How Not To Let Fear Stop You Travelling

How Not To Let Fear Stop You Travelling

“Nothings going a change my world”

Not many people say this out loud when confronted with new ideas and their own limitations, but their body language, their way of looking at you and their next sentence almost screams it.

Why? Why is it when confronted with new ideas the first thing we do is to scoff at them and not take them seriously. Why is travel part of those new ideas? Why do we let this mantra, this fear, control us?

Not many people travel, at least not as regularly or as much as they could. Travel is shunted to being only something rich people indulge in, as too many times that fear, that mantra, latches onto things we know aren’t true but refuse to acknowledge.

We watch other people jumping out into the world and think that if only we could do that. But the mantra is back and we think that that person that is doing something we so desperately want to do has some special skill that we don’t have, some cosmic gift.

Looking longingly over at them, usually they will come over and begin to talk, casually as the mantra dies down a little; we ask how they did it.

“By just going, I don’t have much money, but you don’t have to really.”

The answer is not something we want to hear, and our body language screams that we don’t believe them. The traveller tries to help and explain how they do it, but it’s too late, the mantra and the fear after a brief fight for control is back and has taken over. The traveller moves on.

Too many times that situation has played out, we are always there, but the faces change, the questions and answers change. But the fact remains, the mantra was too strong and we were too scared.

Fear is almost disabling, fear of the world, fear of new people, fear of ourselves. Are we really up to the challenge of truly stepping out into the world? To fully get out of our comfort zones and just refuse to listen to that mantra anymore.

Most people aren’t, then the mantra grows and suddenly after fighting for so long, we have now simply accepted it and spout it off to other people as our own idea. We try to say it so convincingly so to chop down the other people who are doing what we wished we had done all those years before.

To stop the fear you have to stop listening to that mantra. Your brain may have been taken over but your gut instinct and your good feeling never usually listen to your brain anyway, so start listening to them.

Ignore everyone around you. Absolutely everyone, your mother, brother, aunt, friends whoever you have surrounded yourself with, nine times out of ten won’t understand your need to travel.

These people are Chirpys and you have to ignore them.

Spend an afternoon figuring out the absolute worst thing in the world that could happen while travelling, if your mantra is still strong you should be able to think of quite a few. Think of everything you can and then write down that list.

After you have found, at least a good ten, find out every single way you can stop them from happening.

Think you will miss your plane? Write down when it leaves, figure out ten different ways to get to the airport if there is a traffic jam, international war whatever.

Get your passport stolen? Write down your passport number in a separate place from the original and find out who you can contact overseas if you do indeed get it stolen.

Get attacked overseas? This one is a little harder, but use common sense, don’t travel alone, or if you are, don’t go into dodgy areas, either at night or not. Don’t look like a tourist. Blend in with the locals.

Money stolen. Bring about four different types of cash, make sure you can contact a relative or friend even if you have no money, find out where your countries consulate is in the country you’re going to should the absolute worst happen.

International War. Well there is pretty much nothing you can do to prevent this, but stay aware of what country you are going into and how they treat your nationality, when travelling keep a general eye on the news. Don’t spend your nights watching the news – but just a general idea should give you an idea and again find out where your countries consulate is.

The list goes on and on, but the idea is not to let this fear stop you from doing anything. Chirpys are all over the world, you don’t need to have one inside your own mind as well. The key is to ignore them all and try to drown out that mantra and not spend the rest of your life wishing.

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