The Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Leave Everything Behind And Travel The World

You don’t have to accept an average 8-to-5 as a career. If you hate your job and know that you want to do something different, don’t stay in a job you hate any longer than you have to. But don’t make any decisions you can’t take back before you have figured out what it is that you want to do with your life.

Yes, it is good to follow your wanderlust and start new journeys in your life. Before that, you have to make sure that you are fully aware of your actions, and that your dream doesn’t end up in the toilet, literally, as happened to a South African couple. In their website they tell their story, about how they quit their advertising jobs to travel around the world, but ended up broke and have been scrubbing toilets due to their impulsive decision.

Know your reasons

“We are all travelers. Every moment is a place you’ve never been before”. Usually, travelling is about the adventure and experiences you have instead of the places you see, so try to understand why it is that an experience in another country is inherently more valuable to you than the experience you can have at home.

Make sure that you are not running away from your life, or that job that you hate, but that you are running to experience the world.

Looking back on your life, 20 years from now, what would you like to have accomplished with your travel?

Try formulating a single sentence that sums up who you are and what, above all, you aim to achieve with your travelling.

Before quitting your job and starting your travels, make sure that you do it for the right reasons. To increase your chances of happiness and success, you must be sure about what your calling is.

Experiment

The best way to find your purpose and passion is through experimentation.

If you’ve never tried working at something outside your regular job in your entire life, it will be pretty tough to learn another skill while you’re also trying to travel the world, and unrealistic to count on making money with it in the future.

Writing articles, blogs or taking pictures, and being able to sell them are two entirely different things. Learn both of them and especially the selling part, before you jump into quitting your job and being excited about your travelling adventure.

Look for temporary assignments, outside contracts and creative work to get experience or build skills in new directions.

While you are still at home, try to find a way to set up an online business that can bring you an income and allow you to live a sustainable traveling lifestyle.

Take some time off

Instead of quitting your job, you can always take some time off and take short trips.

If you want to change your life, create a rigorous and formal plan. Try to find the methods that can work for you in order to turn travelling into a lifestyle.

The idea of travelling is an opportunity to grow and learn new things, and make your life better.

Try first to find out if you could introduce these new dimensions into your current job, or the dream job that you might find while still at home.

Extended vacations also can be valuable in providing opportunities to experiment.

Test your ability to deal with difficult and unexpected situations, and learn from the experience.

Sometimes traveling abroad makes you validate our own home experiences and rekindles a certain amount of love for the place that you left.

Know your skills

If you can identify your inherent character strengths and talents, you can lead a happier and more successful life. It’s estimated that two-thirds of us don’t know what our strengths are.

There are skills and abilities you’ll desperately need once you quit your job. It is a lot better to start working on them while you still have a job and a regular income.

As with most things in life, it is all about preparation. If you fail to prepare, then be prepared to fail. 

Make your list

Try to list all the inspiring people and places you want to see, and build your travelling plan on them.

Make a list of people who have successfully come to the place in life where you would like to be and learn the specifics about their route to success in travelling. Study them, figure out how and why they are able to become successful when others are failing, and then set up structures to emulate them.

List the ones who didn’t make it, too. You can learn best from the failures and mistakes of others.

Read over the most memorable and worst experiences of other travelers and list the places that best fit your interests.

Travelling to a country with electricity outages, uncertain access to running water, or no internet, does not help you in putting your life into perspective.

Make sure you know all the economic disadvantage or cultural differences and think how that could affect your quest for personal meaning, improved interpersonal skills, or spiritual growth.

Network

While you are working, you have contact with people from different areas.

Make sure you connect with the right people to help you along your way.

Your network is the most important asset you have, and in some cases it’s even more important than what you are offering as a product. If you have a great article but no network, you’ll end up being ignored by everybody.

Use the time you have to connect with people and make sure they will remember you in case you need to get in touch in a few years.

If you take a short trip, make contacts in the cities that you visit, because they usually give you advice about places to visit later on.

Save money

The desire to explore the world is nothing but that, without the money to pay for it. It is a fact that you’ll barely make it across town if you don’t have any money.

Before you quit your job, try to save as much money as possible, because no matter what the online articles tell you, you’re going to need it. 

Make sure you have at least a few months of expenses in your bank account.

You don’t want to do freelancing jobs to pay for expenses, especially in the beginning. Working will consume a lot of time and would diminish the travelling experience.

Make sure you work on these things before you actually quit your job. Actually, start working on them right away!

And while having your job as a resource to generate income to turn your dream into reality, you can plant the seeds of that tree that you want to build your tree house in.

This article was originally published in Youth Time print edition, 31th issue. Click here to check the content of the issue, subscribe here, purchase one issue here.

Photos: Shutterstock

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