Traveling is a great way to expend your internal world. In search of happiness, traveling is a good way to realize that happiness has no address. You only need to open your door and leave your comfort zone to find out you are carrying the whole world with you in your thoughts, your mindset and your actions.
Traveling for variety
For some, traveling is a way to bring variety and excitement into their life. In the routine of everyday life, everyone needs to “let go of the glass” and refresh (even my computer needs to be restarted from time to time). Changing scenery, changing daily activities, changing food and atmosphere, changing the social surroundings – all these can give us that feeling of variety that we all need to keep on going. Traveling on the weekend to another town and doing something different can fulfill the need for variety. For such travelers, change is the name of the game.
Traveling for expanding the horizon
For others, traveling is a way of expanding their horizon. For such people, a trip is a way of seeing new things, much like watching the Discovery channel. The name of the game there is “new”. Everything new is wonderful and adds to the “knowledge bank”. A guided tour works very well for horizon seekers. For them, getting out of the routine, just for the sake of change, is not enough. They have to try new scenery, a new kind of food, a new culture or a new language.
Traveling for the experience
Another group looks for an experience. For them, traveling is a way of experiencing things they could not experience from the comfort of their sofa. For them, hearing about or even seeing is nowhere near experiencing. You can tell them about climbing a special mountain and they will want to feel it for themselves. Experience seekers welcome all kinds of experiences. Every experience, good or bad, can bring them closer to their own happiness. If the experience is good, they can add it to their happiness tank. If it is not good, they know what they need to avoid in order to keep their happiness tank full.
Traveling for perspective
Some people travel to different places in order for them to get a new perspective on their life. They believe that only when they take a step back from their life can they evaluate and appreciate it better. Only when you see how people struggle for food can you fine-tune your definition of wealth. Only when you go to places where you see people doing things in a different way can you learn better ways and improve what you do. For such travelers, the main aim is applying their new experiences to their own life and getting better results and a better feeling.
Traveling for happiness
I guess a big group of people travel in search of happiness. They believe happiness “lives” somewhere else where there is love, money, comfort and luxury. They go on trips to faraway places in hope of finding true happiness. It is no coincidence these people stay at hotels and go on cruises, fly in planes and cross oceans, yet they end up surprised and disappointed to find, around the corner from their hotel, rundown places and people with no money, living in huts and not having even the luxury of a toilet. For such travelers, the meaning of life is the search for the special address where happiness lives. Some say happiness resides where people live a simple life. Some say it is where people have everything they need. Some say happiness is where there is the most beauty and others say it is where people have more time.
Unfortunately, this search for “the happiness place” causes one of people’s greatest frustrations. In my many travels, I have found wonderful places, inspiring people and amazing cultures but no map leading me to that desired address. I remember other travelers who came to the same places I thought were heaven and thought they were hell.
Happiness resides in the heart of each and every one of us,
covered with dark vale of fears
– Ronit Baras
All the clients we have at Be Happy in Life want happiness in their homes, with their families, in their relationships, at work or just within themselves. Therefore, during coaching we take them on a new journey – an exotic, fascinating, wonderful journey – into the self, where there is a lot of variety, expansion of the horizon, experience and perspective. This journey helps them develop and grow.
Many of them think that happiness resides at the back of our house, on our beautiful balcony, where we take them on this journey, and find excitement and beauty without leaving their seats. In fact, happiness resides in the heart of each and every one of us, but it is covered with the dark vale of our fears, so we cannot see it there.
Coaching is only one way of taking this journey, but you take the first step by yourself. Get out of your comfort zone, peel away the vale of fear and start traveling in your mind. Travel to a new feeling, to a new taste, to a new way of getting up in the morning or to a different way of saying things. Learn something new about someone, try doing the things you are afraid of (you can always start singing in the shower when you are all alone) and discover the exact location of happiness inside yourself.
Happy travels,
Ronit
