Your Vacation Starts When You Book It

“Your vacation starts when you book it.” I did not understand what my boss was telling me at the time. He thought I should schedule my dream trip for a week that was one full year in the future. It felt similar to the time he took me and another sales rep to a Mercedes dealership and had us test drive a new car. His belief was that if you could see it, smell it, hear it, and feel it, you’d be way more motivated to earn the commission money to own it. Which means higher sales. A win for me, a win for him.

He was definitely a winner, a very successful business owner—and he was right. In fact, ten years later, I told my employee in the computer business I owned, “Your vacation starts when you book it.” Here’s why that’s true…

Imagine you've always wanted to take a trip out West.

You've never been to South Dakota, never seen Mount Rushmore, never driven through the Badlands. It's one of those trips you've talked about for years.

Someday.

Then one afternoon, you stop talking about it and book it.

I used to tell my coaching clients, “Your vacation starts when you book it.” I wasn't giving them travel advice. I was teaching them something about commitment.

So you're not leaving for four months. You're sitting in exactly the same place you were sitting five minutes ago. Mount Rushmore is still more than a thousand miles away. But something has changed.

You're going.

And almost immediately, you grow antennae.

You see a story about South Dakota and actually read it. A friend mentions that she just returned from a rafting trip out West and loved it. You want to know where she went.

You start reading about the Badlands. Someone tells you not to miss Custer State Park. You hear a story about Theodore Roosevelt and think, He's on Mount Rushmore.

You mention your upcoming trip at dinner and someone says, "Oh! We went there three years ago. You have to..." And now you're even more excited.

None of this happened when you wanted to go someday.

It happened when you committed.

Your vacation doesn't really begin the morning you load your suitcase into the car. It begins months earlier, the moment you decide: I'm going.

I’m not saying “it’s nice to have something to look forward to.” That’s so, but the truth is: You've stepped into your future before you've actually arrived there.

And you begin enjoying some of its fruits before the harvest.

It happens with other commitments, too.

Maybe a marriage begins before you ever walk down the aisle. The moment you say yes, something changes. You're not just dating anymore. You're planning a life together. You start making decisions differently because your future now includes another person.

Or you sign up for a marathon six months away. You haven't run the race—or even trained for it yet—but tomorrow morning you're no longer someone who thinks it might be nice to run a marathon someday. You're training for a marathon. That commitment changes what you do tomorrow.

The future event hasn't happened, but it has already begun changing your present.

The same thing happens when you commit to writing a book.

There's a tremendous difference between saying, "I'd like to write a book someday" and saying, "I'm writing a book."

Once you've made that commitment, you begin seeing your everyday life through a different lens.

You hear a story and think, That belongs in my book.

Someone asks a question you've answered a hundred times, but this time you think, My readers will want to know that.

An old memory surfaces. You notice an article you would have skimmed right past before. Someone says something that makes you think differently about one of your ideas. You start asking better questions. You start collecting stories.

You begin noticing your own life differently because now you have somewhere to put what you notice.

And something else happens.

Other people begin seeing you differently, too.

You're having a conversation about a subject you know well, and you say, "Yes, I agree. In fact, I'm writing a book about that. It comes out next spring."

You're not pretending to be an author.

You are an author.

The finished book may still be months away, but you've already stepped into a new identity. And that identity can change the conversations you have, the people you meet, the questions people ask you—and even the opportunities that come your way.

All before you've held the finished book in your hands.

We sometimes think we should wait until we're ready before making a commitment. Maybe we've got that backward. Sometimes the commitment is what begins to make us ready.

You don't need to know every stop you'll make on that trip before you book it. You don't need your suitcase packed four months ahead of time.

And you don't need to know every chapter of your book before you decide you're going to write it.

You just need to move it from someday to I'm doing this.

Because commitment does something wonderful. It reaches into the future and brings a little piece of it into your life today.

Maybe that's one of the unexpected gifts of finally saying yes.

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