Your Limiting Beliefs About Travel

Adventure is a State of Mind

What Are Your Limiting Beliefs?

Why am I asking about your limiting beliefs? I’m asking because I know you have them. We all have limiting beliefs about ourselves, about what we can and cannot do, and about how the world works.

A limiting belief is a thought or state of mind that you think is the absolute truth and stops you from doing certain things. Your limiting beliefs about travel might include the following:

• I’m too old to take that trip.
• I’ve never done it before, so I can’t do it now.
• It’s too hard to plan a trip.
• It takes too much time to plan a trip.
• I don’t know how to start.
• I’ve never been adventurous.
• I can’t afford to travel.
• I can’t take the time off.
• I don’t speak the language.
• I’ll get lost.
• I’m not brave enough.
• I don’t have enough travel experience to plan a trip to…

Sometimes we’ve carried our limiting beliefs for most of our lives. They’re so embedded in who we think we are that we don’t see them for what they are – lies we tell ourselves.

Because they feel like Truth with a capital T, we unconsciously let them determine our lives.

Where Do Limiting Beliefs Come From?

For the most part, limiting beliefs are the result of life experiences. Our brains are constantly trying to help us learn and grow but they also want to protect us from pain. So, when you have a painful experience – perhaps you take a risk and try a new sport, but it doesn’t turn out so great and you’re embarrassed – you start to tell yourself a story about how you’re somebody who isn’t athletic or doesn’t do sports.

Sometimes limiting beliefs result from trying to make sense of the world as a child. We use a child’s logic to explain why things work out the way they do, and from that develops a belief about the world that may not actually be based on sound logic. For example, maybe you really wanted to visit the ocean as a child, but your parents were saving to buy a new car. They told you that they couldn’t afford a trip to the beach. Instead of realizing what they meant was they couldn’t afford the trip at that time because they had other priorities, you may have developed a belief that such trips were too expensive in general.

We also develop some of our limiting beliefs because we were told them as a child. The problem is that what we were taught as a child might have been helpful advice and guidance at the time but is no longer helpful with the situations we find ourselves in as adults. For example, I’m sure that at some point in your childhood you were told not to cross the street by yourself. Can you imagine if you still followed that advice today?

The Outcome of Limiting Beliefs

Limiting beliefs keep us within our comfort zone so we don’t have to experience uncertainty, failure, or shame.

Limiting beliefs also keep us from pushing past our comfort zone so we can learn and grow and experience an exciting and remarkable life.

Limiting beliefs are often the ultimate reason why people who say they want to experience a travel adventure don’t actually do it. Most of the barriers to travel can be overcome if someone wants to do it badly enough. If you tell yourself you can’t, no matter the reason why (see the list above), you are the person telling yourself “no.” Your limiting beliefs are what’s holding you back.

Identifying Limiting Beliefs

The first step to overcoming your limiting beliefs is recognizing them for what they are. Think about the travel dream you have put off making into a reality. Why? What reasons do you give yourself (or others) about why you haven’t gone on that travel adventure yet? Write those reasons down.

Once you have a list of your reasons, excuses, beliefs, and challenges, try identifying where they came from. If you can’t figure this out, don’t worry. Sometimes the beliefs began at such a young age that we don’t actually have memories of them. Or sometimes they snuck up on us so subtly that they were a part of our personality and understanding of the world before we realized what was happening.

Sometimes, though, where the belief came from is crystal clear. You remember the time you were so embarrassed by a failure that you told yourself you’d never try something like that again. Or maybe you can hear the belief spoken in your father’s voice and remember that it was something he told you or maybe said about himself.

If you’re struggling to figure out your limiting beliefs, an alternative way to identify them is to think about what in life feels challenging to you. When it comes to travel adventures, consider the places you’d like to go or things you’d like to do but have told yourself you can’t. Ask yourself, “Why can’t I?” The answer to that question is your limiting belief.

Challenge Those Thoughts!

Here’s the fun part – challenge your limiting beliefs by asking the following question:

“Is it true?”

Simple, eh? Well, yes and no. It’s a simple question that can change your life, but it can be a difficult one to sort through sometimes. As I said earlier, some of the beliefs we have about ourselves and the world have been ingrained in us for so long that they feel like the truth. So, if your quick answer to the question, “Is it true?,” is “yes!” then you may need to ask a further clarifying question:

“What evidence do I have that it’s true?”

Oooh, now it gets a little more interesting. When we start looking for evidence, many of our limiting beliefs start falling apart. For example, if you’ve told yourself you can’t do something, the reality might be that you haven’t done that thing… but you can’t really find any evidence that it would be impossible for you to do it in the future. For example, if it’s an activity that goes against the law of physics or is illegal, then you have evidence that it is accurate knowledge rather than a limiting belief. Most of the time, however, this isn’t what is going on.

Alternative Beliefs

Now that you’ve figured out some of your limiting beliefs, start experimenting with some possible alternative beliefs. This can be uncomfortable for many of us, but it also can be liberating. If you’ve always told yourself you can’t do something, what would it be like to tell yourself you can?

Maybe you’ve always wanted to visit Spain but told yourself you can’t because you don’t speak Spanish and you can’t afford it. The alternative thoughts that you can learn to speak Spanish and save up enough to travel there might open you to possibilities you didn’t consider or even notice before. For example, you decide to start eating at home more often to save some money each month to put in a savings account designated for a future trip to Spain. And you notice that the local community center is advertising a six-week beginning Spanish class. Now that you’re telling yourself you can travel to Spain, you’re excited to sign up for the class.

Experiment with actually acting on alternative beliefs… even if you don’t believe them yet. Most of the time, and for most of us, this means taking a giant step out of our comfort zone. Telling ourselves we can do something that we’ve believed we couldn’t for most of our lives can be pretty scary.

It’s never too late to be who you might have been.

attributed to George Elliott

Not Yet

One of the easiest ways to create an alternative belief about yourself is to look at your limiting belief and add the word “yet.”

Instead of telling yourself, “I can’t travel,” tell yourself, “I haven’t traveled yet.”

Instead of telling yourself, “I can’t afford to go there,” tell yourself, “I can’t afford to go there yet.”

“Not yet” opens up the future. No matter what you’ve believed about yourself up to this point in your life, there is an opportunity to do things differently in the future.

Confirmation Bias

When you do step out of your comfort zone and let go of your limiting beliefs, something really cool happens. You start to notice evidence supporting your new beliefs. This phenomenon is called “confirmation bias.” It is our tendency as human beings to notice information that supports our beliefs and theories about ourselves and the world.

Confirmation bias helped to keep your limiting beliefs alive all these years. If you tell yourself you can’t go on your dream travel adventure, every year you don’t go affirms that belief.

Lucky for us, it works in the opposite direction as well, and you can harness this as a super power! Once you start telling yourself that you can go on that travel adventure, each step you take in that direction, even the tiny steps, will confirm your new belief. For example, maybe you’ve told yourself that you couldn’t afford to travel. Telling yourself that you can afford to travel and experimenting with that new belief may result in you opening up a new savings account and putting $20 per month in it. Now you see that step as a confirmation of what you can do, and that may motivate you to save more each month or start researching ways to make travel more affordable, all of which further confirms that you are someone who can afford to travel.

Develop a Growth Mindset

The best antidote for limiting beliefs is to develop a growth mindset. This is a theory developed by the psychologist, Carol Dweck. Dr. Dwek described a growth mindset as a belief that abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work, as compared to having a fixed mindset that you were born the way you are and cannot grow or improve over time.

Having a growth mindset means viewing your skills and abilities as constantly growing. Embracing lifelong learning and seeing failures as opportunities to learn and grow are at the heart of a growth mindset.

Consider your limiting beliefs about travel. Is it that it’s too difficult? Is it too hard to plan a trip or to learn any words in a new language? Are you afraid of making a fool of yourself? These reflect a fixed mindset. A growth mindset results in thoughts like:

• I can learn new things.
• Challenges help me to grow.
• I can’t wait to see how I handle the problems that develop during this trip.
• How can I afford to travel? (Instead of “I can’t afford to travel.”)
• I haven’t taken that trip… yet!

A growth mindset is the opposite of a limiting belief. It not only gives you permission to make mistakes, it encourages you to get out there and try new things and make mistakes because that’s how we learn and grow.

In Conclusion

You don’t have to keep your limiting beliefs.

Limiting beliefs keep us and the world we live in small. It can be comforting to never leave your comfort zone, but it’s also boring. I doubt you would be reading this blog if you want to keep your world small and don’t have any desire at all to learn more about the world, whether it’s eating at a new restaurant in the town where you live or traveling halfway around the world.

You’re not the same person you were a few years ago. We all change with time and experience, and your beliefs about yourself can too.

What limiting beliefs do you have about travel? How can you reframe those beliefs? What can you tell yourself as a reminder that you’re a brave, wise traveler?