8 Ways Empathy Can Improve Your Travels…And Your Life

Empathy

On your next trip, don’t forget to pack your empathy.

Whether on stage or on the page, I often assert that, “travel can not only improve each of our lives, but it can also make the world a better place.” I suggest this instinctively, but then I have to step back and ask myself, “Well, how exactly does travel do that?

One of the pathways in my experience is through motivating a practice and expression of genuine empathy, or “the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective.” Listening to, understanding and connecting with the feelings, thoughts, and stories of others — especially those entirely different from your own — can not only enrich and improve your experience at hand, but it can also simultaneously improve your well-being.

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How Travel Is The Classroom

Simien Mountains

I recently came across an article about experiential learning that featured a list entitled 12 Things You Might Not Have Learned in the Classroom. The principles were adapted from a book entitled Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto. The list was preceded by the phrase “Really educated people…

“Wow, that’s a pretty presumptuous lead,” I thought. Then I continued reading and found myself nodding in agreement through much of the list.

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10 Ways Travel Helps You Let Go

travel

Travel. It places us in situations we couldn’t otherwise imagine. It often spurs us to do things we thought we couldn’t do. It provides perspective on our lives and our place in the world.

Amidst all this, travel also offers freedom. Among those freedoms, the greatest freedom of all: the freedom to let go.

Sounds about right, doesn't it? But what does “let go” really mean?

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How to Motivate Yourself: 9 Steps from Doubt to Doing

Have you ever told yourself that you weren’t able to do something? That you couldn't motivate yourself? Then one day you just got up and did it? This is that story. It shares how I motivated myself to run and changed the narrative in my head. However, these nine steps can be applied to anything you want to motivate yourself to do that you've been resisting getting started.

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The Danger Map of the World: Fear vs. Awareness

This is about fear and awareness and how recognizing a distinction between the two can improve your travels…and your life.

At the extremes, we have two choices in life: a) sit back and be afraid of absolutely everything and never leave the couch, or b) proceed recklessly and lean blindly into situations that will likely harm us.

Or, there’s a third way.

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