“Adventure is worthwhile.” – Aristotle

There’s something exhilarating and freeing about traversing new lands, stepping away from all of your obligations to let yourself remember how to play and enjoy without the constraints of all of the performative hats you might wear and the various calendars you’re attuned to. 

It often helps us let go of other stressors and put aside the hustle and bustle of everyday life when we choose to enjoy a vacation or holiday that prioritizes recreation and leisure.

With the 2025 season wrapping up to a close, it’s a good idea to think about how you want your life to look and feel in 2026. Mapping out a 12-month calendar that already has some exciting events or travel plans is a great idea to keep you motivated and structured through the new year, and the newness of adventure can help strengthen new neural connections in your mind—this is your neuroplasticity! 

Before diving into planning, it helps to understand why travel can be such a catalyst for growth, and the various other benefits it can have on your wellbeing. Some notable, positive effects of travel and exploration include:

1. Building self-awareness and clarity of your identity. When you separate yourself from familiar, known environments (especially work and home), you naturally create space to reflect, confront your own thoughts and perspectives, and gain clarity on the things you value or enjoy most. You might not leave for a trip and “find” yourself per se, but you might return from a trip feeling more solid in who you are or have a strengthened sense of independence.

    

2. Enhancing your aptitude for resilience and adaptation. Some degree of uncertainty is inevitable in travel. You could experience missing a train, flight delays, cultural barriers or differences, or even struggle navigating to that great restaurant Yelp told you about—directing yourself through this build emotional strength, patience and resolving conflict as it arises—and yes, these skills are transferable to other areas of your life!

    

3. Improving empathy and “intercultural competence.” What do we mean by this? If you’re traveling to a new country, or even just a new state, you’ll have to quickly learn how to interact with new cultures in a respectful manner despite language or cultural barriers. You’ll have to exercise empathy, understanding and flexibility.

    

4. Sparking inspiration and creativity. Being in a new environment with unfamiliar sounds, foreign foods, and altogether different experiences can help reignite your creative thinking and spark innovation. There are new observations for you to intake, learn from and your mind will be forced to create new neural pathways that challenge your preexisting way of thinking. 
5. Promoting wellbeing and personal growth. According to the Wall Street Times 2025 article titled How Travel Contributes to Personal Growth and Emotional Wellbeing, “travelers often return from their journeys with a broader understanding of their place in the world, a greater sense of connection to others, and a renewed perspective on relationships and community.” Where you are is not who you are, but who you are is where you are.

    

6. Helping foster goal integration. A major benefit of travel and cultivating new experience, forming or deepening new connections and creating new neural pathways as you allow yourself to learn is that you’ll likely wind up with some new goals. When you reflect on your travel experiences and integrate lessons or takeaways into your daily life, you can reinforce long term growth.

Structure Your 2026 Adventure Calendar

Let’s break down the upcoming 2026 calendar year into a template for adventure (think of this as your personal springboard for ideas—take what resonates and works for you, and leave what doesn’t) with intentional growth woven in. 

• Identify and Set Your Growth Themes for 2026

Start by pinpointing 3-4 “growth pillars” you’d like to develop or strengthen this upcoming year through travel. These might overlap with a few of our GoBundance Women’s pillars (for instance, “Age-Defying Health” “Genuine Contribution,” or “Authentic Relationships”).

Here are some example themes for travel and growth:

• Renew + Rejuvenate: plan restorative trips focused on rest, wellness, resetting yourself physically, mentally, spiritually or emotionally 
• Challenge + Grow: adventurous trips that challenge or stretch you—this could be something physical, cultural, or psychological—but something new to expand your experiences
• Serve + Connect: engage in travel with a service that provides meaningful contribution for others, such as a church group or nonprofit endeavor 
• Reflect + Harmonize: choose a vacation that is intentionally slower and more mindful, such as a solo trip or women’s retreat 

Make sure to track all of your ideas, and highlight or prioritize the ones that best align with the abundance you’d like to invite into your life in the new year. 

• List 4-6 Travel Experiences (these can be quarterly or bi-monthly—this is entirely up to personal preference!)

Section your 2026 into travel experiences that align with your personal adventure and growth themes. We know that travel can be expensive and often seem like more of a luxury, so remember that this adventure map is supposed to work for you! Using a quarterly system might make more sense for your brain or budget than bi-monthly or vice-versa. Your adventure calendar is completely customizable!

In these examples, we’ll provide instances of bigger travel, as well as micro-adventures and smaller getaways such as weekend or day trips that may be more attainable. This list will help guide how you book and search for vacation spots while ensuring you achieve the growth you’d like to in the new year. 

• Renew + Rejuvenate in Quarter 1 (January–March): Join a wellness retreat
• Yoga or meditation retreat
• You can even do a day trip to join yoga on a beach or at a new studio, or find sound bath workshops 
• Spa resort
• Nature lodge

   

• Challenge + Grow in Quarter 2 (April–June): Plan a new adventure to challenge the senses
• Plan a cultural immersion trip
• Spend time in a foreign/new city or region and engage with locals and different culture
• Take a workshop course on something new, like cooking or pottery
• Hike a new local trail
• Try surfing or go on a wilderness trip

   

• Serve + Connect in Quarter 3 (July–September): Service trip or event
• Join a church mission group to build homes 
• Volunteer abroad
• Help organize donations to give 
• Prepare and serve food in a soup kitchen

   

• Reflect + Harmonize in Quarter 4 (October–December): Plan a trip that brings inner peace 
• Solo weekend to cabin, coastal town or mountains to journal and reset 
• Visit a spiritual or sacred site for reflection and prayer 
• Spend time in a botanical garden or walk through an arboretum and sketch or write prose

Intentionally Integrate Growth Into Adventures

For each vacation, big or small, plan ways to intentionally integrate your lessons and growth into the trip.

• Set yourself pre-trip intentions: Before each trip, journal about what you desire to learn or experience. Create guidelines you’d like to follow, but don’t be too rigid. Keep an open mind and know that things might not go entirely as you’d like them to. 
• Create practices to engage in during your trip: Participate in a daily reflection routine, such as setting aside a few minutes to an hour for journaling, going on a gratitude walk, or meditating on the growth goal you set for this specific trip. For example, if the focus of this trip is to renew and rejuvenate, think about how you’d like to accomplish that at the beginning of each day while you’re on your trip! 
• Have a post-trip reflection plan: Design a “coming home plan” — how will you bring lessons back into your life? Outline any lessons, skills or insights gained and think critically about how you can incorporate those into your everyday life to get the most from your travel experience. 

Mapping Logistics and Planning: The Nitty Gritty 

In order to make your 2026 adventure calendar realistic and actionable, you’ll have to spend time on the logistics of planning. Trips of any length require time and money, and it’s important to feel comfortable allowing yourself to enjoy these trips with some detailed, attentive planning beforehand. 

• Set a budget and timeframe: Provide yourself with a cost and time estimate for each trip. Don’t just include flight prices or sleeping accommodations, but also add in excursions and other experiences, transportation, and “buffer time” for needed rest or unplanned discoveries.
• Provide flexibility in your schedule: Build options into your vacation to allow room for unplanned discoveries or making decisions on a whim! You’ll come across new experiences or places that you may not have known about at first, so leaving room to embark on unplanned detours or delays will help you feel more prepared. 
• Engage in deep research: Pick a few “must-have” experiences for each trip—these are the things you know you want to do with certainty. It could be a volunteer experience, a restaurant, a sight-seeing point, or something else that aligns with your trip’s growth theme.
• Take advantage of digital tools: Thanks to technology, there are many planning tools like travel apps, spreadsheets, or calendar reminders that can optimize your trip preparation. A more creative way to plan is by designing a story arc or narrative-driven itinerary as an adventure guide to give planning an exciting edge. 
• Consider sustainability and travel intentionally: Think about the impact your travel has, and try to limit the amount of thrown-away products you bring. Travel light and be intentional about the products you use and how you can minimize your environmental impact! 

Track and Reflect on Your Growth 

To make sure you’re really sticking to your growth goals when you travel, integrate ways to measure and reflect on your takeaways with each trip! It’s important to involve these things in your calendar and hold yourself accountable so you know your yearly progress. 

• Define metrics for tracking with each trip, think about your…
• Confidence: how you feel before and after the trip
• Resilience: how you handled any challenges or unplanned circumstances
• Learning goals: what new skills or insights you gained
• Relationships: your ability to make new connections or strengthen existing ones,
• Wellbeing: how your stress or energy levels were before, during and after your trip
• Implement reflection rituals into your post-travel routine. Have a personal quarterly review session, similar to what might happen in a business setting, and evaluate:
• Did I meet my intentions and growth expectations? Why or why not?
• What surprised me, and how did I react to the unexpected?
• What do I want to carry with me moving forward? What do I want to do differently next time?
• Share your experiences with others to gain outside perspective and insights. Consider letting others help to hold you accountable to your growth through travel and new experiences—sharing your travel calendar and growth goals with a trusted friend or a GoBundance Women Pod for support and accountability will help you move forward in 2026 with an abundance mindset! Join a membership today to find power in preparing for your next adventures.