Reflections From Italy
Solo travel allows you to see yourself in a new light.
You are given the opportunity to question the way you usually approach life, your typical habits and rituals, and even your personality. It’s as if you are able to get an outsiders view of who you are.
Traveling is often a time when you are more easily able to access this self reflection. When you are traveling and in a completely new environment with new experiences, schedules and people, you get to see yourself differently.
Plus, each place in the world has a different energy. When you’re in new places you can feel the energetic shift and can even start to take on that energy (for better or worse) as if you are shifting your personality slightly - wearing a jacket that you don’t usually wear at home. Different pieces of yourself are brought to life. Old parts of yourself are questioned.
When you return home, you return with an altered perspective. You see clearly what you are looking forward to returning to, and what you resent returning to. Maybe you realise how grateful you are for your home, your routine, your life. Maybe you realise how much you dread your job, how you feel like you have no one in your life who understands you. Maybe you miss the breakfast you were having every morning when you were away, or the way you watched the sunset every evening.
We can uncover so much about ourselves when we travel. Sometimes it can feel like you left a part of yourself behind on the plane.
The thing is, though, we can bring all the best parts of ourselves wherever we go. All that we discover about ourselves when we are traveling, we can bring with us. If this updated version of ourselves does not fit into our everyday lives, it might mean that something needs to change. The shifts we feel when we are traveling - the joy sparked and wonder found - they can be experienced anywhere, at all times.
The last few trips I have taken, I have come home with the knowing that the magic I feel when traveling, I want to experience it in my everyday life. The freedom, the connection, the peace. The ability to see life with awe and find the magic in the mundane. My goal is to continue to find that and see that everyday no matter where I am or what is happening.
Of course this process is not only accomplished through solo travel. This can happen when you are thrown into a new experience, out of your routine, or simply taking time to pause and reflect and see yourself with fresh eyes.
This can happen through any experience where there is a combination of being out of your comfort zone, along with the ability to regulate your nervous system. The regulated nervous system is a crucial part. Otherwise you are simply stuck in a trauma reaction, unable to take that pause, unable to separate yourself from your emotions.
Whether or not you travel, it is important to take time to get out of the habitual automatic process of our lives and assess if we’re on the path we want, if we are the person we want to be. We must check in with ourselves often in order to continue to evolve. We must find the space in our lives to pause.
Beginning a practice of pause and seeing yourself and your life from an outsiders perspective allows you to make sure you are living a life that feels good to live in, as an insider, wherever you are.
