Ever started planning a trip, only to stop yourself mid-organization?
Guest Contribution:
Written by Muna Mohamed Yusuf
Mindset and Intuition Travel Coach, Founder & CEO of “World Bound Travels”™
———————————
You get an idea. You get excited. You start planning. All of sudden, you stop yourself.
You daydream of fantastic vacations, make endless lists of faraway locations or google where to go for your next staycation - but you never take action.
Sound like you? Does it feel like something you’ve experienced time and time again?
When we don’t have unlimited capital and we have a busy life, full of engagements and commitments, people often find it quite hard to include what they consider extras (like travelling for example) into their life.
“Oh come on, what am I doing planning that weekend away? I’ve got more serious things to worry about. It’s not like I have money falling from the kitchen ceiling!,” you say to yourself while preparing dinner for yourself and your family.
Again, sound familiar?
The reason we deem traveling as an extra, a luxurious and wonderful extra that only the rich can afford, is simply because we have the wrong mindset in place - one which is hardwired into our minds and dictated most of the time by the environment we grew up in.
Think about it. Aren’t we all taught from a young age to work hard and get a solid job, with a decent income? To save money for your future 2.4 kids' education and to get yourself the nicest house in the neighborhood, inevitably leading you to a mortgage to pay for nearly the rest of your days?
Because that’s the way it is, isn’t it?
Well, this is exactly why we refrain from thinking about spending money for a trip, no matter how much we would love to go.
All because we are living on a budget, in every aspect of our lives: we have people who depend on us, we have commitments, we have a demanding job, with little annual leave, we work long hours and we don’t earn $70K a year. We have bills to pay and responsibilities that weigh on us. And for many, those responsibilities don’t stop once you’ve clocked out of work for the day.
With the wrong mindset and set of beliefs, we struggle to see the importance of going on that weekend getaway and why it could be so beneficial for us, even if we want it with every ounce of our being.
I have seen it happen so many times in my life. I’ve had a lot of people come up to me asking how I could do it...How I could embark carefree and without a worry on a travel experience whenever I wished. Because they couldn’t see it.
They didn’t feel entitled to it.
Being on a budget, time-wise and money-wise, and being hardwired to believe we should be focusing only on tangible things lead to feelings of illegitimacy. We feel like we're not entitled to what we want, that our wishes are not important enough and we let society dictate our actions. We don’t want to let people down and therefore we don’t even entertain frivolous thoughts such as travel.
We are stuck in what I identify as an "Illegitimacy Cycle,” one that suppresses our inner self and causes us to be unhappy for the things we would love to experience but we sabotage from the beginning.
As human beings, we try to blend in as much as we can, trying to comply with a certain persona or identity. Being our true self comes with a deep and devastating fear, that is at times paralyzing. Reality and society are telling us day in and day out something different and at the end, those words become our beliefs.
We are afraid of breaking the cycle because it means completely changing what we believe and how we act/react to situations and wishes. But it’s what we need to understand and embrace and we can only do that by removing us from a concept of “scarcity” and directing us towards a concept of “abundance.”
Through the years, I was able to map out the steps of the Illegitimacy Cycle and it all starts with the “Wanderlust” feeling. We would like to incorporate travels into our life and that’s the feeling that I was referring to at the beginning of this blog.
We are travelers at heart! Granted, budget travelers, but nonetheless - travelers!
But that “budget” is where things start to go wrong: our scarcity mindset kicks in and the “Budgeting” phase begins. We fight our wanderlust feeling with the cold and rational thought of being on a budget and we allow the “Illegitimacy” feeling to spread and stop our desires and wishes.
At the end, we surrender. The “Surrender” ending is where we talk ourselves into believing that now is not a good time to travel because of X, Y, Z and we inevitably postpone.
This happens because the cons outweigh the pros in our minds.
Shifting our mindsets, prioritizing the pros and being able to recognize the symptoms of the “Illegitimacy Cycle” are essential steps to take in order to start traveling without feeling illegitimate.
We deserve to travel, we deserve to explore the world and we owe it to ourselves. We deserve to first take that trip and secondly to do so in a smart, free and intuitive way. With purpose and meaning.
Traveling is the only way to expand our horizons in the most effective way. Sure, you can read, you can watch movies, you can go to as many lectures as you want but nothing beats throwing yourself directly into the culture of that specific country and just LIVING IT.
And when we come back home as a better version of ourselves, that’s when travel is not only looking at beautiful landscapes but it becomes wellness, self care and wellbeing.
After all, if you find yourself feeling like you should take that trip, doesn’t it mean that you already are looking for that transformative experience?
So, why not follow your heart for once?
I promise you, it’s pretty freaking amazing.
Ps: If you want to learn how to do so, your FREE "World Bound Mindset Blueprint" is here waiting for you.
MUNA’S BIO
Hi, I’m Muna - Your Travel Coach!
Have you ever wondered how to travel the world when you don't have a lot of money or time? Do you want to achieve a life changing transformation but you don't think you have the means nor the rights to do so? For once, you just want to feel, do and embrace all the possibilities but you feel stuck, guilty and not entitled?
Think no more!
I'm Muna, Mindset and Intuition Travel Coach, Founder of "World Bound Travels™", and I'm here to help!
After 10 years of budget traveling and navigating the thin line between the desire of visiting far away lands and the means I had, I gained the experience necessary to help other people shift their mindsets and to empower them with the tools to embrace the wanderlust within themselves.
Say goodbye to those illegitimate feelings and learn to travel SMART, FREELY & INTUITIVELY!
Connect with Muna here:
Email: worldboundtravelsinfo@gmail.com
IG: @agalfromthemoon
