Life
Why Travelling Can Wake You The Hell Up From Your Reality
Spending some time traveling the world can change your current perspective on life. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut and then not be able to see a clear way out. The way out can often be blinded by your own thinking.
Travel is something that can wake you the help up from the day-to-day grind and help you to realise an abundance of things that you either didn’t know or have forgotten about. We live our lives so numb to what else exists or what could be happening on the other side of the world right now.
There are certain triggers that we all need to bring us back to the present and realise what is important to us individually. There are few things that have the immense power required to catapult you out of your current reality, but traveling is definitely one of them.
What I have just described to you is exactly what happened to me on two recent trips to China and Hong Kong. To be honest, I haven’t had the pleasure of doing a lot of travel in my life and made the mistake of thinking that seeing the world isn’t as important as the daily entrepreneur grind.
We’re taught by social media that we should never sleep, never take a break, and work on our passion 24/7. This is a recipe for disaster, and it’s a reality I have unfortunately lived many times over.
Thanks to my China trips, I would like to share with you the seven ways traveling can wake you the hell up:
1. Remind you of the world’s problems
The catch phrase “first world problems” is something that many millennials use to describe their problems. The phrase is considered by many to be a joke towards just how little our problems are compared to developing countries, but I feel that many young people don’t quite understand the problems that exist.
The benefit of travel is that it allows all of us to wake up and see what other countries are like. No matter how bad you think you have it, there is always somewhere else in the world that has it worse. Travelling shows us that we need to put our problems into perspective and not think that everything in our life is so bad after all.
The more that you travel, the more you will see that other countries problems are very similar to your own and that on the surface they may appear different, when in reality they’re the same.
As I visited parts of China, I saw people that were immensely happy, yet they had hardly anything. I found that the more I trekked into country villages, the happier the people seemed to be. There was a place in Shanghai that I went to called “The Bund” which is where a lot of the wealthy business people of China work.
The place was filled with the successful business type, and the shops were flooded with luxury brands like Hugo Boss, yet the people didn’t come across as happy. Many worked twelve hour days hustling for the dollar and were never given the time to travel out of fear that they might lose their illustrious position at the top of the corporate ladder.
Travelling makes you see that the corporate ladder can be an illusion of happiness in some ways and that the so-called “first world problems,” are often the problem in itself because these challenges are so minor in the scheme of what’s important in the universe.
2. Rediscover the beauty in the world
When you transform into a traveler for an escape, you wake up to the fact that there is so much beauty in the world outside of the usual office building. The typical places we all visit in a week are very dull compared to places like The Great Wall Of China.
“By not traveling, you get stuck in a slumber of nothingness and your goals get left behind in the world’s rear vision mirror” – Tim Denning
Beauty can often be hard to see when you haven’t witnessed enough of it. Coming back from traveling the globe can often help you to see the beauty in the small things. In your day-to-day life, you walk past amazing flowers and trees all the time, yet you probably don’t notice them.
How is it, though, that when you’re traveling, even something as bland as a rubbish bin can seem so spectacular? It’s because traveling helps us to become present again and assist us in waking the hell up!
3. Remember how short your time is
It’s a fact that our time is short on planet Earth, but it’s so easy to forget this simple truth. Traveling around the world helps to wake you up and make you realise that time is short. You start to think to yourself, why didn’t I visit this country much sooner? What if I never get to see all the beautiful places in the world?
These questions are a normal response for any traveller returning from their latest adventure.
“The key is to use your travelling experience to come back to your daily life with a sense of inspiration and urgency about your mission or purpose” – Tim Denning
Don’t have regrets about your lack of travel, just get up off the couch, book some flights, and go out into the world and explore!
4. Make you realise if you miss work
It’s easy to get stuck in a career and never live your dream of being an entrepreneur. Travelling can help wake you up by giving you some time away from work. When you spend time away from work and travel the world, the new places can give you some thinking time.
As you return from travelling, you will notice whether you missed the excitement of work or not. If you find that you didn’t miss work, and you’re even dreading your return, then you are most likely in the wrong line of work. That’s okay because travel has done you a favour and given you a moment of decision.
This moment of decision is a chance for you to go on a new path and find success in another direction. Sometimes knowing what you don’t like doing is the best gift you can get in life!
5. Show you what entrepreneurship can do
It’s no secret that one of the benefits of being an entrepreneur is that you are not chained to one particular location. You can typically travel and work at the same time. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this means entrepreneurship is for everyone because it’s still bloody hard work.
What travel does though is show you what it can be like to be in a different location constantly. If your field of work is flexible, try and work from another country with your laptop and see how it goes. It may be the best thing you ever experiment with, and it could become a new standard for your life.
6. Remind You Of Freedom
I’m sure if I asked the average person whether they thought they had loads of freedom they would say no. As you travel the world, you realise that you have more freedom than you think you have. There are people that are much worse off from you who are enslaved each day just so they can buy very basic food supplies. Many of these same people live a very hard life.
Travelling showed me that I have plenty of freedom including the very thing that I had forgotten; I had the freedom to get on a plane and travel in the first place. The simple act of travelling is a demonstration of freedom right there in front of our eyes, we are just so blind sometimes and need a good wake up call like travel to remind us.
7. Relax your mind
By choosing to travel somewhere in nature, we can escape the daily grind. When we travel, we have an excuse to be uncontactable and escape our mobile phone. We no longer become on call to anyone, and we can just be with our own thoughts.
As you spend time apart from life’s challenges, travel helps you to see them in a new way. It gives your mind clarity on what the decision is that you might need to make to get back towards success again. Travelling allows us to have an excuse to do some meditation because we should have plenty of time to do so.
Meditating in another country is a whole new experience, and it takes you to an even higher level of calmness. I’m someone who used to find certain parts of travel as stressful, but through meditation, I have been able to enjoy my travels much more.
In China, I visited a mountain that was carved into the shape of a Buddha. Once I climbed to the top of the mountain, I entered a Buddhist temple and was blown away by the sense of calm I felt. There is nothing like this in Australia where I come from, and that’s why you have to wake up from reality and travel sometimes!