Dena Patton Blog: 3 Ways to Prepare To Visit Paris (even if you think you can’t)

As I prepare our trip to Paris I’m excited to be celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary over there (and created a speaking engagement too) – this is kinda like the honeymoon we didn’t take. We will unplug, eat croissants, see amazing architecture and art, dance on the lawn of the eiffel tower, see the Moulin Rouge and we are renewing our vows. The best part is that we are overlapping our trip with one of my best friends European trip and my inlaws will be there too! As I learn how to pack bags, speak some French (I failed that class in school) and learn tips on how to travel with kids I am feeling very grateful. It wasn’t long ago that my life was led by my smallness which would never be able to do a trip like this. It fed me lies like: I could never afford it, I can’t take time off, I could never do something like that. But once we come OUT of agreement with our smallness we allow ourselves to see that our greatness was there the whole time.

It’s in our GREATNESS that we allow ourselves the freedom and power to design our life how we want it to go instead of being ‘in reaction’ (aka a victim) to life. If you want to go on a trip that has only been on your “wish list”,’ then I’ll give you 3 tips to make it happen.

#1. Save: Go to your drawer right now and get an envelope out. Then put $5 in it and on the front write ‘Paris’ (or your destination). Even if you have to save for 2 years. START TODAY. Done – how easy was that. That is how dreams happen…you think it, then you take the first action. Saving the money to do something like this takes focus and discipline but it’s worth it especially to our marriage and our kids. My 7 year old daughter is freaking out that we are making this happen – the pure joy on her face is worth it!

#2 Stop:  Don’t tell yourself you can’t go on a great, juicy, fabulous trip. We are the biggest barrier to the things we really want, so make a declaration right now to stop saying limiting, demeaning smallness statements like, “I can’t do something like that’. Because you can! I put $50 at a time in my envelope until we had enough then I got online and bought airline tickets. Then once that was done I started saving for the hotel and paid that. Then the third phase was saving for the ‘spending money’ You can save money and make airline and hotel reservations – those are three things you can do easily, right?  Do you see that the actions are actually easy, but to turn off the tape in your head is hard?  So try this – delete that old tape in your head and create a new one that say “I will earn my way to Paris and I will have a fabulous time”. Then say that everyday.

#3 Plan: Do your research!  I made a bucket list of everything I wanted to do while we were there and then I started googling those things. I learned from bloggers, you tube, and friends about the do’s and don’ts.  If you don’t do your research then you will pay double on most everything. We are using AirBnB instead of a hotel and we saved about 48%.  If you are going to Paris I have some GREAT pins on my Paris board on Pinterest read here.

This I know, it doesn’t show up on our doorstep, so go make it happen! This is your chance to share your gifts and greatness with the world, so whether you are going to play, speak, work or just ‘be’ I encourage you to go to that special place YOU want to go – you don’t have to explain or apologize to anyone, just make it happen!  I leave June 25 2015 and I’ll be blogging about it here on my blog so stay tuned for lots of pictures of chocolate, wine and great sites.