What I Learned from 2 Weeks in New Zealand

Lessons from the trip of a lifetime (can you say ‘bucket list?!’)

Oh, friends. Do I have an adventure to tell you about. This one comes with Hobbits, Wine, a really long plane ride, and lots and lots of sheep. That’s right, I recently returned from a two week trip to New Zealand, and I did not come back empty handed. Let me tell you what I learned on this adventure of a lifetime.

As a Sagittarius moon, I consider myself a wanderer at heart. I yearn to wander to every corner of the globe and experience life as I’ve never lived it before. To watch and learn and engage with things and people I’ve never encountered before. To gather up all of those lessons and new perspectives and not only let it inform how I live my life, but synthetize it into guidance and wisdom for others to learn from as well. In fact, I think this might be my true purpose in life, because just about nothing feels as good or as true or as uncomplicated as that.

So, despite being a single mom with three jobs that definitely should not be spending money on grand adventures across the entire freaking globe— this April that is, in fact, exactly what I did.

What? How? Why?

I know, I know. It seems like a lot. I could have driven an hour and a half to the Jersey Shore or two hours west to Gettysburg (for the 10th time) or done something totally wild and flown to some pleasant domestic location for a more budget-friendly trip. And yet, I chose the land of Hobbits and Kiwis and a 19 hour long flight. Why? Well, because a small group of my closest girlfriends wanted to take a crazy trip somewhere and that’s the one location we all agreed we had to go to before we died. It’s a bucket list trip, you guys. Bucket. List. And we just happened to be crazy enough to say fuck it, let’s go.

Listen, there were travel mile deals, many planning meetings involving copious amounts of wine, bullet journals, excel spreadsheets, and a year and a half of budgeting, but we actually made it happen. Not gonna lie, I was so proud of us. And so, we set off in late April for an 18 day voyage to the other side of the world.

What did New Zealand teach me?

I learned so much about New Zealand on this trip, it would be impossible for me to cover everything. Highlights include sheep, sauvignon blanc, Hobbiton, geothermal sites, the sea, the stars, the pies, the people, and the mountains. But if you were looking for some more enlightened thoughts on the matter, I will direct you to my latest YouTube video where I broke down the eight most interesting insights I had during my time there, complete with stories and videos from my adventures to help illustrate how I came to these conclusions. Enjoy the video, but if you prefer to read the highlights – I’ll also outline them below.

Let’s break down my top 8 lessons from New Zealand:

1. No Day But Today – It’s not always easy to seek out and find ways to make our dreams happen. Some things feel like they will never materialize. Some things aren’t practical. I know, it’s a lot, but it’s always worth investigating how we might help facilitate the realization of our dreams before we die with all of our music still in us. Believing you can find a way is how you start.
2. Presence is a choice you have to continue to make every day – imagine my surprise when my intentions alone did not automatically make me stay present in the moment during my adventures in New Zealand. Turns out, you can say you’re going to put your phone away or stop thinking about work all you want, but that doesn’t mean shit if you don’t actually hold yourself accountable and do it.
3. There is a time to lead and a time to facilitate leadership in others – not sure if you know this, but it’s not always about you. If you’re someone who turns into a natural leader when traveling or working on projects or in your home life, that can create a dynamic that may deter others from stepping up to realize their own gifts and leadership abilities. Sometimes being a leader is also about stepping back and letting someone else show what they can do.
4. Sometimes you have to leap head first before you know if it will be worth it – taking risks can be scary, but without risks how do you know what rewards you may be missing out on? Get out there and try something new, take a step outside of your comfort zone, and push yourself to see what direction you could expand in next. You may end up deep in a glow worm cave, or just really excited to have learned that you’re capable of more than you thought yourself to be.
5. Allow people room to experience the world in their own way – I may be a Human Design Projector, but I try not to be a projector of my own limiting beliefs onto others. Sometimes we judge people once and then apply a thinly developed concept of who they are to our beliefs about them from then on. Woof. That’s not it, guys. If you find yourself limiting what someone else can do or what they will or won’t like before allowing them to try or experience something themselves, you are robbing them of the chance to show you who they really are. Don’t be like that, leave the pre-judgments at home and let people surprise you.
6. Profound experiences may elude you if you don’t make time for them – are you guilty of telling yourself you’re going to meditate and hike in the woods and commune with nature and self-actualize and become one with the universe and then not really doing anything to create those experiences? Hi, I’m Jenny and that’s how I spent the first half of my trip to New Zealand. Turns out, that works out much better if you intentionally create time and space for yourself to connect and be fully present in those moments. Vacations can be all go-go-go, but the profound is often found in stillness. Give yourself a moment. It’s okay to lay down and enjoy the stars.
7. People see more than you think so just be all of you – I am guilty of thinking that there is a secret side of me that no one else sees, it’s the private world I live in inside my mind and in there I don’t have to be a charismatic extraverted Leo. In there I’m an introverted deeply intuitive and secretive Scorpio Rising and no one else knows what my Scorpio mind is thinking ever. But actually, it turns out my friends were totally seeing the complexities of my totality and they still loved me, and in fact, respected and got that part of me too. So, perhaps it’s best to just let all of me come to the table rather than just the part that I think people want to see, yeah?
8. The natural world is the connection you are missing in life – I think I had forgotten how good it felt to be outside. How important grounding with the earth is, and how connected I feel when my feet are on the soft green grass. People are complicated, urban areas are loud, and sometimes it’s easy to feel alone and disconnected from everything around you in an age where so much of our lives are lived online. If you feel that way, I recommend re-establishing your connection with nature before tackling all of the other messier stuff. It will help to touch grass, climb a mountain, step into the sea, or breath the fresh clean air on a crisp early morning walk. And while you can go to New Zealand for this (and in fact I recommend it), it’s not actually necessary. The earth is all around us, so go out and find your little corner of it.

So where am I off to next?

Well, I don’t exactly know yet. As I said in the video, my dream bucket list trip is to Scotland. So maybe I’ll start working on that one… after I take my son to the new Super Mario World park at Universal Studios. I don’t know how many more months of begging and pleading I can take, ha. Wherever I wander next, I’ll be sure to let you know, and I’ll be taking my notebook along to jot down what lessons I learn along the way.

Thanks for reading, and if you liked my YouTube video – maybe you would enjoy looking through some of my other recent videos HERE.