“To realize one’s personal legend is a person’s only real
obligation. All things are one. And, when you want something, all the
universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
Traveling around the world to other countries can offer you many opportunities for personal growth. It can help you discover character traits
that you didn’t know existed, give you great practice in staying calm in
chaotic situations, improve your interpersonal skills, and become more culturally
sensitive. All of this can help you
realize who you are and what your interests and motivations are. With this in mind many people who find
themselves in a transitional time of their lives look to traveling to help them
find answers.
Most (not all) of the people that I have met in traveling in
Spain, Germany and China were in some sort of transitional situation that they
were dealing with back in their home country. Some examples; being in between jobs or seeking to change careers, and
being in between schooling. Leaving your
country and your situation and going to a “neutral zone” allows you to focus on
yourself. Most of these travelers are
young (20s and 30s) and have not settled down yet because they are
still struggling with who they are or what they are going to do with their
life. Traveling is in a sense like
meditation, it forces you to look within for the answers that you seek.
I am a pretty strong advocate for staying in hostels when
traveling around the world, especially if you are traveling alone. Hostels are excellent hubs for travelers to
have a place to sleep, eat, drink, participate in tours together, and make new
friends. Traveling alone forces you into
situations that are outside of your comfort zone and forces you to become more
self reliant. As a consequence you can
learn a lot about yourself and may even become more self confident. For example, when staying at a hostel, making
friends to accompany you with on your excursions and party with will make your
experience magnitudes better than if you spend your stay alone. But making friends is completely up to you,
this forces you to step out of your comfort zone (if you are shy or are
inexperienced) and go up to strangers and strike up a conversation. If you don’t make a move, then there is no
possibility of you making those friends.
Now I hope I have set the scene a little bit about why
people travel and what its benefits can be for an individual. Now try to imagine what happens when you put
a bunch of these individuals together in a group. You have a group of people who are
individually on their own journeys and are actively pushing themselves out of their
comfort zones and into new situations.
But really we are all on the same
journey to find our own “personal legend” and because we recognize this and are attracted to this similarity, as travelers we tend conspire to help out in each others journeys. We encourage and support each other in the trying new things and then we celebrate the occasions together. It is
wonderful to learn from the experiences and lessons shared by other travelers. And hopefully my own lessons and experiences have made a positive influence on them as well.
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My Fellow Travelers I Made Friend with in Berlin (Me in the Middle back) |
You seem very comfortable outside your comfort zone. It makes me wonder if you will be satisfied with the mondane things of life. Regular job. Regular wife and kids. Idk. We can chat about it one day. You may need to be one of those doctors without boders... But a home base somewhere. Just something to think about. Love you. Miss you. Be safe.
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