Jillian’s March Post: Step into Your Courage

Traveling alone can kindle your courage – even on an adventurous “Travel Date” in your own town. You taste your courage as you may not when traveling with others. And our solo travels are like being able to star in our own movie. Yet like good actors, we must study a part and then become it.

What was a moment when you felt courageous? Maybe it is one you have yet to create in your future travels.
Next time you journey, seek to create such a moment. Then, back home, ask yourself several questions: Why was this experience significant? What quality, or qualities, did you discover or further tap into? What have you done to process your experience back home: shared stories with friends? Reviewed your journal? Stayed in touch with people you met on your trip? Written a blog or travel stories? Finally, how have you maintained this quality in your everyday life?

Michael, an entrepreneur I interviewed in Change Your Life Through Travel, stepped into his courage by cliff diving in Jamaica, which also improved the way he does business today He said he didn’t immediately convert his Jamaican memory to an understanding of how to take more calculated risks. He learned that later, after processing the experience back home. How did he do that?

First, he recognized the importance of opening himself to such experiences. Second, he adopted the ritual of recording his experiences. He likes journaling, but you can create a photographic journal if you’re more visual. Finally, Michael proposes revisiting these memories, time and again. “Journal your experience and what you learned from it…Re-read that passage about what you experienced, what you felt, what you learned, and how you have incorporated that into your life. The practice of writing and reading something helps jog our memories; puts us in that moment again. If we do that often enough, then we begin to see the world through the eyes of that experience. And we become more aware when something similar occurs so that we can react in a similar way, and use what we learned.”

 How can you step into your courage and bring your “road courage” back home?