Why You Feel More Alive When You Travel (and How to Bring It Home)
I love how expansive traveling feels.
There is something enchanting about being in a foreign place. It evokes an aliveness within me that is difficult to recreate in daily, mundane life. Everything I experience while traveling is with greater presence and with more intention in each action I take.
It’s hard to come back from a trip like this without feeling different. Because when you really take in a new reality, whether it be by seeing how people live in local villages, the nuances of language that shape the whole meaning of what is being understood by one another, learning about the culture, or just taking in the geography of vast and unfamiliar terrain, how can you come back the same?
Travel literally expands your perception of what is possible. Of what else already exists. It quiets the noise of our inner worlds and makes us look outside of ourselves. You can’t ignore what it’s teaching you.
A week in Antigua taught me more than some college courses did, and though I could share everything, this channel is more focused on the wisdom and advice that could help benefit you as the viewer. So with that being said, come explore Guatemala with me, and I hope that I can bestow some of the life-changing wisdom I gained from being present in a place like this.
Creativity Begins With a Sense of Safety
Don’t mistake this first piece of advice for “playing it safe” in your creative pursuits. Rather, I see my creative projects as like therapy.
We only get to the point of opening up in therapy, sharing our deepest and most painful experiences, thoughts, and regrets, when we feel safe to do so. A sense of deeply rooted trust is involved, whether it be with a professional or someone you are close to, that allows us to open up and share our most vulnerable selves. This self is the one that comes out the most when we are creative– the most emotional, the most angry, the most at peace. Our raw and truest forms are what creativity thrives off of.
I think this can also be related to a state of flow when we express ourselves through language.
When we are pouring our hearts out, speaking about something, we aren’t really thinking about what we are saying; we are more present with the feeling and expressing ourselves in relation to it. We are in a state of flow, expression-wise, and this expression can also drive art.
I was sitting in the LAX international airport terminal when I came to this realization. I realized there were two main elements in my life that interfere with this “safe feeling.”
First, feeling watched gets in the way of my creativity. It’s difficult to be vulnerable because you don’t actually know who is paying attention. I’ve felt this way writing on campus or in a coffee shop before. And although it is usually out of genuine curiosity, one of the worst feelings to get is when you are creatively locked in and processing your feelings about something, and a stranger approaches and asks, “Hey, what’s that you’re working on?” Like “Bro, I’m not really sure yet,” but I don’t know how to explain that.
I’ve found that I need to feel cozy and protected in order to let my mind go to a space where it can simply create and not pay attention to what is going on around me.
Our creative minds can sometimes feel like they exist outside of the room we are creating from. To access it, we need to feel safe going there. Our guards are down when we are being creative, so step one, place yourself into a room where you feel safe.
Another thing I’ve recognized that has prevented me from accessing my creative brain is my fear of being creative. I know that sounds a bit taboo, but allow me to explain.
So much of my identity and sense of self-worth is tied up in my creative pursuits, in my writing. Without them, I would feel like a shell of a human being. However, this also creates a lot of pressure, since I’d rather create things that are awesome. But most of the time I don’t. I’m fearful of producing bad content.
The irony is that in order to dissolve this fear, I just end up not writing. I mean, hey, if I’m not writing, I can’t produce bad stories, right? But that’s the irony. In trying to dissolve my fear, I’ve perpetuated it by revoking the bliss that writing can bring to my life. It’s never truly been about the product. It’s always been about the process and how the process itself leads to fulfillment.
So, in order to overcome this aspect to feel safe, it really means just sitting down and starting to write. I’m not trying to judge myself for whatever comes out, that’s what shitty first drafts are for– to be shitty. Judgment only makes us feel unsafe within ourselves. I mean, would you really confess your deepest and darkest thoughts to someone you thought was judging you?
Accessing our creative minds comes from feeling safe, both in the space around us and the space within us.
Wellness Isn’t a Performance
The number of productive morning routines, gym routines, extensive healthy meal preps, and absolutely insane skincare routines on the internet nowadays overwhelms the shit out of me.
There’s even been times, and I’m sure will be another, where I buy into this “productivity maxing” propaganda and try to timeblock every healthy habit I possibly can into every minute of time I have. The result is usually that I feel shitter and more stressed than I did before.
My personal definition of wellness is that of a tool used to discover more inner peace within life. It shouldn’t be used as a distraction from that goal.
True wellness comes from creating space to sit with the resistance I was talking about before and let it make its way through us. I think that wellness has become such a vibrant market for consumerism, partially because it can be used as a distraction. Just as clutter in any capacity can be used as a distraction or a quick hit of dopamine, wellness clutter exists too, both physically and by jamming our days with every possible “productive” habit we can muster without actually giving ourselves some space to process life.
It’s the space or the pause that allows us to actually change ourselves. The pause allows us to break whatever cycle we may be in. Not to mention, there are so many beneficial ways to practice wellness that don’t cost money or require you to collect more gadgets.
- Meditation
- Some kind of movement or yoga practice
- Walks out in nature
- Spending time with friends and family
- Volunteering
- Getting crafty with things you already have
- Taking care of plants and pets
Living Is a Creative Act
After hiking Acatenango, I came back with a creative rush. It got me thinking about creativity in a broader context. How creativity isn’t always just what we think is art– living life itself is a creative pursuit. Anything that we create or have the capacity to create is creative.
It got me thinking how even activities such as hiking are creative, because they can bring new inspiration and motivation to our beings. You can’t sit down and make art without living some life first. True living is creative, not always producing something specific.
Creation is the imperfect, the uncomfortable, the patience. But within all of that, we become a person desirable of the product. Long story short, fulfillment comes from the process, not the product. The views from the top of Acatenango would be awe-inspiring regardless of how we got there, but hiking it made the summit that much more rewarding.
Producing something we are proud of wouldn’t be as fulfilling if we lost our memory and forgot how it came to be. The process makes the end result that much more satisfying. The journey is how we grow as people. It’s how we change and experience life.
We talk so much about creating versus consuming nowadays. I feel like unhealthy media consumption is the equivalent of having a piece of candy or a shot of espresso. It’s satisfying in the moment, but that high doesn’t last long. And if we have too much candy or coffee, we can end up crashing.
Creating is a deeper sense of wellness. One that betters us from our core and makes a lasting impact. This metaphor can be taken into the little actions. A choice that is made in favor of our long-term well-being is one that creates energy, while a quick dopamine rush that comes with a crash results from the consumption energy.
I think we are all smart enough to know what falls into each of those categories within our own lives.
It’s about the journey, not the destination, and creativity definitely happens within that journey.
Speaking of journeys, this was one of the most incredible I have ever been on. Guatemala was absolutely awe-inspiring, and as much as I want to go back already, I know there is so much more of the world I would like to see before then.
