I exited the Skype call with Natalie.
Natalie has built a business that has supported her non-stop 5 years of travel and adventure around the world (and she helps entrepreneurs do the same).
Like most times after speaking with Natalie, I was reconnected with my sense of wonder and awe of travel and adventure.
This time, though, it was different.
Sure, on the call, Natalie and I briefly swapped past and future travels.
But this call felt different.
It felt sobering. Tender. It made me sentimental.
I heard a change in Natalie’s tone and excitement for travel. Natalie’s travels and life of freedom have always inspired me. I don’t think that is going to change, but I felt a shift.
I am reminded of my own worldwide travel.
I am reminded of my moments of novelty, adventure, and play. The sandbox I played in as a child with my hot wheels paved the way to my experience of the world as my sandbox.
I am reminded of the time I woke up to a cabin at 11,000 feet elevation all to myself. When I went outside, with the chocolate brown lab named Mia, I played fetch while it was snowing. As if it wasn’t already enough that this was my second time seeing snow fall, I was awestruck.
I am reminded of the time I was working at a small rustic coffee shop an hour north of Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve worked from 50+ coffee shops around the world, but this experience was different. I recall a long-time customer coming into this coffee shop and conversing with someone else about his tractor and farm. That’s not a conversation I have found in other coffee shops.
I am reminded of the time I was in Uganda visiting the huts and homes of various local tribes and people throughout the country.
I am reminded of the time I was in Amsterdam and I had the opportunity to experience the Van Gogh Museum or the Heineken Experience while walking 50+ miles over a week’s time.
Or the time where I found myself staying with a retired musician and his two dogs at his home in a small town named Salida, Colorado. For breakfast, I remember the aged humorous spirit offering me a coffee cake. I gladly accepted and began to eat the coffee cake from the package. Quickly, the salty haired man showed me how to really eat the coffee cake. Put it in the toaster oven with a specific size of butter at a certain temperature for an exact amount of time. There, that is perfect, as defined by the sage of time.
I have hundreds, if not thousands, of photos and thoughts and stories just like this from around the world.
But this place beyond travel is not of the physical.
It is not a place that I can get to from an airplane, although the airplane helped me find the place.
It is not a place I came to and saw other people.
For me, it wasn’t even a place that you may consider beautiful or happy.
This is the place beyond travel.
It is the place within.
It is the thing that pulls me from within. The thing I am in tension of. My intention.
At some point in my travels I realized that, although I have enjoyed the effects of travel, it is time for me to affect.
I allowed myself to be affected by my experience of life, culture, people, love.
Now it’s my turn to put the pieces together, turn around to the world, and say, “this is it.”
This is me.
This is my vision.
This is my place beyond travel.
It is profoundly deep. Call it purpose. Call it conviction. Call it passion.
I don’t want to say it’s born purely out of happy moments. Pieces of my vision are inspired by my pain and suffering.
It is the thing I am in tension of.
I don’t want to say it was easy to find or that I read a book and “figured it out.” No, it took time. And not just time, but proactive, intentional time.
Time where I unpacked my greatest fears. My insecurities. My need for perfection. My shame. My self-doubt. My safe desire to play small. My self-acceptance. My self-love. My relationship with money. My relationship with myself. All of my habits and stories I told myself. I unpacked it all. To some, it could look like chaos.
It took structured time. Years.
Sometimes I was happy and joyous from my self-discoveries. Other times I was emotional and crying uncontrollably. Sometimes I was alone. Other times I was with those closest to me. Sometimes, I unpacked my life with strangers.
The place beyond travel was my unexpressed self.
It was the place that was hardest for me to go to. Alone, and even more so, with others.
It took effort to be uncomfortable and truly express the deepest parts of myself.
This place carries the most weight. It is “closest to home.” It’s my deepest desire to serve others, my greatest power.
My discovery of this place was about creating the world that I believe in.
I’ve seen what’s out there. I know about the wars. I know about the injustice. I know about the pain and suffering of others. I know about the lack of access to food or clean water. I know about the kids dying of malnutrition. I know about disease.
My awareness, that I refer to as knowing, comes from experience.
I have walked miles with small children on their way to fetch clean water in the third world.
I have cried hearing the stories of teenagers getting raped in the third world (followed by how they were then abandoned by their families due to the shame it brings).
I have looked a child in the eye who was visibly dying of a disease our species labels as “cancer.”
I have listened to stories of children who escaped war and the horrific tactics that were used against their parents before they were killed by warlords.
If it must be said, do not mistake my intensity for the world I believe in for naivety or ignorance.
If I appear selfish, it is because I am protecting the place beyond travel.
I am protecting a vision buried deep within.
This is not a story about my evolution as a leader.
This is my realization that I am a follower of something only I can see.
I still value travel and experiences over things but the way I go about it has changed.
These days, I am about finding those who believe what I believe and value what I value so that I can advance the world I believe in. That is my agenda. Not for myself, but for my species.
This is my legacy. It is my value to humanity.
I have a choice to be affected by the world or to affect the world.
Although there are times where I surrender my power and allow myself to be affected, I do it consciously and proactively, in ways and with people that I mindfully believe in.
I believe that the more self-aware I become, the more powerful I become. I believe this because my self-awareness connects me with the body, beliefs, habits, and values that give me power.
When I think of Natalie, who sparked this article, I think of freedom. She serves entrepreneurs in their quest to create a lifestyle of freedom and adventure.
For me, in my own evolution of freedom, I think of the freedom that Viktor E. Frankl defined.
Frankl, the concentration camp survivor, says it this way: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
It is my freedom to fully express myself. Powerfully. Vulnerably.
It is my freedom to create the world that I believe in simply by who I am being.
When I learn to see and honor this freedom in myself, I am able to honor it in others.
For this freedom I have found, I am grateful.
I am grateful for the place beyond travel.
If you’d like to learn more, I’ve candidly shared my journey of purpose.
