The Traveller’s Mantra: Embrace Joy


All that You see is temporary.

All of it will pass away.

Yet your awareness will remain.

In the end, You are indestructible. All of the struggle, the pain, and the heartache is temporary, freely given to you as an instrument for your own growth. You can chart your own path through countless adventures, even in the face of incredible opposition. Do not doubt your power. Wiser ones than You have slept beside the street, penniless, in times of trouble.

Embrace Joy.

Because they survived. The great travellers of the past did not fret over tomorrow. They focused it. They imagined it. And then, they let it go, knowing that tomorrow was a myth yet sleeping within their dreaming minds, a myth that did not exist until it became today, completely unrecognizable from what they had imagined. They knew that delving into anxiety proved itself to be yet another example of a loss of faith, so they made a choice.

Embrace Joy.

Once, a wanderer struggled to pick up Faith and take it with him. He struggled for many years, until he realized that his hands were already filled with the slimy fragments of Worry. This worry had different flavors and forms: worry over loneliness, worry over possessions, and worry over the future. And the Wanderer realized that there was no room for Faith while he still clung to the Worry that he had held onto for so long. Yet the Wanderer wanted the Faith very much, so he struggled and struggled to open his hands and release his Worry. He struggled and strained, until at last he opened his hands and the Worry fell to the ground, like a lifeless worm from the Abyss. And then, with great care, the Wanderer picked up Faith.

Suddenly, a radiant path appeared before him.

And he set foot onto the path.

And embraced Joy.



How to Increase your Power through Travel


Do everyday chores ever feel like impossibly weighty tasks? Are there projects that you know you should tend to, yet you can’t seem to muster the focus to deal with them? Do you feel powerless to alter your destiny?

Everyday tasks and future plans don’t have to weigh on you. You can find the strength and the motivation to tackle the projects you’ve been putting off. You can (and will) alter your destiny.

And travel will be your catalyst.

How is Travel a Catalyst?

The more I travel the more I realize how much it changes my perspective and strengthens me as an individual. For instance, a few days ago I returned home after a month-long quest to explore the East Coast of the United States. Upon returning, I began to realize, just as I realized after my West Coast trip, that I had perceptibly grown as an individual. I felt more confident, more clear, more decisive, and more able to confront challenges that appear in daily life. Over and over again, I have realized that travel is a powerful catalyst for growth.

Why is this the case?

In short, the act of travel gives you sublime opportunities for you to mature in uncounted ways, including increasing your own power. From repeated observation of this pattern in myself and in others, I’ve seen how travel (especially travel that involves exploring expansive areas or contending with situations you’ve never been in before) poses excellent opportunities for you to adapt to new surroundings and situations. This process often features a collection of challenges in different areas, and these challenges increase in difficulty as you proceed into more foreign and new experiences. And in the process, these challenges stretch you as a person — they stretch your consciousness itself.

And the result becomes clear when you return.

When you return back to your old surroundings, you return to an environment that you created from your previous level of thinking. Your old environment was a product of the person you were before you ventured out to travel, so when you look at your old environment (your office, living situation, relationships, etc.) you’re really seeing an old reflection of yourself. Yet this new you, this post-adventure you, sees your old challenges in a completely new light, and they probably don’t seem nearly as weighty or intimidating as before.

If you’ve stretched yourself at all while travelling, you will feel a shift; and the more you’ve stretched yourself and challenged your assumptions about life itself, the more pronounced your shift in perspective will be.

How to best harness this New Power

However, if you’re not careful, you can lose most of your gains because your environment will support or hinder your overall sense of power. You want to hold onto this newfound strength, right? If you do, you’d be wise to harness this newfound strength now to upgrade your life to support this new sense of perspective you now have. Best to do it now, because it’ll be much more challenging later.

What are some things you should think about doing?

To harness your new power after any consciousness expansion (including, but not limited to travel), I highly recommend you:

  1. Form a Fresh Vision
    • Write a few sentences about where you’d like different areas of you life to be a year from now. (Cover health, relationships, social, career, and finances.) Where would you like them to be a year from now?
  2. Upgrade your Workspace
    • Take some time to reconsider how you’ve designed your workspace because your environment is critical to supporting the habits that will shape you into the person you’ll become. My article “How to Improve your Workspace in 7 Steps” will help you reevaluate and refresh your workspace so it’s truly supportive to who you are.
  3. Take ACTION!
    • Are there any tasks you’ve been meaning to do for weeks but let go for an extended period, certain that you’d “get to them later”? You are strong now. Whether it was short trip or a longer quest, you have just returned from travelling and that makes you wiser than you were before. Take decisive action now while you’re still hot.

Conclusion

Always remember, with each new adventure comes a new opportunity to stretch yourself and expand your awareness. I’ve found that keeping a journal helps me see these changes in myself, and if you take action soon after you return from an adventure, you can better lock-in those gains made from travelling. In the process, you increase the rate at which you’re able to evolve and grow as a piece of this incredible planet we call our home. It’s begging to be explored, so even after you’ve expanded your consciousness many times, never forget that there are always new ways to grow and new ways to expand your awareness through travel.

Travel is one of the most profound ways to grow, so if you want to continue to grow and increase your power and awareness, never stop travelling. Its rewards compound over a lifetime.