Adventure is a State of Mind
I’m guessing you started reading this blog because you’ve had some fantasies of traveling and adventure, and many of you have carried for years a secret dream of a specific place you want to visit. So, what has kept you from making that dream a reality?
Some of you haven’t taken that voyage because of financial limitations. For others, the limitation is time. For some of you, it has been a lack of knowledge as to how to make your dreams into reality. I’m here to tell you that if you can find the money and time, then now is the perfect opportunity to take action and start making plans. If you’re at the midpoint in your life like me, this is often an especially good time–many of us at this age have more resources in both time and money than we had when we were younger, and we are (hopefully) still healthy enough to climb all of those steps to that castle we’ve dreamt of visiting.
The Best Time to Start Is Now
Now is also a great time in the timeline of history to be brave and travel independently, even if you’ve never done so before. Many years ago, individuals often signed up for tours because they wanted to visit foreign lands but had no way of knowing how to plan such a trip on their own. Today, though, I believe we live in a golden era for independent travel–there is so much information available on the internet now that it is almost a crime not to take advantage of it. Not only can you book your plane tickets, train tickets, museum passes, and hotel reservations online, but you can take a virtual walk around the neighborhood where you want to stay, read the menus of restaurants you want to visit, learn some phrases in the local language, and get advice from a local before you’ve even left your house. Why waste this opportunity?
Some of you may be telling yourselves that if you haven’t taken your great adventure by this age (whatever “this age” is for you), it’s too late to start. In answer to that, let me tell you about my grandmother, Mary. She reached young adulthood during the depression and was widowed early with four children still at home. She worked on the family farm and then as the county clerk, and other than a couple of trips to Indiana and Colorado to visit family, she had not really traveled in a way that many of us imagine when thinking of vacations or adventures.
When she retired in her early 50’s, however, she began traveling, first with a few organized tours and then on numerous independent trips with friends and relatives. Before she died, she managed to visit all fifty states, most of the Canadian provinces, and took at least one trip to Mexico. She was a role model for me and contributed greatly to my love of travel. She dreamed of traveling to the British Isles and probably would have made it had health issues not interrupted. Her life is a lesson to me, both that it is never too late to start, and also that we don’t know how much time we each have, so it’s crucial not to put off the things we really want to do.
Start to Dream
Are you feeling more confident? I know I haven’t gotten into the specifics of trip planning yet, but I hope at this point, the idea of a travel adventure is starting to feel like more of a possibility. I also hope you’re starting to dream just a little bit. (Pay attention to those dreams. You’re going to want that information when you start planning.) And if your dreams are interrupted by fears of not knowing what to expect, know that the unexpected will be part of what makes the adventure an adventure.
To have an amazing life, we have to risk stepping into the unknown from time to time; and to do that, we have to have the confidence that we can handle it. On the The Cathy Heller Podcast – Episode 151, the author Poppy Jamie (@poppyjamie on Instagram) tells the following story:
“I remember my mum telling me a story about a bird kind of perching on a twig. My mum’s a psychotherapist, and through her thousands of clients, she’d always say, ‘You know, we are all little birds on twigs, and we get so terrified about the thought of the twig beneath us breaking that I’ve got to remind people that we all have wings. And we can all fly to another twig and fly to another twig,’ And I thought, ‘Gosh! It’s having that self trust that we will have wings I think is the greatest skill and gift we can give ourselves.’ And I think that’s really when our anxiety rises, when we forget we have the wings, we forget we have the tools, we forget we have this, like, unbelievable resilience and the strength we all have inside.”
Don’t forget that you have wings!
So, with all this in mind, ask yourself — what is really keeping you from creating your travel adventure? Why not start today?
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