When you’re a child, it’s easy to have trouble when offered a choice. For example, if told you can purchase one toy from the toy store as a treat, choosing one, by implication, means not choosing all of the others. This can be a tough ask for your little mind to parse at the time, but ultimately, it’s a life lesson we all have to understand and accept.

However, it’s harder to accept things when we only have so much time and so much we wish to do in that time. This is especially true when you go travelling. Your budget and time only lasts for so long, and if you go somewhere even remotely cool it will be filled to the brim with fun experiences to have.

For this reason, overcoming a sense of travel ‘fear of missing out,’ otherwise known as FOMO, is important. It will help you avoid missing the moment and allow you to be more present, which is always important and helpful. Let’s discuss how to achieve that, below:

Keep A Consistent Plan

A good way to avoid FOMO is to look ahead, and plan the events and experiences you most wish to take part in. Then, you’ll be getting the cream of the crop, and you don’t have to worry about anything else. A good variety of different activities allows you to get a taste of everything you may wish to do, and on some nights you may schedule an empty block of time you can fill with whatever is around you, such as taking your partner to a comforting restaurant.

When you can rely on your flexible plan, you’re more likely to think that your foresight led you to the right place, rather than wondering why you didn’t do one thing over another. It’s also important to remember that no plan is perfect, so once you accept that you can feel less worried about missing a tour you wanted to go on, or attending an event that has already been oversold. With some plans, a nice backup activity to each major event in the area can be a good way of keeping yourself active and wasting no time.

Squeeze The Most Out Of One Area

It can also be a nice idea to keep yourself to one location and try to experience as much of it as you can in one week, or however long your stay is. Then you can say that yes, while you remained in one area or near it, you had the chance to enjoy everything it offers.

This isn’t a new concept of course, some people may spend most of their holiday on a cruise with a few country stop-offs, in a resort next to a beach, or even enjoying a modest camping holiday in a seaside town.

But as expected, this list of what to do at the Grand Canyon can be a great idea. Not only will exploring this incredible area a fun way to cross an item off your bucket list, but the side provisions, like cycling, walking tours and more, can help you get the most out of this area and ‘attraction,’ and end up feeling as though you’ve really squeezed the most out of it. It’s not hard to see why that inspires people year-round.

Guided Tours Can Be Excellent

Most guided tours around popular locations have been designed to give you the utter distillation of a place and its history in a comfortable, relaxing trip. These can be short or long, dealing with large areas or specific buildings.

However, they can also be very valuable, and will no doubt yield more information than you might be able to find out yourself. The tour guides tend to be very well-trained and educated which is why they serve as the ambassador for a given attraction.

While you might not take a holiday just to enjoy a guided tour, they can certainly help you feel you’ve enjoyed the best of an area, and at least know what to explore next. They’re a great supplement to a vacation; and in some cases may even give you specific access to certain areas you wouldn’t have had on your own, as now you can be supervised by a trusted professional. So – don’t be afraid to book that event, it can be a perfect way to start or cap off your travel experience.

Don’t Overstretch Yourself

Most often, the desire to see everything at once can lead you to actually miss out on what you came for. Let’s say you come to a seaside resort. You wish to see so many towns while you’re there and maybe plan to explore a city like Barcelona. You wish to go swimming, to enjoy all of the best restaurants, and to visit museums.

Now, you could probably do a fair bit of that. But the truth is that enjoying a travel experience means sitting back and relaxing into an activity, and allowing yourself to really experience. It’s hard to enjoy your time and really take in your travel expedition when you’re worried about the hourly schedule you have, as if you were in the military planning an expedition. If you don’t overstretch yourself, the fear of not seeing everything will subside. After all, is it better to enjoy two things maximally, or twenty things minimally?

Have On-Days & Off-Days

It’s also important to remember that you need to manage your energy when you’re abroad. For some people, this is easier said than done. No one can be a superhero doing everything each day, and then perhaps stay up late enjoying great food and wine until the early hours of the morning.

You can try, of course, but you’ll probably feel wiped out by the evening. For this reason, it’s smart to plan off days and on days. So perhaps during your two weeks, every other day will be a relaxation day, where you take lazy walks on the beach, enjoy ice creams, shop in the local visit, and tan by the pool. During ‘on’ days, you might do something cool, like walking up a famous bridge with a tour company, skydiving, driving to a fantastic geographical landmark, or something else that requires a great deal of energy and enthusiasm.

Sure, you may think that you can do everything, and if you’re young and in-shape perhaps you can more than most. But if you’re thoroughly overtired, it’s also hard to make and keep good memories or to enjoy yourself as much as you would have. So – managing your energy is a fantastic tool in the fight against FOMO.

Document Your Experiences

Record some video footage, take some photographs and write down some of your experiences each day. Then you get to look back at this documentation forever and continually think back to your own experience.

Even if you do get a little FOMO, you will always have this experience to look back on and appreciate what it was, even if you were sick for a day or two after your travelling, or even if the space wasn’t quite that which you expected. It’ll help you realize that it’s the present moment and the adventure you find there that counts more, not the ‘I should have done this’ that may rob you of that fact.

With this advice, you’re sure to overcome that sense of travel FOMO in the best possible way. In the long run, it’s sure to make a profound difference.