Connect with us

Life

30 Life Changing Tips from World Travelers Under 30

Published

on

Are you looking for the best way to tackle your fears and live your most desired dreams? Then grab a map and start planning your next travel destination. Traveling is the best way to expand your mind beyond what you already know and tap into the potential that is within you.

I left all of my doubts and fears at the door when I decided to travel around the world on a 6-month international performance and service tour with Up with People. I traveled to cities in the USA, Mexico, Bermuda, and Europe, where I had the chance to network with influential leaders from all over the world and deliver over 100 hours of service by volunteering at schools and community organizations.

What surprised me the most was the courage and commitment that I witnessed from world travelers under the age of 30, who were fired up about their future and willing to do what it took to pursue and share this traveling opportunity.

Here are inspirational thoughts from 30 world travelers under 30 who took the leap to live their travel dreams and use their gifts to impact the world:

1. Seize the opportunities. Not just the ones that are in your face and those that are presented to you in a nicely wrapped bow, but watch out for the smaller opportunities that are hiding in between each moment.   – Tess Zondervan, Netherlands

2. No matter what your aspirations or interests are, perspective is your most valuable asset. You have to pursue that, regardless of fear or anxiety, because you can’t know the things that are on the other side of them. Step out on faith and travel the world. –Cameron Wright, USA

3. You need to get over your fear of failure if you want to travel. I think ANYONE can travel. It doesn’t have to be scary or a huge commitment. The worst thing that can happen is that you quit your job and have to start over. People make things so serious when they don’t have to be. –Katie Walter, Sweden

4. Prepare yourself for your next adventure by practicing spontaneity. Let’s keep that kid within us who isn’t afraid to try something new. Your inner child is waiting on you to say YES to all the things that your conditioned mind thinks are too irrational. –Charles-Guerin Valtille, France/Belgium

5. The hardest part about trying something new is that you question everything you do before you do it. Stop wondering if you are making the wrong decision and start acknowledging everything that is right in that moment. Be present. –Vicky He, China

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

6. If you want to travel, don’t look at all the roadblocks. Clearly set your intentions, and you will get everything you asked for. You will be better qualified for what you want to do next, and you’ll discover things you didn’t know you were interested in. –Melanie Jean, USA

7. Be very clear about what type of life that you want to live. If you want to experience a different type of life and meet people outside of your social circle, you have to be willing to step beyond what you know now so that you can gain something better later. Traveling around the world is a great way to experience a new type of life. –Ou Lu, China

8. When you surround yourself with the same people, it’s hard to find something new. Stepping beyond your comfort zone allows you to meet people who inspire you in a different way. –Pepa Ul, Germany

9. Don’t get so hung up on hypothetical situations before you execute your plans. You don’t need to overthink everything. Just do it! Traveling can bring you something more than you expected. I think people need to travel in order to find themselves. –Mike Johnsen, USA

10. If you are seeking a career as a credible business professional, you have to be open to new cultures and new ways of operating in order to remain relevant and maintain a sustainable enterprise. Traveling allows you to enhance these relationship-building skills that are crucial to your success. –Jialu Pang, China

11. If you are not finding the answers to what you want to do in life, travel the world! Traveling opens your mind to new experiences. You start to think about things that you would have never thought about before. –Marie Englebert, Belgium

12. Whether you meet individuals who are 10 or 100, everyone has a different experience that can teach you something. When you are traveling, you have a unique opportunity to encounter a teacher everywhere you go. –Sophia Berntzen, Norway

13. Nothing can boost your confidence faster than doing something that you didn’t think you could do. Taking the leap to travel is truly empowering. You can gain back your self-confidence by increasing your understanding of the people around you, becoming a world citizen, and stepping outside of your safe zone. –Paulina Ramos, Mexico

14. If you have a little bit of urge to do something, don’t second-guess yourself. Just do it! Don’t fixate on the money. Your experiences may connect you to the passion and power that is within you, and that discovery is priceless. –Chelsea Henak, USA

15. When you learn about new places and cultures, you learn more about yourself. This is one of the best investments you can make. Most people only invest in education and things that bring temporary satisfaction. Invest in experiences, and you will receive rewards that will enrich you as a person. –Jennifer Brown, Sweden

16. We have been conditioned to follow the rules of society. Now it’s time to follow our hearts. We need to find what sets our soul on fire and pursue that. Amazing things only happen outside of your comfort zone. –Lenize Dos Santos, Cape Verde

17. Don’t be afraid of the challenge zone. Enjoy the challenge zone! Traveling allows you to take on experiences that expand your capacity to stretch yourself beyond what you think you are capable of. If there were no challenges, life would be boring. –Glenn De Kemel, Belgium

18. So often we learn the grammar rules of a foreign language at school, but we are hesitant to use what we learned in real life. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. People will be inspired by your willingness to learn another language, and you may inspire someone else to learn something new. –Margaux de Boeck, Belgium

19. If you think something is impossible, you are just limiting yourself to your safe zone. You have to be willing to invest in yourself outside of a classroom. Traveling exposes you to so many opportunities that will help you learn more about yourself and the world around you. –Timo Bossema, Netherlands

20. You will be surprised by how much you can learn while traveling. You can start learning a different language in one week! Immerse yourself in the language by taking advantage of cultural activities, host-family living, language buddies, and cell-phone apps in order to accelerate your learning. –Roxane Blondel, Belgium

“Travel while you’re young and able. Don’t worry about the money, just make it work. Experience is far more valuable than money will ever be.” – Unknown

21. Traveling can help you become a global instrument. The more you discover about yourself, the more in-touch you are with those around you. You learn how to be the best person that you can by embarking upon different cultural experiences.–Nikki Smith, Philippines

22. If you have a dream, traveling won’t make that dream go away. In fact, the insights you receive while traveling will only magnify your dream if that is something that you truly want to do. –Alexandra Bungum, Denmark

23. Business students often wonder if they should take advantage of more internships or study-abroad opportunities. I think that you should travel as often as you can, whenever you can. The job will always be there. Traveling fosters new ideas and allows you to expand your mind in ways that will heighten your impact in the job market. –Tiki Shou, China

24. Don’t have doubts. Just jump in. It’s not as bad as you think. Traveling is the path to freedom and independence, because it’s up to you to figure out how to manage your money, allocate your time, and develop relationships. If you want to gain the confidence you need to follow your own path in life, travel to a new place alone. –Lauren Reed, USA

25. The more you get out there and just do stuff, the more your comfort zone expands. You will feel like you can do anything. That is the best feeling. Traveling allows you to tap into this feeling and will move you in ways that you never imagined. –Violette Defourt, Belgium

26. Sometimes you think you have to gain access to a certain key in order to gain happiness. When you travel, you realize that happiness is not a key but a puzzle. Each key is a part of the puzzle. Every experience may not give you exactly what you wanted, but it gives you exactly what you needed in order to complete your puzzle.  –Xavier Rosales, Mexico

27. Take advantage of opportunities that allow you to do things you have never done before. Every new experience that you take on can be used to propel your future goals. Whether it’s singing or dancing or acting, you need to see the full picture and how everything comes together — that’s with anything in life. –Caity Cecio, USA

28. You have to tap into your creative bones when you travel in order to make the most of situations that come your way. Traveling teaches you how to use your gifts more intentionally in order to achieve certain results and connect with people from all walks of life. –Raymond Mulangu Gieskes, Netherlands

29. Things will work out the way they are supposed to be. Be vulnerable to everything that comes your way. Through vulnerability, you can fall easily, but through vulnerability, you can fall softer. Traveling experiences will show you how to jump in and be vulnerable. –Andrew Erusha, USA

30. Every day you have to choose to say yes to what you are doing, because it may be your last day. What you are doing now may not be your dream job, but look at it as a way of prepping you for something else. Traveling opens your mind to being flexible in your career and taking advantage of the NOW. –Alicen Schade, USA

What do you need in order to make the leap towards your dreams? Have you learned any new skills while traveling? Let me know in the comments section below!

After 7 years of working in Corporate America as a Certified Public Accountant, Charlene left her job in April 2015 and decided to travel around the world with a non-profit international education organization called Up with People. She has traveled around the world with 100 individuals from 20 different countries. You can visit her www.careergoddessacademy.com or connect with her through Twitter.

Advertisement
17 Comments

17 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Entrepreneurs

The Brutal Truth About Entrepreneurship with ADHD (And Why Most Advice Is Making It Worse)

Published

on

Image Credit: Joel Brown - Addicted2success

You’re not lazy. You’re not undisciplined… and you’re definitely not broken.

You’re an entrepreneur with ADHD, and right now you’re probably sitting on 19 unfinished projects, 47 open tabs, and a brain that feels like it’s running on 12 different radio stations at once.

You’ve read the books. You’ve tried the planners, the Pomodoro timers, the accountability groups. You’ve even hired coaches who promised to “fix” your focus. Yet here you are — brilliant ideas, massive potential, and a business that still feels like it’s one step away from collapsing under the weight of your own mind.

Here’s what almost nobody in the entrepreneurial space will admit:

The real struggle isn’t your ADHD. It’s that you’ve been trying to run a neurodivergent brain inside a neurotypical business model — and then beating yourself up when it doesn’t work.

Most advice for entrepreneurs was written by people whose brains work differently. They preach consistency, routines, long-term planning, and steady execution like those things are universal truths. For the ADHD entrepreneur, those “truths” feel like trying to swim upstream in cement. You can force it for a while (and you have), but eventually your brain rebels, the burnout hits, and you’re left feeling like a failure who just needs to “try harder.”

That cycle is quietly destroying more talented founders than cash flow problems or bad hires ever could.

The deeper layer most people never reach is this: your ADHD isn’t a bug in the system. It’s a different operating system entirely. And when you stop trying to install Windows on a Mac and start building everything around macOS, the game changes completely.

The Hidden Addiction That Keeps ADHD Entrepreneurs Stuck

You already know the surface symptoms — time blindness, rejection sensitivity, starting strong and fading fast, shiny object syndrome.

But the real trap is more insidious.

It’s the addiction to chaos and novelty.

Your brain is wired for dopamine. New ideas, big visions, last-minute sprints, high-stakes pressure — these things light you up like nothing else. The boring, repetitive, systems-building work that actually scales a business? It feels like torture.

So unconsciously, you keep your business in a state of controlled chaos. You say yes to too many things. You chase the next exciting opportunity. You avoid building the boring infrastructure because “I work better under pressure anyway.”

And every time the pressure gets too high, you crash, swear you’ll get organized next quarter, and repeat the cycle.

Meanwhile, the neurotypical advice keeps telling you to “just build better habits.” As if your brain is a poorly trained dog that needs more discipline instead of a high-performance race car that needs the right fuel and track.

This isn’t a character flaw. It’s neurology.

And until you stop treating your wiring as something to overcome and start treating it as your greatest strategic advantage, you’ll stay stuck in the same exhausting loop.

The Identity Shift That Changes Everything

The entrepreneurs with ADHD who finally break through don’t “fix” their brains.

They redesign their entire business to work with their brains.

They stop trying to become the consistent, routine-loving founder the gurus talk about. Instead, they become the architect of a system that leverages their natural strengths — hyperfocus, pattern recognition, creative problem-solving, relentless drive under pressure — while outsourcing or automating everything that drains them.

This is the layer most ADHD entrepreneurs never reach because it requires something terrifying: accepting that you are never going to be “normal” at entrepreneurship… and that’s exactly why you can win bigger than most.

Your ability to see connections others miss. Your tolerance for uncertainty. Your capacity to go all-in when something lights you up. These aren’t liabilities. They’re unfair advantages in a world that rewards speed, creativity, and bold moves.

The shift is simple but brutal:

Stop trying to manage your ADHD. Start designing your business around it.

How to Actually Build a Business That Works With Your Brain

  1. Stop fighting your energy cycles — weaponize them. Most ADHD entrepreneurs try to force 8-hour focused days. That’s insane. Instead, track when your brain actually works best (for many it’s 10pm-2am or random 4-hour hyperfocus bursts). Build your schedule around those windows. Protect them like gold. Do the deep, high-leverage work then. Use the low-energy periods for admin, calls, or recovery.
  2. Build “chaos containers,” not rigid systems. Traditional project management tools feel like cages. Create loose but effective structures that give your brain freedom. Use tools like Notion with massive flexibility, or body-doubling (working alongside someone virtually), or even hiring a “chaos wrangler” — an assistant who thrives on turning your scattered ideas into executable plans.
  3. Turn your rejection sensitivity into rocket fuel. That intense fear of letting people down or looking stupid? Channel it into creating ridiculously high standards for your customer experience or product quality. Use it as fuel instead of letting it paralyze you.
  4. Outsource the parts that make you want to die. The execution, follow-through, and maintenance phases are where most ADHD entrepreneurs lose. Hire or partner with people who love the details. Your job is vision, strategy, and big swings. Let someone else own the spreadsheets.
  5. Create external pressure on your own terms. Deadlines and public commitments work wonders for the ADHD brain. Use them strategically — announce launches, create beta groups, or work with coaches who understand neurodivergence instead of fighting it.

The entrepreneurs with ADHD who are quietly crushing it right now aren’t the ones who finally became “disciplined.” They’re the ones who stopped apologizing for how their brain works and started building empires that are specifically engineered for it.

They have teams that handle the boring stuff. They have systems that flex with their energy instead of fighting it. They’ve turned their “flaws” into the exact reasons their businesses stand out.

Your ADHD brain is not the enemy. The enemy was trying to play the game by rules that were never designed for you.

The moment you accept that and start designing everything… your calendar, your team, your offers, your processes — around how you actually operate, the struggle doesn’t disappear… but it becomes manageable, even exhilarating.

You were never meant to fit the mold. You were meant to break it and build something better.

The world doesn’t need another cookie-cutter entrepreneur. It needs the chaotic, brilliant, all-in, slightly unhinged visionaries who can only operate at full power when the game is built for them.

That’s you.

Stop trying to fix yourself. Start building the business that was always meant to be run by a mind like yours.

Your next breakthrough isn’t going to come from working harder or being more consistent. It’s going to come from finally giving yourself permission to work differently.

And when you do that? Watch what happens.

The same brain that once felt like a curse becomes the exact reason your business becomes unstoppable.

You’ve got this. Not despite the ADHD. Because of it.

If you want to learn more from me or send me a personal message I’ll respond to you on Instagram at https://instagram.com/iamjoelbrown speak soon!

Continue Reading

Health & Fitness

The Health Planning Habits That Support Long-Term Success

Published

on

Image Credit: Joel Brown - Addicted2success

Most people think about health planning only when something forces them to.

A medical bill arrives unexpectedly. An insurance issue appears during treatment. A diagnosis changes how future care needs are viewed. Suddenly health planning becomes urgent instead of preventative.

The problem is that long-term health stability is usually shaped by smaller habits built quietly over time, not just by major decisions during emergencies.

That includes physical health habits, of course, but it also includes how people approach insurance coverage, preventative care, financial preparation, and long-term healthcare planning before problems become immediate.

The families who navigate healthcare stress most effectively are often not the ones avoiding every issue entirely. More often, they’re the ones who built systems early enough to make difficult situations feel more manageable later.

Consistency Matters More Than Perfection

A lot of health advice still revolves around extreme change.

Perfect diets. Aggressive routines. Complete lifestyle overhauls.

In reality, most long-term health success comes from consistency people can realistically maintain for years instead of months. Small preventative habits tend to matter more than dramatic short-term efforts that collapse under pressure.

That principle applies financially too.

People often spend more time researching investment strategies than understanding their healthcare coverage or preparing for future medical costs. But healthcare instability can disrupt long-term financial plans surprisingly quickly when households are unprepared for how expensive even routine care can become over time.

The practical side of health planning is becoming harder to separate from overall financial planning now than it used to be.

Preventative Planning Reduces More Stress Than People Realize

One overlooked benefit of health planning is emotional stability.

People who understand their coverage, maintain preventative care routines, and think ahead about healthcare decisions often describe feeling less overwhelmed when unexpected situations happen. The goal is not eliminating uncertainty entirely. That’s unrealistic.

The goal is reducing how chaotic healthcare decisions feel under pressure.

That’s one reason broader conversations tied to healthcare and health insurance have expanded significantly over the last several years. Rising costs, changing coverage structures, and increasing healthcare complexity have made long-term planning more important for average households than many people expected.

Healthcare is no longer something most families can comfortably approach reactively forever.

People Underestimate How Quickly Healthcare Costs Compound

One reason health planning habits matter so much is that healthcare costs rarely arrive in one dramatic moment alone.

More often, they build gradually:

  • recurring prescriptions
  • specialist visits
  • ongoing treatment plans
  • insurance deductible increases
  • long-term care considerations
  • unexpected procedures layered on top of existing expenses

Families often absorb these costs incrementally until they realize how much financial pressure accumulated over time.

That gradual buildup is part of what makes proactive planning valuable. People who think ahead about coverage structures, emergency savings, provider networks, and preventative care tend to adapt more smoothly when healthcare needs eventually increase later in life.

The difficult part is that many households delay these conversations because they feel healthy right now.

Healthcare Decisions Have Become More Complicated

Another challenge is that healthcare systems themselves continue evolving quickly.

Insurance structures change. Telehealth expands. Employer-sponsored benefits shift. Prescription pricing fluctuates. Patients now carry more responsibility for understanding deductibles, provider networks, and out-of-pocket exposure than previous generations often did.

That complexity creates decision fatigue.

Even relatively organized households sometimes feel uncertain about whether they’re making good healthcare choices because the systems themselves are difficult to navigate confidently. A lot of current health insurance trends discussions reflect this larger issue, healthcare planning is becoming less about isolated medical events and more about long-term sustainability across entire households.

People want predictability, but healthcare systems increasingly feel harder to predict.

The Most Effective Health Habits Usually Feel Boring

One thing people rarely admit is that good long-term planning habits are often not particularly exciting.

Scheduling preventative appointments. Reviewing insurance annually. Building emergency savings slowly. Staying physically active consistently. Maintaining realistic routines instead of dramatic cycles of burnout and reset.

None of those habits feel dramatic at the moment.

But over long periods, they create stability that becomes incredibly valuable once life gets complicated. The people who navigate healthcare stress most effectively are often the ones who built ordinary systems early instead of waiting for perfect motivation later.

That applies financially and physically at the same time.

Why Long-Term Success Depends on Adaptability

Health planning is ultimately difficult because people’s lives keep changing.

Careers shift. Families grow. Aging parents require support. Medical needs evolve. Financial priorities change over decades in ways nobody predicts perfectly in advance.

That’s why the strongest long-term health planning habits are usually flexible rather than rigid.

The goal is not building a flawless plan that never changes. It’s creating enough structure, awareness, and preparation that future adjustments become manageable instead of overwhelming.

Most people cannot control every future health outcome. They can, however, build habits that make uncertainty easier to navigate when it eventually arrives.

Continue Reading

Life

Why Moving to a New City Can Change Your Mindset

Discover how moving to a new city boosts neuroplasticity, builds resilience, and reshapes your mindset

Published

on

How relocation changes your mindset

Relocation is always a challenge. Rebuilding and restarting your life requires you to step outside of your comfort zone. (more…)

Continue Reading

Change Your Mindset

The Hidden Reason You Can’t Stay Consistent

If motivation keeps failing you, the real issue isn’t discipline. It’s the identity shaping your habits and long-term success.

Published

on

Identity-based habits

Success often looks like a time-management problem. You buy a planner, set reminders, and hope that next week will be different. For a few days, it works. Then stress hits, motivation drops, and old patterns return. (more…)

Continue Reading

Trending