Lessons From the Journey
When it comes to conferences, the last thing I want to do is get on a plane, fly to somewhere extraordinary, and go from the airport to the resort complex (granted, they are generally adorable) – and then, for the next two or three days, spend the bulk of those days seeing the resort from inside conference rooms. When it’s over, I return to the airport and return home without seeing where I went. THAT WAS BEFORE COVID-19, but that is another story.
The trip that prompted this article was in 2017. The Nazrudin gathering was held in South Dakota. Nazrudin is an extraordinary collective of people from different backgrounds that mainly deal with people and their money stories. We come from various fields. These include holistic financial planners like me or therapists, life coaches, authors, etc.
We believe there is more to the life planning issues involving people and their money. It is undoubtedly more than asking a dozen or so questions. The solutions are also a lot more complex. Life planning issues involve more than choosing a portfolio or specific investments. Some of the world's leading thinkers in financial planning are Nazrudin members. This group changed my life and has been my haven for the past twenty years. These are my people, and this is my tribe.
What’s near South Dakota? Yellowstone National Park, of course, is a place that has been on Donna’s and my bucket list forever. We planned a road trip around the conference. What started as a three-day conference became a two-week holiday. We invited Yvonne, Donna’s friend from high school, to come along. Yvonne has travelled with us to Greece, Turkey, Amsterdam, and on our safari to Tanzania. She has been a delightful travel companion.
Once Yvonne accepted, it was a matter of planning the trip. We would fly to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and spend three days. Then, we drive up through Yellowstone and use Gardiner, Montana, as our home base for three days. After Gardiner, we would head to Cody and then to the conference in South Dakota.
This trip has two takeaways: the first is that we made the time to add to the conference and included our friend, Yvonne. Yellowstone was not half an hour down the road, but we could pack in so much more than just the conference. As a bonus, I could include three more states on my life list (including that trip, I have now been to 44 states).
The more significant takeaway is how we faced and dealt with adversity head-on.
September, the weather can be spotty. Jackson Hole sits at an altitude of 6,200 feet. Yellowstone’s plateau averages 8,000 feet, and the mountains around the plateau reach up to 12,000 feet. The mountain passes we had to travel through ranged from 9,000 to 10,000 feet.
We had great weather for an hour after we landed, and then a freak snowstorm hit the area during our first day. Roads were being closed all around Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks. The timing was interesting as we managed to be one of the last cars to get through the pass between Jackson, Wyoming and Victor, Idaho. The Idaho side was a valley with a lower altitude and had intermittent rain, which also made for fantastic photo opportunities like the title photograph.
We had another day planned around the Grand Teton area to see that park and Mormon Row; another must for my photo portfolio. Yellowstone was still open, but none of our access roads through the park to Gardiner, Montana, were open. I did not understand how six inches of snow closed the park roads. After all, I was Canadian and knew how to drive in snow – I COULD NOT HAVE BEEN MORE WRONG!”. Eventually, six minutes on those roads convinced me they should have closed them after 3 inches.
One consideration was to travel miles and hours out of the way to get to Gardiner. Another was to skip Yellowstone altogether. We found a third, out-of-the-box solution by reversing the sequence of accommodations. We would go to Cody first, then access Yellowstone from the northeast direction versus from south to north. We would need to contact the two places where accommodations were booked, cringe, and change dates. The hotel was no problem and accommodated us right away. We could not reach the Airbnb host for another day. However, she, too, accommodated us.
The biggest takeaway is that we could have let the weather ruin our plans, but we changed and adapted to something we had no control over. Some of my best images took advantage of the dramatic lighting caused by the rain clouds.
These challenges are tests and part of our lifelong learning on our journey.
The “lessons” often carry over into the financial planning realm. In this case, we did a lot of planning to fit all those unique places into our limited time. We set our goals of things to see and do. As can happen in any journey, things do not always work out as planned. There will be challenges and setbacks. There are always things that are out of our control - it is our reaction that we can control.
We can predict that long-term assumptions will have twists and turns. Being prepared for most situations is essential. Understanding what is happening and how it impacts us is equally valuable.
NOTE: This is not a complete article if we do not address the 600-pound Gorilla currently in our lives – COVID-19. By most accounts, this is a “Black Swan event,” something so dramatic that it impacts us unpredictably. They are high profile, disproportionate, and beyond normal expectations. Another example was the “9/11 Twin Tower” plane strikes.
How do we handle COVID-19?
Frankly, I am still a work in progress on this one. Here is what I do know. I cannot change it, so I must learn to cope with whatever is needed. I wear a mask, quarantine myself if needed, and keep a safe social distance from others – even though these three things are new to us. We did not know about any of these previously, but we adapted.
How does this relate to planning? We need not panic and know that this, too, shall pass. We can read or listen to people like Elizabeth Gilbert, Oprah Winfrey, and Eckhart Tolle discuss coping in times like these. There are lots of examples of support programs and people helping each other. Take advantage of this opportunity to grow.