The act of travel gives you perspective. Inspiration. Vision.
Does this resonate with you?
Can you name a trip you’ve gone on in your life that left you feeling… different somehow?
All of the big trips I’ve done in my life have always transformed my outlook and direction completely. Travel has encouraged me to listen to my instincts, make shifts in my life, and get closer to the source of who I really am. Big trips aren’t inherently life altering, but they offer me opportunities for reflection and refinement. And that ripples into big life changes and huge creative shifts.
I spent years trying to puzzle out exactly why this happened. Did I feel the need to adapt my life because I wanted it to mirror the experiences of cultures I was interacting with? Was it an inherent need to just shake things up to keep from getting bored when I returned to normalcy?
In the end, I think it really boils down to the benefit of looking at your life from a distance.
When you get out of your regular habits and patterns, you can see which ones actually serve you, and which ones don’t really fulfill you.
You realize what you really need, and what you can live without.
You discover new outlooks, traditions, and ways of being that you can incorporate into your routines.
Travel is one way to access your deeper self — when you allow yourself to get outside of your habits and patterns.
What perspective could you have on your own life if you stepped OUT of it for a moment and looked at it from a birds-eye view, and how can it make you a more creative, well-rounded, happy person?
Breaking Out of the Trap of Habits
We talk a lot in coaching and personal development about building habits and structures that are supportive. And those are great! Whether it’s your morning routine, your optimized work schedule, or your weekly catch up with friends, it’s important to have habits that source you.
But I would argue that there’s a bigger value in assessing how you break your habits, and what you do without them.
I’m not encouraging you to throw away everything that gives you structure, but breaking out of our habit loops gives us the gift of understanding and valuing what we’re missing when it’s not there.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?
This is an opportunity that travel affords us: there’s a perspective shift and an opportunity to assess:
- Was this habit lifting me up or weighing me down?
- Do I actually need/enjoy this?
- Is this a coping mechanism that I feel I need less when I’m in other circumstances?
I have a weighted blanket that I carry with me when I travel because it helps me sleep. That’s important to me, so I know that it has to come with me on trips unless there is a weighted blanket available there. Is this a habit/need? Yeah! I have had enough travel experiences without it that I have found it was actually a necessity for me.
But in the same way, there are things I used to bring with me when I traveled that I have discovered are not actually needs and just add weight to my suitcase but not value to my experience. So now I leave them behind or find alternatives.
Makes sense, right? What if we apply this to habits and experiences in your life, instead of just things to pack?
What if you used travel as an opportunity to notice what you’re missing, or what you thought you needed to do that you are actually happier without?
This is the core lesson that drove me to fully integrate travel into my personal development journey… and into my coaching offers.
Traveling and creating these new experiences for myself enabled me to break out of my day-to-day habits and get a better look at what is really important to me.
And that allowed me to come back to my day-to-day with a new perspective, new ideas, and new creative juices.
So how could intentionally creating travel opportunities provide the structure for me, and for my clients, to implement big changes in their lives? In their businesses? In their art?
This is the question that drove me to create bespoke creative retreats and merge coaching with custom trips all over the world.
This world is this beautiful canvas where you can create anything. So instead of thinking of travel as some highly commercial, corporate experience, why can’t we use it as a way to create truly special experiences?
This is not a Sandals commercial: all surf sand and fun… This is an invitation to rethink your travel experience and how you can intentionally review habits, restore your energy, and build new habits for you and your clients.
You can go to Vegas, or Sandals resort, or the fucking rodeo… that’s fun and great!
But that’s not my vision.
My vision is to work alongside you to curate the experience you need in order to unlock your creativity. To create opportunities for wonder and transcendence. To give you the space in which to play, think, change your perspectives, and open your mind to how limitless you are.
To change who you are as a human, and ripple into the way you lead your life when the traveling is done.
How could a trip change your business or your life habits?
As an exercise, I’d like to invite you to answer some questions for yourself, especially if you’ve never interacted with or thought about travel on this soul-level before.
- Where in the world do you most desire to go? Dreaming big – no reasoning needed.
- What about those places calls to you?
- If you could change anything about your day-to-day life or habits, what would it be?
- What creative/business/life projects have you been “trying to” start or finish for a while now? What’s keeping you from them?
- When you are experiencing burnout, what is often the reason you feel that way?
- What is your dream/goal lifestyle, really?
Questions like these are the kind of questions that provide vital insight when we are creating experiences together, FOR YOU. The answers, if you are honest, may even provide you some immediate insight on the places where your needs are not getting met, or your creativity is being left unfulfilled. They also help us open conversations about what you are truly desiring to experience and how we can create those experiences for you with intention.
If you like, you’re welcome to email the answers to me to start that conversation! Anything is possible.
We are conditioned to think of travel as “vacationing” in the commercial sense. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good vacation, but my goal is to help you shift your perspective on travel, and on your LIFE in the process.
What if the trips we take go from being a “vacation FROM our life” to “a vacation FOR our life”?
What if they became a tool to revitalize our creativity and fulfillment in our lives?
What could this look like for you? I’d be thrilled to discover that with you.