TRAVEL AND THE MINDSET OF
“I CAN”
Develop confidence and
find your own identity through “free-thinking” travel
Colouring inside the lines
As we make our way through
elementary school and then high school, then university, and then enter the
workforce, we spend the majority of our first 25 years of life learning how
to obey: how to colour within the lines, how to follow deadlines; how to sit
down, keep quiet, pay attention and do what we’re told. Some people thrive
in this environment and others don’t, but either way, we learn that these
are values of our society, and there’ll be consequences if we don’t comply.
When you grow up in a
system like this, you learn pretty quickly that it’s easier to just follow
the rules and do what you’re told than it is to go against the current and
rock the boat. That’s not to say having rules is bad, though, like for
reinforcing certain societal values and things like basic human rights, but
when we’re continuously in an environment where things are regimented, and
90 percent of our lives are controlled and evaluated by someone else, our
brains eventually become programmed to just fall into place and serve
requirements bestowed upon us. We forget that we have the capacity to decide
whether we want to be a part of this matrix at all.
“Shit disturbers” and
success
This is why “shit
disturbers” and ADHD kids grow up into revolutionary adults. I literally
Googled “famous people + ADHD,” and these are some people who came up:
Will Smith, Bill Gates,
Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Albert Einstein, Emma Watson, Michael
Jordan, John Lennon, Vince Vaughan, Stevie Wonder, John F. Kennedy, Leonardo
da Vinci, Stephen Hawking, Sylvester Stallone, Henry Ford, Walt Disney,
Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Woody Harrelson, Mozart, Terry
Bradshaw, Michael Phelps, Alfred Hitchcock, Beethoven, George Bernard Shaw,
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Babe Ruth, Richard Branson, even Galileo.
I don’t know if this list
is 100 percent accurate or if some of these people were only speculated to
have ADHD, but my point stands either way: people who reach impeccable
heights of personal and professional mastery, and evolve into some of the
most unique and impactful minds that have ever come to be, don’t evolve this
way from sitting still and “drinking the Kool-Aid.” They make their own
rules and march to the beat of their own drum.
Reprogram your brain
through travel (not a “vacation”!)
Searching for your own
unique life path while mentally programmed to “conform-or-die” is really
hard. The next step for anyone here is to reprogram your brain to think for
yourself again, and one of the most powerful ways to do this is through
foreign travel.
When I mention “travel,” I
don’t mean spending seven days on an all-inclusive vacation. I used to think
that travelling meant setting foot in another country, but my perspective
completely changed after my first big trip to Nepal, Thailand and Indonesia
when I was 22. It gave me a completely different point of reference and
opened my eyes to why staying in hotels and doing “touristy” things—AKA
vacationing—is a completely different experience from travelling.
· Hotels and
resorts are walled gardens, safe and controlled environments where guests
are only supposed to see what they’re “supposed” to see. Raw authenticity is
limited in an environment that’s consciously designed and managed to deploy
a specific user experience.
· All-inclusive
vacation experiences take the system even further, as people are escorted on
and off the resort property on a timely schedule according to systems in
place by transport accommodation companies. Things are usually planned well
ahead of time, and there isn’t much room for the natural or sporadic flow of
human movement, aside from whatever happens among the people who’ve ended up
at the same property at the same time. From activities to dining options and
sometimes even curfew, there’s not a whole lot of active decision-making to
do.
Staying at resorts or
pre-planning a vacation to a tee is a wonderful thing for people who want to
turn their brains off, chill out and unwind, but this isn’t the style of
travel that’ll help you become an individual thinker again.
Vacationing simply extends
the structure of our systematic lives to another location, where we continue
living within a set routine or schedule that’s been put in place by some
higher authority above. We’re all ushered along by guidelines and timelines,
and our “free-thinking” is only useful concerning bacon or sausage.
When life doesn’t require
our input, autopilot ensues. We turn on, we do what we must and then we turn
off. Vacationing reinforces a similar system.
Travelling, on the other
hand, dumps this system on its head and leaves you to your own devices. Your
entire experience is curated on the fly. Everything requires a decision, and
there are dozens of moving parts impacting each decision you make (as well
as your decision-making skills) throughout each and every day. Travelling
puts you in a position where you don’t have a choice but to make choices.
Here’s why travel travel
is different:
· You’re not in a
walled garden, you’re out in the world. Some places are beautiful and safe,
and other places are raw and unforgiving. The only “user experience” is what
you yourself decide to do, and then choose to make of the given situation.
· You end up being
exposed to people from all over the world, all at once: people at various
points in their timeline of life, working within various budgets and ETAs;
people heading in various directions, maybe coming from where you just came
from or going somewhere you might not dare visit. You might hang out with a
stranger for one single day or choose to stay with your new friend for weeks
on end. Deadlines are in place by choice and fate.
· Your day is full
of decisions, and your travel experience is actively created by you and
whomever you might be with, which evolves daily. What’s for breakfast? When
are we getting lunch? Are you going to that thing? Where are we staying
tonight? Yo, it’s that guy from Tuesday! Everything in your world is a
mixture of do-it-yourself (DIY) and going with the flow, shaped by your own
input and desires.
If this sounds stressful to
you, or if it sounds like a lot of work, then you probably need it the most.
Real travelling means making real life decisions all day, every day,
everywhere; it forces you to tune in and figure out what you want, and then
take action to make it happen.It’s
real life.
“Real” travel changes
people for the better
This type of travelling
changes people. It changes the way your brain is wired. You realize that
you’re entirely in control of your own life experiences, and that you’re
entirely in control of where you end up and what you have to deal with
because of it.
If you want to go
somewhere, you just go. If you’re late, nobody’s going to suspend you. If
you want to spank an ass, spank an ass; just make sure it’s wanted in
return, and know that even if it’s wanted, you still might have to throw
down with someone bigger than you and then have your nose cracked back into
place by a Thai bartender with a dart hanging out of his mouth. Nobody’s
gonna get sued, and everyone involved will receive free buckets.
Travel opens up the door to
impulsive decisions and wild situations. Familiar patterns dissolve and
re-establish themselves in ways that would never happen under controlled,
systematic circumstances, and each situation you’re in will be the direct
result of your own desires and motives, whether you’re prepared to accept
that or not.
Travel teaches you to have
an idea of where you want to end up, but also that the zestiest experiences
come from welcoming the flow of unforeseen attractions and taking the
universe up on opportunities that unfold before you by sheer luck and divine
timing.
You learn to connect with
other people you vibe with, and part of the magic is intertwined with the
odds that you might never see these people again—and certainly never in the
here and now of that particular moment. You learn to engage and to strike up
conversations. You learn to be brave, to say “yes” to things you might
normally say “no” to, and you learn to love the rush of stepping outside of
your comfort zone.
Travel is life-changing
because you learn to embrace the world and participate in the creation of
your own experiences.
It’s a beautiful thing,
being forced to create, because you learn quite quickly the type of world
you want to create. You learn what you like, what you don’t like, who you’re
attracted to and what you’re repulsed by. You learn which challenges you’re
willing to take on and how to observe your way towards challenge acceptance.
You learn your turn-ons and your “hard nos.” You learn to shape your world
according to whatever you want, while letting others do the same.
No
expectations—cultivating happiness, confidence and self-knowledge
There are no expectations
to be a certain kind of someone. The characters we play in our “real” lives
fall to the wayside, because when you travel, you can be anybody—which
means, sometimes for the first time in our lives, we can discover and be our
own authentic selves.
Not only does this tint the
lens through which we perceive the world, it changes the way we perceive
ourselves. It shifts our minds into new dimensions of processing and
connectivity that just aren’t required of us when we’re living on
auto-pilot, doing our best to conform. Travel is life-changing because you
learn who you are at your core and you learn how to present that person to
the world.
I believe that anyone who
can travel should, but the most wonderful thing about the lessons of travel
is that you don’t actually need to explore foreign lands at all. The lessons
wrapped up in travel are ultimately about buying into the state of mind that
you create your own happiness by creating your own reality, based on who you
are at your authentic core—and everyone has the ability to tap into that
state of mind, regardless of where you are in the world.
What matters is that you
increase the variety of experiences you have under your belt by trying new
things and meeting new people. Increasing the number of experiences you have
to draw upon will profoundly impact your capacity to perceive everything
else in your life, and it’ll also enhance your own capabilities. When you
discover that you’re a more capable human, you’ll find yourself gaining
confidence as well.
Double down on your
confidence with intuitive guidance, and there, you’ll have the internal
foundation to navigate anything.
This post is excerpted from
TRAVEL
AND THE MINDSET OF “I CAN”