What delayed flights taught me about self-trust and alignment
[19 MIN LISTEN]
Travel has a way of revealing how you actually move through uncertainty.
You can plan everything carefully, build in extra time, double-check every detail, and still end up sitting at a gate with no clear answer about what’s happening next.
That’s what happened to me on a recent trip to Atlanta.
What I expected to be straightforward shifted quickly. Delays stacked, updates changed, and the sense of predictability disappeared almost immediately.
And with that, a familiar internal response started to surface.
When control feels like the only option
There’s a moment in situations like this where your mind starts working overtime.
You begin thinking ahead, trying to map out different outcomes, looking for ways to stay one step ahead of whatever might happen next.
It doesn’t always feel dramatic, but there’s a subtle tension underneath it.
A sense that you need to figure it out.
The pattern most people don’t notice
What’s interesting isn’t just the situation.
It’s how quickly your internal state can shift in response to it.
The same experience can feel completely different depending on how you meet it.
A different way of moving through it
This time, I noticed that shift as it was happening.
And instead of immediately reacting to it, I approached the situation differently.
Not by ignoring what was happening.
Just by not rushing to control it.
That didn’t change the delays.
It changed how the experience unfolded.
The moment that wouldn’t have happened otherwise
At some point during the wait, I ended up sitting next to someone I wouldn’t have met if everything had gone according to plan.
What started as a simple conversation turned into something deeper and more meaningful than either of us expected.
It was one of those moments that feels small on the surface, but stays with you.
And it raised a question I hadn’t been asking before.
What if alignment doesn’t look the way you expect?
It’s easy to associate alignment with things going smoothly.
When everything lines up, when timing works in your favor, when the plan unfolds exactly as expected, it’s natural to assume you’re on the right path.
But what about the moments that don’t look like that?
The ones that interrupt your plans.
The ones that slow you down.
The ones that move you somewhere you didn’t intend to be.
Those moments don’t always mean something is wrong.
Sometimes they create space for something you wouldn’t have experienced otherwise.
The role of trust
Trust, in this context, doesn’t mean expecting everything to go your way.
It means staying grounded when it doesn’t.
It’s the ability to remain present without needing to control every detail.
To stay open to what’s happening, even when it doesn’t match what you had planned.
A different question to ask
When things don’t go according to plan, the instinct is often to fix it as quickly as possible.
But what happens when you pause instead?
What if, instead of asking how to solve it, you asked what’s unfolding here?
That shift doesn’t give you an immediate answer.
It gives you awareness.
And sometimes, that’s what changes the experience entirely.
Want the full story?
In this week’s episode of The Life with Liz, I share what actually happened during that trip and how it shifted the way I think about trust, alignment, and control in real time.
If you’ve been in a season where things aren’t unfolding the way you expected, this will meet you right where you are.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode below
If you’ve been feeling that gap between what you know and how you’re actually showing up in your life, I also created a free training that walks you through how to hear your intuition in a really honest and open way.
Episode transcript:
This is an auto-generated, unedited episode transcript. Please excuse any tyops.
Welcome to The Life with Liz Podcast, the place to be if you wanna go from invisible to vibrant in your life and embrace the power you didn't know you had inside of you. I'm your host, Liz Fleming, business owner, mom, military spouse, entrepreneur, founder, CEO, and life coach, who is passionate about helping ambitious women like you step into their power and their purpose on purpose so they can experience as much joy, success, satisfaction, and abundance as humanly possible. Now without further ado, let's dive right into this episode.
Alright, I’m talking about it, here it comes.
Travel lately, am I right? Air travel?
Feels a little unpredictable.
Oh my goodness, you can plan everything down to the minute.
Your girl. Virgo, over here.
You can build in the extra time, double-check your itinerary, and still find herself sitting at a gate with no clear answer about what’s happening next. What’s going on? And that’s exactly what happened to me on a recent quick weekend trip to Atlanta.
And I’m in North Carolina, so naturally I was like, oh, bing bang, boom, so easy. I’m on the plane for an hour or so. Airport’s right here. Boom.
That makes sense.
And I went into it expecting something simple like that. In my head, easy in and out trip, nothing complicated.
But almost immediately, things started shifting.
One delay turned into another, updates kept changing, and what had felt so predictable and sure became uncertain pretty quickly.
I could feel that familiar tension start to build. It’s that internal pressure to figure things out, and to fix the situation, and to regain some sense of control when everything around you feels unclear, like it’s starting to spiral.
And I’m sure you’ve felt this too, if you’re a human being listening to this podcast. We’ve all been there, and it doesn’t just require airports to feel that way.
But that’s usually where my energy goes in those situations. I start thinking ahead, trying to anticipate what might happen next, paying close attention to timing. I’ve got multiple apps, the phone is always charged, I’m talking to the people, looking for ways to stay one step ahead of the disruption.
And it happens quickly, almost without even thinking.
But there’s a moment when your body shifts and you can feel it. What started as a grounded, chill day, I’m flying solo, that alone, in and of itself, is a vacation, right?
But what started as chill and grounded turned reactive. And suddenly, everything carried more weight than it did a few minutes before.
And in this particular instance, something felt different. The situation itself wasn’t necessarily better. The delays were still happening. The airport was still chaos, there was more people at RDU than I had ever seen in my entire life at that airport.
Something was going on, and nothing about the external experience around me had changed, but my friend, what had shifted was how I chose to meet it, which is what I want to talk about in this episode today.
Because before I even left for this trip, I set an intention.
And I talked about this on my Instagram that day, and a lot of people replied, and they were like, wow, I never thought of that reframe, and this really resonates.
So, I’m gonna tell you what happened, and hopefully offer some insights into not just your upcoming travels, but how you approach each day of your life, because it is so useful and so powerful.
So before I left for this trip, I set an intention, and this is something I’ve started doing before I travel. I take a moment, and I ask to be kept safe, right? I connect with my team of light, my spirit guides, universe, and I ask to be surrounded by kind people, I ask to be held in safety, I ask to move through the experience with patience and stay grounded no matter what comes up.
And I come at it from that place of gratitude. Like, it’s already happened. Like, thank you, universe, for keeping me safe, thank you for surrounding me with kindness and generosity and patience.
And it just really sets the tone for my trips, and it helps me feel so good, and it’s something I’ve started doing in everyday life as well, when I wake up. It’s a great habit to get into. Highly recommend setting your intentions.
Anywho, I had all this in the back of my mind the entire time.
So, when things started going sideways, I had a choice. I could be reactive. I could feel the frustration building and follow it, or I could stay with that intention and trust that I was being taken care of by source, God, whatever your higher power is, right?
That’s truly what I feel. It was just being taken care of, even if it didn’t look convenient in the moment. Because when you really zoom out, what’s the alternative?
What is the alternative? Spreading that frustration to everyone around you, adding more tension to a situation that’s completely already out of control. Becoming part of the problem instead of part of the energy that steadies it.
Or worse, pushing for something to move faster when there might be a reason that it’s not.
And we don’t always know what’s happening behind the scenes. Delays can obviously feel so inconvenient, especially when you’re on really tight timelines.
But sometimes they’re protective.
They’re completely necessary. And that thought stayed with me. It carried me through that day.
So, instead of seeing it as something going wrong, I started looking at it from the lens of something’s just being rerouted. I’m not physically being redirected, it’s not a denial. It’s just a delay.
So, I stayed with what was actually happening. I didn’t rush to solve it or force an outcome.
I stayed aware, I let the moment be what it was without jumping ahead to all the ways it could continue to unravel, which is what old me would have done, spiral beyond recognition.
That didn’t change the delays.
It changed how I experienced them. It changed my energy levels.
And what I noticed next really stood out. The more I stayed in that grounded, patient energy, fueled by love and kindness, the more everything around me seemed to reflect it back.
The security line, I already you, moved faster than expected, and that bad boy was the longest I have ever seen it. It was all the way through the front doors of the building.
And it was zigzagged.
So, in reality, if you put that in a straight line, it was probably 3 times the size.
But I got right through.
The gate staff, everyone was so kind and communicative, and clearly doing everything they could to help people through a frustrating situation, given everything that they’re going through in their own lives. These are all human beings.
Every interaction I had felt easy.
And at one point, there is another delay.
This happened several times. By the third or fourth time, I watched a man walk up to the gate agent.
And this was probably our second or third gate agent at the time.
And he just completely unloaded on her.
Oh my gosh, it was so deeply uncomfortable and heartbreaking. A, because this man is clearly going through something in his life that he has no support with. For someone to carry that amount of anger and irritability around without knowing how to process it always shows me that they are not receiving the love and affection that they need.
So that was number one. And number two was just this sweet girl who was just doing her job. And when I say sweet, I don’t mean she was a pushover. This girl was a badass.
And you could see it on her face. She loved her job, she was doing her job.
And she was managing something she had no control over herself, and still taking the impact of someone else’s frustration.
And I saw that as an opportunity. I don’t know who this new me is, but when he walked away and went up to her, and I told her, I was like, you’re doing a great job.
I can only imagine how hard your job is, especially in moments like this, and I know you’re really busy, but you’re handling this so well, and I just want to thank you.
And she smiled, and we had a really nice moment. And I went back and sat on the floor.
There was no other seats. It was that kind of day.
It was just a small moment, but it mattered. It was almost like I didn’t have control over my body. I was just destined to go have that conversation with her. It mattered.
And that’s the other side of this. The energy you bring into a situation, whether it’s at the airport or not, it doesn’t just affect you, it affects the collective.
Everyone around you.
It shapes the experience for all of the people in your orbit.
And at some point during all of this, it’s so funny, on the way back, it was easy breezy, lemon squeezy.
I ended up sitting next to another woman named Liz, and we both sat down, and I’m not really a talker on planes. I sit down on the plane, I pop in my headphones, I bust out my Kindle, and that’s that, until we land.
But we sat down, we both opened our Kindles at the same time, and yeah, what started as a simple moment, just a funny moment, turned into something deeper.
We talked about books, then life, and then motherhood, and everything in between.
And it just felt divinely guided. It felt easy and familiar in a way that’s hard to explain.
And I remember having this thought in the middle of it, this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Maybe all of this happened just so that this girl and I could have this moment. And I know that sounds out there, but that’s just the person that I am.
So if everything had gone according to plan, that moment wouldn’t have happened. I would have boarded on time, sat somewhere else, and kept to myself, and we wouldn’t have met, probably.
That conversation wouldn’t exist, and that’s what shifted something for me that day. It wasn’t big and dramatic, it just felt more like a soft recalibration.
And to be clear, I was feeling it, I was going through the motions. When you hit the fourth delay, you reach a point where you’ve spent the whole day in an airport, you’re like, should I drive the hour home, stay, book a hotel, try and get out the next day, all the things are going through your head, all the scenarios.
So I don’t want to dumb it down and say that it wasn’t hard. It was absolutely hard, but it took a very quiet kind of strength for me to regulate my emotions and nervous system in the moment, which, again, I’ve talked about on a few of my other most recent episodes.
And I just felt a shift in me, and it was a reminder that alignment doesn’t always look the way we expect it to.
So, while in the moment, sometimes, when you feel those negative emotions, and you start to let them bubble, you might feel like you’re failing, like you’re slipping backwards, and why is this happening to me, and blah blah blah, when really it’s happening FOR you, right?
And I just think so often in this work, we tend to associate alignment with ease.
If something flows, if it unfolds smoothly, if everything lines up exactly as planned, we assume we’re on the right path.
And most of the time, that’s the case. But real alignment isn’t always neat, my friends.
Sometimes it completely interrupts your plans. Sometimes it slows things down, sometimes it places you somewhere you wouldn’t have chosen, only to show you something you wouldn’t have found otherwise.
And now here I am.
Because I met this gal and had this experience recording a podcast episode, teaching you about alignment and emotional regulation.
It’s wild, right?
Anyway, through all of that, that’s where that sense of self-trust comes in. And it’s not the kind that guarantees a specific outcome, but it’s the kind that allows you to stay grounded when things don’t unfold the way you expected.
And there’s a very big difference between being passive and being open.
Being passive feels like complete dissociation and disengagement.
Being open requires presence.
There’s no other way.
So it asks you to stay with what’s happening without trying to force it into something else. And that is what I practiced in those moments during my wild air travels.
And it wasn’t picture perfect. I don’t believe in that.
But it was intentional.
It was so intentional, and I stayed with what it was, whatever it was in front of me, instead of trying to manage everything that it wasn’t.
I surrendered.
And I trusted. That was a decision that I made.
And what I noticed was how much that shifted my entire experience. I felt more available, more aware of what was happening around me, and more receptive to the moments I would have missed if I had stayed in frustration and been like that dude.
Which I never would have done. I think we all dream about doing that sometimes, at least the old version of me did.
But not anymore, man. That just doesn’t feel right.
So, that’s where alignment actually lives. It’s not in everything going according to plan all the time.
Plot twist.
That’s not up to you, honey.
Destiny is not up to you. It’s in your ability to stay connected to yourself while the plan changes.
That’s where alignment lives.
And when I look back on that trip, what stands out isn’t the delays anymore. It’s how I supported myself in the middle of them.
And how supported I felt, as well.
Really.
Because everything I had asked for in that intention showed up. I met some really cool people. I was surrounded by kindness and generosity. I felt safe. I was not, God forbid, in an airplane during a hailstorm without an airport to land at. That would have really sucked.
That’s game-ending shit right there.
I felt safe.
I was, again, surrounded by kind people. I moved through the experience with more patience than I would have before. I just felt light.
And airy.
And smiling, and I was going to a wedding. I love my family, and weddings are cool, but it wasn’t like I won the lottery and was going on a fucking tropical vacation. That would make anyone smile.
It was a normal trip. It was an everyday life thing, and I just chose to approach it positively.
And again, didn’t all go as planned, wasn’t perfect, but it looked aligned.
For me, for who I am in that moment.
So, if you’re in a moment right now where things don’t feel like they’re lining up the way you expected, or plans are shifting, and timing feels off, or something just isn’t moving the way you thought it would, whether it’s in your travels or in your work or at home, it might be worth stepping back for a second.
Several seconds.
Instead of asking how to fix it, see what happens when you notice what’s unfolding there.
Some experiences aren’t meant to be solved right away. They’re meant to be lived through.
You’re being taught a lesson. Have we not learned this?
And when you give yourself space to stay present, instead of rushing past all of that, instead of trying to avoid all of the mistakes, and all the fears, and all the things that could go wrong, you finally start to see things you would have missed otherwise.
And that was the biggest lesson for me.
So if this is something you have been starting to notice in your life, again, there’s that space between what you know, and how you actually feel day-to-day, and the intentions that you’re setting.
I walk you through this step-by-step inside my free training. It’s a really grounded place to start reconnecting with yourself in a way that actually sticks.
You can find it linked in the show notes.
But for now, just stay present with what’s in front of you.
And don’t be afraid to approach life from your intuition, and pure, honest, good intentions. That alone will take you further than you know.
I’ll see you next time.
Did that go by too fast? No worries. You can always find me over at elisabethfleming.com for more information about my programs, events, and how you can take your learning further with me. If you loved this episode, leave a review. It helps more than you know.
Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll catch you next time.
Connect with Liz:
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