7 Ways Transformational Travel Will Change Your Life Path: Guest Blog

7 Ways Transformational Travel Will Change Your Life Path

Guest Blog by Matthew Mason of NuMundo

We travel because we are seekers. Our realities feel unfulfilling or discordant. A nagging voice whispers that there is more to life, to the world, and to ourselves.

Yet it eludes us, this sense of contentment, of “making it,” of arriving. The comforts and “successes” of the promotion, the salary, the home ownership—they all still feel empty. “All is not right with the world!” our intuition screams, even when society tells us it should be.

So, what are we to do? Keep going down the same road, continually reaching for the next “made it” milestone, only to be left unfulfilled? Take a well-deserved break on a tropical island sipping mai tais to decompress and recharge, only to return to the same mundane routine?

Let me suggest another alternative: follow your “seeker” intuition and discover transformational travel experiences. The opportunities are endless as progressive travel organizations focus on ecological protection and restoration, sustainable travel, permaculture, yoga, holistic health, cultural exchange and education, and above all, personal and global transformation.

For anyone seeking a more profound, life- and world-changing travel experience, here are the seven reasons to make intentional, transformational travel a priority.

(1)  Transformational Travel Goes Beyond Tourism

Any chance to see the world from a new vantage point offers an education beyond what we can experience in the comforts of our typical environments. Yet traditional tourism and experiential travel often leave travelers less than fulfilled, or even worse, cynical. Vietnam’s iconic Ha Long Bay has suffered dramatic ecological degradation and fatal accidents, and the ancient pagodas in Bagan, Myanmar are withering under the carelessness of tourists who clamor to their peaks for photo ops. Destruction of such wonders inevitably leaves a traveler questioning whether travel does more harm than good.

Even experiential travel, in which travelers seek to immerse themselves in a different culture and connect with locals, doesn’t quite deliver real value.

It is time for a new kind of travel experience.

Transformational travel transcends the mundane and unfulfilling nature of traditional travel structures. Here, travelers go beyond merely archiving new experiences and instead pursue self-discovery and perspective in the hopes of changing themselves and the world around them. Transformational travel prioritizes sustainability, cultural protection, and self-discovery in order for us to learn from the wisdom of the world beyond our comfort zones.

In short, it offers the chance to truly change the world, one travel experience at a time.

(2) Transformational Travel Creates a New Reality

It is, counterintuitively, the internal reality that changes first through transformational travel. We can all pick up and venture to a new location, change our scenery and daily experience, and passively observe a different external reality. But in transformational travel, the real work happens within.

Regularly thrust into novel scenarios, we find that our comfortable, patterned behaviors do us no good. We cannot rely on the unconscious, habitual responses we develop in our lives at home, where we dig ourselves into ruts of consistency and routine.

Instead, by immersing ourselves in a new culture, learning new skills, or overcoming personal challenges, we gain unique opportunities for introspection. We must choose what is right for us in that moment. By “unlearning” the conditioned behaviors imposed by our destructive materialistic society and observing our emotions and decisions in new situations, we free ourselves to listen to our intuition informing us who we really want to be. Our motives and attitudes shift as we align more closely with our true sense of self. We change our inner reality.  And in doing so, we necessarily project that true self out to our external world. We begin to see everything through our developing lenses, and our environment responds to the behaviors we exhibit as a result. A new external reality takes shape that is more in line with our human evolutionary prerogative to thrive in a system that is communal, spiritually uplifting, and in harmony with the environment that sustains us.

We must become the change we wish to see in the world if the world is to change. That change starts inside.

(3) Transformational Travel Leads to Conscious Awakening

The necessary first step for any transformation is awareness. Awareness of unconscious patterns and behaviors. Awareness of one’s calling.

By far the most life-altering transformation in my travels have come from a personal conscious awakening. I lived my prior life entirely identifying with the thoughts in my head. With the social conditioning and pressures to “succeed” and “fit in,” they never stopped. Then, through the array of interpersonal interactions and cultural shocks I experienced as I pursued personal discovery, I began to see just how much I acquiesced to the programmed thoughts and related assumptions I had internalized throughout my life. Unsurprisingly, the disconnect between what my mind and my intuition were telling me led me to realize that perhaps my mind wasn’t being forthright. Or at the very least, its beliefs were a product of my conditioning rather than a product of truth.

This is the conscious awakening that can occur when we set out to transform our lives. Whether through the mind-body awareness developed through yoga and meditation, the healing and exploration of plant medicine, or the cultural learning that sheds light on the diversity of knowledge and paths to peace, transformational travel lays the foundation for genuine personal transformation. Away from restrictive environments, we can consciously shift toward enlightened, communal, sustainable living.

(4) Transformational Travel Teaches Self-Love

As we expand our consciousness, we no longer fall victim to self-doubt, insecurity, and hesitation. We are free to embrace life with a new sense of love for everything and everyone—including ourselves.

It is far too easy to be self-critical. There is always something more we can achieve, some higher level of success we have not reached, some social status we can acquire. Who we are is never “enough.” We learn not to like ourselves.

But as we venture into new territory and new cultures, we gain perspective and realize just how absurd our self-limiting beliefs are. In doing so, we make room to choose entirely different beliefs about ourselves.

I frequently use the analogy of an airplane emergency, where we are instructed to put on our mask first, then assist others. If we do not care for ourselves first, we are no good to help anyone else. In this way, transformational travel teaches us to identify the things that make us content and pursue those first. Only then are we in any position to be of service to others. What sounds like an act of selfishness actually becomes an act of selflessness. We must be kind to ourselves, encourage ourselves, and cultivate more optimism. When we learn to love ourselves and pursue the things our intuition tells us are right, we are not only happier, but we lead with action, becoming better stewards in ushering in personal and global transformation.

(5)  Transformational Travel Can Lead to Self-Actualization

In developing consciousness and self-love, we lay the foundation for what is arguably the greatest of human needs: self-actualization.

As conceptualized by psychologist Abraham Maslow, self-actualization is the ultimate aim of psychological development in our hierarchy of needs. Or as psychologist Carl Rogers described it, it is our “tendency to…become [our] potentialities.” When all of our basic needs have been met, only then can we experience our full potential.

In “normal life,” we rarely have the opportunity to reach this highest state of actualization as we stay hypnotized in our unconsciousness. Through transformational travel, on the other hand, we actively seek it out through focused self-discovery. Stripped of our patterns and comforts, we are forced to look inside and find our true selves there.

By pushing travelers outside of our routines and offering experiences that promote radical self-discovery, transformational travel provides a path to self-actualization in a way we may have never known was possible.

(6)  Transformational Travel Increases our Creative Capabilities

In order to achieve this self-actualization, we need to tap into our intrinsic creative capabilities. For most of us, our default is to follow instructions and formulas that lead us to predictable outcomes. But this programmed, methodical way of thinking must be deconstructed in order to unlearn and unplug from a system that keeps us under its control, preventing us from achieving the bliss of self-actualization.

Transformational travel provides the perfect blueprint for this unlearning process. Novel and purpose-driven experiences in new environments improve cognitive flexibility. These changes improve our neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to reconfigure its connections and ignite new activity with novel input. Our brains physically change, opening up a vast sea of new potential. With our newly-forged neural capabilities, we are free to create like never before.

Transformational travel facilitates precisely this form of creative growth. Whether learning to build a self-sustaining ecosystem through permaculture study and practice, attuning to the mind-body connection through yoga and mindfulness disciplines, learning from the wisdom and experience of millennia of cultural development, or experimenting with natural, sustainable building, we have access to a plethora of ways to expand our personal creativity in a manner that will benefit ourselves, our environments, and the world.

(7)  Transformational Travel Teaches Us How to Create a New World

For global transformation to take place, it is incumbent on us not to hoard information learned and creativity discovered merely to benefit our immediate environments. We may create a new reality for ourselves and live comfortably within our new way of life, but it is essential to share paradigm-shifting ideas and practices to actually create the new world toward which we strive.

In the archetypal “Hero’s Journey,” the hero ventures into the unknown to gain knowledge and perspective he or she cannot obtain without leaving the comfort of home. But this insight is of little value if the hero fails to pass it on to those whose lives may be enriched by it.

Personal development is necessary, but the ultimate vision of transformational travel is one of sustainability, community, and growth on a global scale. With intentional travel, we hope, seekers will begin to project their internal change out into the world.

Each of us must fully embody that change if we are to create a globally sustainable environment in which we can survive and thrive. Personally transformational travel is the first step.

Changing the world is not a pipe dream. It is an imperative. And it all starts with how we choose to travel.

If you’d like to plan your own transformational travel experiences, check out NuMundo. NuMundo is a network of locations for co-living, co-working, personal transformation, and reconnection with nature. The platform answers a growing demand for purpose and physical participation in new ways of living. Through the NuMundo network, more people are connecting to their purpose, and participating in a global revolution towards regenerative living.

To talk about your own transformational travel experiences and to learn about the experiences of others, you can do so on Konversai. Konversai is your one-stop shop for any and all personal human knowledge on any subject you can imagine. The online platform connects providers of knowledge with seekers of knowledge through one-on-one live video conversations. Knowledge providers have the opportunity to make money by sharing with others what they know on their own time without having to leave their home. Knowledge seekers have the opportunity to engage in a personalized conversation on exactly what they’re looking to learn with an actual human being. All users are encouraged to be both knowledge providers and knowledge seekers on any and as many topics as they wish. Whether you’re on the platform as a provider or a seeker, you are sure to come out of the conversation feeling enriched. By joining Konversai, is to be part of the movement to democratize knowledge, put the human connection back into technology, and make the world better by enabling meaningful and authentic conversations that have the power to transform people’s lives. So whatever you’re passionate or curious about, bring it with you to Konversai.

About Matthew Mason, JD: Matt is a seeker for his own benefit and a sharer for the benefit of others. A recovering lawyer, he embarked on a life of world travel, seeking perspective and truth. He writes in order to help others escape the prisons of their minds by developing a conscious, mindful lifestyle. A compassionate empath, he finds strength in helping others become the best versions of themselves. He aspires to become a full-time digital nomad, writing on self-improvement and the forthcoming conscious revolution, while DJ-ing on the side. Follow Matthew on Instagram.

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