makes the commitment light enough that you'll actually make it. So now I want to ask you something. When was the last time you made a decision just for yourself? Not the responsible choice or the logical one. Not what made sense given the circumstances. Just the decision, the thing that you actually wanted. And then did you follow through with it? Did you talk yourself out of it? Did you even suppress the thought before it had a chance to arise? That's the practice. Not the trip. This right here, in the small moments where you're the only one deciding. Give yourself more opportunity to make decisions. Sometimes all of the steps are not clear. Think just about the next step. Have the destination in mind, that solo trip, that decision that you want to make, but just focus on the next step you can take. That is how you can avoid overwhelm. So step one is what this episode is all about. It's about creating space to hear yourself. It's about getting out of the noise of your normal life long enough to notice what you actually want. The solo outing is the tool for this step. It doesn't have to be overnight. It doesn't have to be three hours from where you live. It just has to be something that you feel is completely yours. Step two is the activity itself, putting yourself somewhere long enough that the practice of making decisions for yourself feels real in a sustained way. Maybe you just start with the Sunday morning, but remember we're working towards a few days of this, going on that solo trip. And then step three is what happens when you come home. What do you notice when you finish the activity? That's the step a lot of us ignore. And this is also where real change begins to land or gets lost. Do you get swallowed back into your routine right away? Or do you have a little bit of space for yourself? I've talked before about how every decision you make for yourself builds evidence. Evidence that you can be trusted with your own choices, that you know what you want, that you can follow through. It's more accessible. It's the walk in the park on a Sunday morning, the decision to leave a museum after 30 minutes, the choice between the cafe and the hotel room. They feel small. They are small because the stakes are low and no one else even needs to know that you made them. But there's still evidence. And each time you ask yourself what you want and answer honestly, each time you follow through on that answer without guilt and without second guessing yourself, you make a deposit of evidence. And you're building your account of self-trust. And self-trust is what you're going to use when you make bigger decisions. That's where the capacity comes from. When my friend didn't come on this trip, I still went. And it's not because I had resolved every question. I just showed you a bunch of examples where I hadn't. I went because I knew that I could figure it out. And I do figure it out every time, not perfectly, but enough. Enough to have a good trip. Enough to build some memories. Enough to develop my confidence and my self-trust even more. And enough to come home feeling more like myself. A lot of women ask me, can I figure out what I actually want? Can I handle the decisions? Will I be safe? You can do a bit of prep, but it can really be answered by going on the trip. The prep is not just planning, it's also making small decisions in low stake moments every day. So here's what I invite you to do before the next episode. Take yourself out alone. One hour, one afternoon, one night. Whatever you have. It doesn't need to be planned beyond the general direction. You don't need to have an agenda. What you need is to be somewhere different from where you usually are, with no one else's preferences in the picture, and to notice what you move toward when you're the only one deciding. That's it. Just notice. That's the praxis in step one. If you want a structure for it, I have the take yourself out. Out alone this week guide, and it's in the show notes. FreedomLookslike this dot com forward slash goalone. And it walks you through step one specifically, how to design your solo outing, what to notice, and how to follow what surfaces for you. And if you want to do this with a group with other women asking the same sorts of questions, with me there to guide it, I have a free workshop coming up on May 30th, and you can find the details at freedomlookslike this dot com forward slash training. Thank you for spending this time with me. If something in the episode resonated, I hope you will take one small action today, this week, before the next episode, to get you closer to that trip that you've been dreaming of. And if you've been a listener and you have found value from any of the episodes, I invite you to leave me a review wherever you're listening to this podcast. Reviews help other people find the show, and I would be so grateful.