RTW Travel Fears
It is more than likely no one you talk to will ever tell you that it is ok to quit your job to roam the streets of Rome. In fact, it is very likely that some will say that you are crazy to want to do this. As well-meaning as the advice from all the naysayers around you maybe, the only permission you really need to live your travel dream is your own.
One can come up with gazillion reasons to postpone travel to sometime in the future—after you’ve made at least your first million; after you’ve paid off that mortgage; after the kids have left home; after retirement….
“No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
For years Kapil and I kept putting off our 6 month trip across Asia and Europe. We believed we had very solid, practical reasons for not packing our bags right away. Upon closer inspection though, each of these turned out to be more fear than reason really. As we started breaking down all our mental barriers, we also started figuring out ways to manage the social, economic and time pressures that had kept us from packing our bags.
Our 3 greatest fears and the arguments we used to overcome these:
Job
What if I quit this and can’t find another one?
Job security is an oxymoron in the world that we now live in. Employees are just part of the collateral damage as companies merge, acquire or/and restructure to remain relevant and, more importantly, profitable. In a world where no one is immune to the vagaries of the financial markets, jobs will come and go, but your skills, experience and credibility are yours forever. These coupled with confidence and initiative will always help you land on your feet, anywhere in the world. Are you willing to give up your travel dreams for a job that could be gone in the blink of an eye if your company suddenly decided it was time to “right size”?- Career
This break will look bad on my resume.
Our resumes are the story of what we have learned and created in the time that we chose to exchange for money. Any story worth telling has its twists and turns. In fact, the best ones usually are about the main character’s journey of self-discovery & self-actualisation. A simple Google search will bring up stories of scores of people for whom travel has been the trigger for changes of this very nature. If you think that’s a tall claim, look at it this way: Travel gives us time and distance from humdrum. An opportunity—a quiet—that generally triggers deeper introspection. Looking inward in this manner can only lead to better understanding of self and thereby better life (and career) decisions—in other words, twists and turns for a better story on your resume.
Money
I don't yet have/ make enough to travel around the world.
For most of us money is the No. 1 deterrent to round-the-world travel.
One way or another, we all choose to exchange a substantial chunk of our finite time on this planet for money, then why not use some of those hard-earned $$ to create the life and memories that we want. Squirrelling away money for a distant (and not guaranteed) time in the future, while spending our present denying our most cherished dreams seems criminal. Yet, so many of us do exactly that.
Doesn't matter how much we make, most of us have a fraught relationship with money. This is mostly because of the rules, duties and obligations imposed by society in relation to the responsible earning, saving, investing and spending of it. Once on this hamster wheel, we let our biggest life decisions be driven by the fear of scarcity of money. To tackle this fear, we must understand and realise, first of all, that we can all live on far less money than we think we need. Second and equally important (as I have said already in relation to jobs), we carry within us all the tools we will ever require to make enough money not just to survive, but to thrive.
Of course Kapil and I needed to follow up this mindset about money with pragmatic decisions that would allow us to juggle the things we want to do with the things we have to do. This is what we focussed on in the weeks and months before we set off on our travel adventure.
We had been putting aside money for travel for a couple of years. Having this money go into a seperate bank account kept us from dipping into it to pay off any unexpected large expenses. Once we decided to step away from our jobs to travel, we got to work simplifying our lives. We got out of a mortgage in India and gave up the lease on our rental apartment in Melbourne. In the weeks before our departure from Melbourne, we went even further and culled as many monthly and annual financial commitments as possible—gym memberships, magazine subscriptions, google music subscriptions etc etc. We bought travel insurance and put our monthly private health insurance payments in Australia on hold for the duration of our travel.
One by one we eliminated expenses that would put a strain in our finances while we were travelling, until our travel costs were the only expenses we would have to worry about while we were on the road.
For Kapil and me cultivating this outlook about money, jobs and career has been a process that has involved distancing ourselves from peer pressure and the rat race, and being brutally honest to ourselves about the life we must create to feel truly fulfilled. It has been a lesson in integrity and courage—one that we are still assimilating. And the more we exercise this way of thinking, the stronger we become in our convictions.
