Traveling is becoming an increasingly popular lifestyle choice for young people with new travel blogs created daily, Instagram updates as well as countless Pinterest photos showing how amazing the world is and what an incredible lifestyle travel bloggers or remote workers have. All this is true but what you rarely see is what it actually takes for people to leave their comfort zones and sometimes even their whole lives for a lifestyle filled with uncertainty, risks, new cultures and the unknown.
The idea of traveling is amazing for some people, seeing amazing places, experiencing new cultures, meeting new people and living a remote work lifestyle. For others the idea of traveling is too risky, too lonely, too uncertain or creates the image of an uncomfortable lifestyle. Everyone is different, there are people who aspire to travel for the traveling lifestyle then there are people who actually take the risk and go. These two types of people are very different. Everyone has the desire to travel whether it’s for a holiday or for a long period of time- who wouldn’t like to wake up every Monday morning and think what an amazing place I’m living in. For many the desire is interrupted by reality, having to work, only getting 20 days of holiday a year, family commitments or just being scared of change or leaving everything behind. These are the ‘wanderlusters’ longing to be somewhere they are not but being too afraid to actually get there. You can sit on Instagram or Pinterest everyday and like thousands of photos but actually uploading one of those photos is completely different.
I get it, every time I am sitting in an airport about to embark on another adventure, I freak out, what am I doing here? Why am I putting myself through this? What’s going to happen? Did I make the wrong choice? This happens every time and I think it’s completely normal, I have travelled to a large number of different places doing different things and no matter where I am going I still get that same ‘airport feeling’. I have learnt to talk myself out of this feeling and ask myself this question ‘would I regret not giving it a chance?’. If the answer is yes then I have made the right decision, my heart’s true desire is to be sitting in this spot in this moment, taking this risk, having this adventure. Even when booking flights I ask myself the same question- is this something I want to do? Is it worth putting myself through the stress (because travelling is stressful for everyone)? But what if the risk pays off? How do you know if you don’t try.
People who give up their lives to see the world are a rare breed, the majority of people will never move out of their comfort zone let alone across the otherside of the world.
This being said, you don’t have to give up your life to travel, you can travel in a large number of ways; there are so many jobs now which require travelling for periods of time.
Travelling has a huge number of benefits for everyone, you may discover something you didn’t know about yourself, learn something new, meet new people, discover new cultures or even prove society wrong about a country. Travelling can come in many different forms: Making the most out of your holidays, taking long weekend breaks, finding a job which requires you to move abroad or taking a gap year. However you choose to do it, I urge everyone to travel in some way, you won’t regret it.
