When was the last time you took a trip where you had no idea where your exact destination was? When was the last time you took a leap in life, not knowing if you might succeed or crash and burn spectacularly?When was the last time you made room for serendipity to leave a magical mark on your life?The idea of serendipity has been on my mind a lot over the last few months. The concept of serendipity first came to me in the form of the book Vagabonding, by Rolf Potts. I first read the book about a decade ago and it left an indelible mark on me. For those of you who haven't read it, it's equal parts practical-toolkit-for-travel and philosophical mind-blower. I'd recommend it to just about anyone.Serendipity is a magical element, a muse that wants to bestow upon us wild moments that will have us belly-laughing and shaking our head in disbelief at what just happened. Unfortunately, we often eradicate serendipity from our lives through structure and planning.Serendipity brings the moments of magic that have the power to alter our lives. We will always remember the serendipitous moments, the turn of events that happen spontaneously. We could never plan them. We cannot buy them. No amount of research on the Internet will allow us to discover them.You are more likely to experience serendipity if you like to fly by the seat of our pants.This might look like the first time I Couchsurfed in Ireland with a dairy farmer and ended up road-tripping with him and a buddy to surf spots around Ireland. This might look like the time I was driving through Patagonia and ended up spontaneously staying with a family on their ranch in Cerro Castillo. Or the time I was in Cambodia and was offered an opportunity to teach English at a Buddhist monastery for four weeks.Like all things in life, the key is finding balance. I don't believe that people need to eliminate all forms of structure and planning. But I do advocate for people embracing the unknown.When I travel, I almost never research a place before I visit. I might book a hostel for the first night of my arrival. But then I usually leave the rest of the time unplanned. Maybe I will want to stick around at one place longer than I originally thought. Maybe I will hear about a place or an opportunity and I will want to jump on it without thinking, "Oh, but I already booked this other thing."Now of course, many people only have very limited windows in which to travel. If you only have three days for a vacation, it makes sense to plan out those three days to maximize your time. I have been fortunate to have had several open-ended travel experiences. My favorite was traveling South America on a one-way ticket. I didn't know when, or if, I would return. So I had all the room in the world to take extra time in a place I fell in love with. I totally understand that my ability to do that comes from a place of privilege.But I believe many people do not take enough ownership over their own ability to structure their lives in such a way that this kind of living becomes possible. Many people take the societal norms and live within them. Two weeks of vacation per year plus the occasional three-day weekend. Some people might prefer that kind of structure and the security and predictability that comes with that lifestyle. But others might feel constrained by it, wishing there was an alternative but feeling like living that lifestyle is naive or impossible.With a little creativity, there are all sorts of ways to travel the world, to live on an open schedule, and to allow for more serendipity in your life. For me, that has come through a career in media. But there are certainly many more opportunities to travel or to vagabond than for writers and photographers. I began in this world while I was still working full-time as a wilderness therapy guide. So I had a predictable income. But I also had every other week completely free to do anything I wanted. Seasonal workers such as fishermen, guides, and wild-land firefighters earn an annual salary in a compressed time-frame and then have multiple months off per year. Teachers and professors have the summer off. Even traditional business people can negotiate periods of time off work, like the family of six I met in Jordan. The dad was an engineer who had negotiated a year off work so he and his wife could take their four kids (between the ages of six and sixteen) on a yearlong trip around the world. They wanted to do it as a family before their eldest went off to college.

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I don't think that family will look back and say, "You know what? We should have played it safe. I really wish I had just kept working and not taken that trip together." I've got a feeling they will treasure that year they traveled together for a long time to come.Allowing for serendipity and the unknown isn't only available to the free-spirit-but-dirt-poor-hippie, or the ultra-wealthy, or the retired. There's room in almost anyone's life. It will likely take time, forethought, and strategy. But if this idea sparks something in your soul, there is usually some way to make it happen.How would you benefit from a little more serendipity in your life? How can you make it happen?