I woke up one morning 20 years ago and popped out of bed excited to travel and start my new adventure! I was 18 years old and had just graduated from high school. I was leaving on a world backpacking trip for a year.
I had been working as a waitress and filling a jar with tips to help fund my travels. I was on a mission to leave the town I grew up in and see the world!
My grandmother took me on a trip for a month to Italy when I was 16 years old, and it changed my life for the better. The trip shifted my perspective and the way that I saw life. I realized that there was a whole world beyond my friends that I wanted to explore.
When I returned from Italy, I promised myself I would go on a long trip once I graduated from high school. I dreamed about it and manifested every detail of the trip.
That trip changed my life, and 20 years later, I still want to travel, but it has shifted now I enjoy living in different countries and staying for years. This way, I can absorb the culture and language completely and build a community which is very important to me.
Travel is pushing your boundaries, meeting new people, learning a new language and gaining different perspectives.
As well as eating some delicious and sometimes bizarre food.
Here is what I know for sure about travelling
1. Travel pushes you out of your comfort zone to the point that you will sink or swim. It can be challenging in a new country, not knowing where you are going and only speaking a few broken words of the language.
2. Enhances your confidence. Travelling on my own around the world has given me an incredible amount of self-worth and self-confidence. You can’t learn this in a book or from a university degree.
3. Everything is new to the senses, so it keeps you in the present moment, and your senses become heightened because you need to be aware when travelling, or you might find yourself without your wallet.
4. It helps you know what you like and don’t want. When you suddenly find yourself in new and challenging situations, you become aware of things you don’t want to repeat and discover new things you love to do.
5. Travel brings out your true colours and is a good test of your character. I have always said that the best test to see if your boyfriend or girlfriend is right for you is to go on a trip with them in a remote country, and if you are still together afterwards, you have found your person. Trust me, I have tested this, and it works.
6. When you travel, you become disconnected from daily life and routine, which can bring on a sense of freedom from anger, discouragement, frustration and anxiety. It can help you to see that it is possible to live without these daily feelings.
“We are driven into wild rage by our luxurious lives so that whatever does not answer our whims arouses our anger.” –Seneca
7. It Enhances your creativity, you see new landscapes and architecture, and it can be pretty mind-blowing and inspiring.
Travel to me is enjoying the slow and peaceful breakfasts, the long walks to new places, the people, new experiences and memories. It makes me feel alive and joyful! All of which is a recipe for excellent health and happy life!
I am always striving to do things that make me feel good, and travelling is the number one thing that does. Well, so does really hot weather.
It is important to know what you enjoy in life to feel better and stay healthy mentally and physically. I think the number one thing that is most important is your health because, without it, you can’t do anything that you enjoy doing. It is so valuable to take care of your body and your spirit.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s life.”
Mark Twain
I love this travelling book, I have read it multiple times on my travels, The Alchemist
