Nanda In your spiritual development, you can do a lot of things to become more mindful and to grow into the person you were meant to be. You can grow your talents, heal your blockages and have your vision in place and still have the feeling that you are not really going anywhere. There is a reason for that and it has a lot to do with your environment. Let me tell you why your soul needs to travel, the 4 benefits of traveling opposed to staying at home.
1 Break free from old patterns
When you travel all of your daily life experiences change. It is completely different than at home, doing the same thing day in and day out. The bed you wake up in is different, the routine of your morning is different. That way you create a new pathway in your brain and have a chance to break free from old patterns.
Changing your day to day routine will create a possibility for your brain to open up. And in that open state your Soul has a chance to come through. When we are stuck in old patterns and try to break free from them, it’s harder when we try to do that when we are still in the same environment. So my advice is to take a change of scenery once in a while and see what patterns are no longer serving you. You can ask your Soul for some guidance with that. Just follow your joy – it’s the feeling we get when our Soul is free and putting us in alignment with where we are supposed to go.
2 Liberty to be You and discover new things about yourself
Another great thing about traveling is that we get to choose who we would like to be every day. There is no set expectations of what you are supposed to do. It is just you, yourself and I to watch your moves and you have the Liberty to be Yourself. What that is, you can discover while you are traveling. You can try out new ways of talking to yourself, new morning routines, new eating rituals and new ways of connecting to people around you. Everything on your holiday can be a whole new invention, every day.
Find the ways that most perfectly match your state of being and the person who you want to be. You have the Liberty to be You. Who that is? That is completely up to you….. Have you never traveled by yourself? That is a really good way to get to know yourself better. Have you never went out camping in the wild, then choose that for a change. Get a little out of your comfort zone, to discover what else you can be. There are so many possibilities to discover new things about yourself.
- Go on a wildlife adventure and discover your courage.
- Have a wild water raft experience, and see how sportive you can be.
- Go and live with an indigenous family for a week and learn how you will do in more basic circumstances.
You can also use your travel experiences to develop new skills or hidden talents.
3 Develop new skills with your travel experiences
When you travel you also get to do so many different things that you have never done before or that you were not so good at. When cooking on a wood stove has never been one of your experiences, you might suck at it at first. But after living the more basic lifestyle, that might just be the skill you are developing. Or when you walk the Camino de Santiago and have a bad sense of direction. Walking 2 more miles than was indicated, might boost your sense of direction the next time.
Developing new skills is a very big bonus of going to travel. Your Soul is loving new experiences like these because it can show you what else is possible for you in your life. So many of our talents and skills get left untouched if we don’t travel and discover and develop new skills.
We were all born with an imminent amount of talents and skills, all ready for us to use and create the most amazing life possible. But if we leave them undeveloped and hidden, then we will never create that life. Travelling gives you the opportunity to develop more of your skills because a new environment just does that to you. You open up your resources because you are outside of your comfort zone. So no regular routine, just new impulses that stimulate your creativity.
Have ever had the experience that you enter your grocery store and they have changed the ile and you just have to think about what you are doing. That is what happens when you break out of your daily routines and go into something new. A new city or a new culture opens up so many of your senses that it also can be a little overwhelming at the beginning. But when you get used to it, you see how much you have learned to adapt to your new environment. That is a skill any of us can use in life because if one thing is certain in life, it’s change. So learning the skill to adapt to change is vital.
4 Do the things you never thought you would do
How would you know you are courageous, creative, or a great teacher if you never left your comfort zone? If you never tried the things you never have done before, you would know what you know and stay in the same place.
You need to step out of your comfort zone to
grow into the person that you can be
Going new places, meeting new people broadens your horizon and lets you see different things of yourself and also might challenge you to do things you normally wouldn’t even think about. That is the cool thing about broadening your horizon, it opens your mind to new possibilities.
What if I told you now that One day you would jump off a cliff or walk on fire.
You would say ‘not in a million years’ right? Because your image of those activities would mean pain or even dying. But when you are traveling and meet people that have done those things and live to tell the tale, that might broaden your mind a bit and let you consider the possibility. Then the next time if someone asked you, would you jump off a cliff or walk on fire. You would say: Maybe if the time is right and there is a cool opportunity to do it somewhere, to create an unforgettable memory.
Travelling opens us up to new things. You might try a new recipe, eat something with ghost pepper or eat shark or crocodile, just because you have the opportunity to try something new. Things that you normally wouldn’t do when you are at home, in your safe (same same) environment.
Integrate what you have learned on your journey
All these new experiences are a great way of testing your limits and knowing that there is so much more out there and inside of you that is possible. So many gifts and treasures to discover in this life.
I would like you to think about the last time you traveled and make a list of things you did, learned and experiences that changed your life in a small way.
- What patterns did you break since you came back?
- What did you learn about yourself?
- What new skills did you learn?
- What did you improve about yourself?
- What new things did you do, that you never thought you would?
Answering these questions for yourself will make you see how important it is to travel to develop more of who you can be. You might even surprise yourself or make a 180 turn in some of your life areas. That is what happened to me the first time I went on a Soul Vacation to Peru in 2012. I came back a changed person.
The next thing that needed to be done was to integrate all the new things I had learned on my travels about myself and my new desired lifestyle. There were so many things that changed since then. I made a list of the things I did differently when I was in Peru and step by step started to integrate those into my life. I centralized my core beliefs, the ones that supported my desired lifestyle and made the changes necessary. I stopped eating meat, I meditated regularly, I stopped drinking alcohol and the social events that were connected to that. I moved back to my hometown and simplified a lot of my life. The one question that was always central in my life from that moment on was “Is my Soul happy?”
Why your soul needs to travel
Now you know what benefits traveling has on your development as a person. But why is it so important for your Soul? I have mentioned it in the first section. Traveling lets you break free from old patterns, opens up the mind and creates an opening for your Soul to come in.
Your Soul is always with you and you can learn to soul travel from wherever you are.
But why it is so important for your Soul to break free from old patterns, learn something new and develop your skills is because it needs you to open up the way you are identifying with yourself. When you keep identifying with your personal traits and behaviors, you are neglecting the potential that is inside of you.
Your Soul is guiding you into new experiences and directions because it wants you to experience how amazing and complete you are. You have everything inside you that you will ever need to be happy and to create the life that you dream about. But when you stay stuck and focus your attention on the life you have now and never wander off into new areas and circumstances, it is not likely that you will discover what else is possible. So to become the person that you can be and uncover all of your hidden potential it is vital that you Travel.
Where is your next journey going to? Let me know in the comments. I can’t wait to hear about your insights on what your last trip has taught you about yourself. Please come and share them with me.
I hope you learn loads of new skills on your next soul journey.
Lots of love
Nanda
