I’m getting ready for another adventure. What I love about traveling is that it gets me out of my routine. It expands my world by helping me meet new people and learn about new perspectives, different cultures and viewpoints. As Mark Twain says, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.”
Sometimes we don’t know we like a meal until we taste it. So with life, tasting another culture allows us to grow and learn. There is something special about the smell of spicy jerk chicken, the sound of reggae music and the feel of plunging into the Jamaican ocean that we can’t get from a book.
Meeting Rastas, I learned first hand where Jamaicans are coming from and an understanding of their perspective. Traveling also gives us opportunities to experience the unexpected — the novel aspects of life!
Wherever you go, near or far, just getting out of your routine will awaken your senses!
Here are 6 travel tips that I hope will help encourage you to get out of your comfort zone and explore:
1. What Fate and Fortune deliver is pretty much out of our control, but our attitude is ours to control and can strongly influence our experience. Appreciation and gratitude opens the heart, resentment and fear constrict it. Be mindful of your attitude when setting out on an adventure and try to keep your mental focus on statements like: “This is going to be fun” and “I am open to however my adventure unfolds.”
2. The best way to exercise your brain is to learn and the best way to exercise your soul is to laugh, especially when you’re laughing at yourself. So, if you face a challenge while on your journey, try to learn from it, and, more importantly, try to bring some levity to it.
3. If you’re single and hoping to find romance on your trip, my recommendation is to seek out what “turns you on,” and what you love, rather than looking to be loved. Love can be found in all the right places and sometimes the “wrong” ones. You may be surprised what letting go of this expectation may lead to!
4. Fear is our opponent and our opponent deserves to be respected. Be open- minded and challenge yourself, but also know your limits. After all, traveling is supposed to be fun, not damaging.
5. Life is not a dress rehearsal. Be the actor and the audience, and play your parts to the fullest. Embrace your journey, lend a hand to your fellow travelers and enjoy the present moment and all of the new, exciting and wonderful things around you: the sights, smells, sounds and energy.
6. Don’t just be, DO. Just don’t do, BE. Try to balance doing (activities, tours, sight-seeing) and being (taking in a view, relaxing in a cafe, sleeping in). I recently met a 90-year-old lady who was sipping on a Jamaican Rum punch, and she said, “Honey, I can’t do anymore, so I just be.” Another couple told me they’ve never sat and enjoyed a cocktail because they’re always too busy exploring. I like finding a balance between the two!
My recent trip to Thailand was a fun balancing act of “being” and “doing,” from riding elephants in the jungle to watching sunsets on the beach! As St. Augustine says, “The world is a book and those who don’t travel only read one page.”
Author: Barbara McNally is the author of Unbridled: A Memoir and founder of the Mother Lover Fighter Sage Foundation. Proceeds from Unbridled go to the foundation whose primary focus is to assist the wives of wounded warriors. Learn more at www.unbridledfreedom.com
Photos: Barbara McNally
