What Are Some of the Things You Thought About Most While You Were Walking?

While I was walking the Camino de Santiago I experienced several different stages of thought.

To answer the question right away: I thought most about the feeling I have being happy, although I had experienced some bad chapters in my personal and business lives. I thought about why I was feeling calm and happy while such drastic (for me personally) things happened to me. I was wondering how this could be. I learned that I had accepted everything. The mistakes I made, the mistakes others made, and the reaction to all of this. The decisions I made with the actions I thought were appropriate. Now I’ve learnt some were good and some were a bit late. My bad. When an instinct tells you something, do it right away, no matter what others tell you. They don’t have the full picture. Don’t wait!

Then there were the moments you thought, What is going on here? I’m walking miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers) and despite not planning a thing, everything is working out every day. Why am I bothering planning so much as an IT Consultant? You still need to plan your days otherwise the day runs you. I’m speaking about the complex plans. Maybe you plan to take control of something in your personal life, but when you think deep about it, you can’t.  It’s better to let go. The universe around you will help you. You need to know what you want. You can’t sit down and do nothing and expect everything will come to a good end. Don’t lose time on planning endlessly on details. I never did this before in my professional life but now I felt it wasn’t necessary to plan even for my personal life, an eye-opener. Have your main goals clear. I see people planning to write a book, walk the Camino or ask a girl out, but they forget to take the proper action to start. Do it. Reading millions of websites or asking other pilgrims how to walk doesn’t help you to take the proper action to do it. I explained in my book how I did the preparations – spoiler alert: I didn’t take so long. The truth is I never take a long time between an idea and action.

Now a thought I thought I would never had. Several days I started walking early and there were no places to have breakfast or even a coffee. There were times I walked 25+ miles/40+ km per day and I didn’t miss skipping breakfast. My body was comfortable with it not having food for several hours. I remembered I thought, “Wow, my body can do more without stuffing myself full of food.” People who know me know I am overweight. Since then, I know I can survive with less food because here in Maastricht I don’t walk 25+ miles/40+ km per day anymore.

I had a lot of other thoughts every day, but it is only during the Camino you take more time to give those thoughts a place. The focus is to walk a nice distance and enjoy the moment. Live in the moment.