Do The Thing That Scares You

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why so few people actually make their travel dreams reality. Anyone who is a frequent traveler knows the common refrain from others of “I wish I could do that!” To which I always answer that you can. For some reason people don’t seem to believe this.

A lot of it is priorities, but I think another huge barrier for many people, is fear. There are a lot of misconceptions and fears surrounding long-term travel. Among them

– Fear of being unsafe

– Fear of being lonely

– Fear of missing out on life at home

– Fear of deviating from the status quo

And maybe the biggest of all:

– Fear of the unknown.

My original plan for this post was to go through these one by one pointing out the logical reasons that these fears ring hollow. It wouldn’t matter though, because fear is not a rational emotion. I have these anxieties from time to time and I have traveled enough to know the truths behind them. Instead, I want to point out something about these boogie monsters that I think a lot of people don’t really think about:

Fear can be a good thing.

Or rather, overcoming your fears can be a really good, healthy thing. Looking fear straight in the eye, taking a deep breath, and forging ahead anyways. It’s certainly not an easy or particularly fun experience, but it’s on of the most important skills you can learn.

It is important because even in life at home we often have to do things that are scary. Things like first dates, or job interviews, or having babies, or really any major life change at all. Ife we played it safe all the time nothing would ever happen to us. We certainly wouldn’t have much fun.

Moving to London, without a job, or any contacts, was absolutely terrifying to me. Of course I was excited, but in the days leading up to my arrival it was all I could do to make myself get on the plane. Still, I did it, and it’s a good thing too. Because if I hadn’t I would never have made amazing friends, or fallen in love, or backpacked through Bosnia, or flown a glider. The bigger the risks and the scarier things seem, the greater the rewards.

Now, I’m not advocating that you do things that are irrational or dangerous. There is a big difference between playing Russian roulette and learning to scuba dive even though you are afraid of fish. There is a difference between defying your fears and defying common sense, and I think if you can stay connected with the logical part of your brain it’s easy to differentiate between the two.

It’s about learning to trust yourself. It gets easier as your go. The first time you strike up a conversation with random people at a hostel you may be secretly petrified, but each time you get a little bit bolder. Suddenly you are the chatty friend who talks to random people at bars and nobody believes you when you tell them you are secretly an introvert.

I know that I will be terrified when I leave for my Round-The-World trip in a few months. Logically I know it will be amazing, but there are still a million undercurrents of fear in my ocean of excitement. I will go though, and I will force myself to meet people and to encounter situations that I will have no idea how to handle. I will throw myself out of plans and sleep in dingy hostels and meet random strangers. And I’ll come out on the other side better for it.

I’ll leave you with a quote from one of my favorite authors, who was a vagabond and world traveler in his own right, Mark Twain:

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.”