“A Passport of Purpose” By: Gloria Atanmo

“A Passport of Purpose”  By: Gloria Atanmo

www.TheBlogAbroad.com

 

Traveling is truly an amazing concept. Not many other things in life can leave you speechless, yet turn you into a storyteller. But traveling does just that and more, depending on your attitude and aptitude to let it make an imprint greater than just the stamp in your passport.

From a year’s worth of travel, I went from a passport of pages to a passport of purpose, as the stamps throughout my 15 countries of exploration decorated the empty spaces, silently singing the stories of spontaneous adventures, life-changing encounters, and the ever-lasting impact the people from other cultures had on me.

But the biggest thing I had to learn was how to be a traveler and not a tourist. The minute you master this, the floodgates of opportunity and discovery will open for you, because there’s a special component to traveling with purpose that changes the way you see and approach life.

Try and create unique experiences by going outside the norm to visit places under the radar. Not to mention breaking out of your shell by trying to speak the language and exchanging perspectives and cultural views with locals. As a global citizen, your duty is to enrich this world. People need you. We need you. I need you — to continue to push the agenda for the uniquely-born, free-spirited, adventure-junkies who eat bowls of pride and courage for breakfast every morning. With a side of bacon.

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Traveling is what I love to do. And when you love something enough, you find a way to make a living out of it. But money alone won’t fund your dreams. It’s audacity that will. Audacity. Courage. And tenacity. The intangibles of downright hard work and a non-stop grind.

I think there’s this illusion that only rich people can travel or build the life of their dreams. Newsflash guys, I am NOT rich. In fact, I don’t claim to have any more money than you. I probably don’t. You can blame my impulsive jet-setting tendencies for this…as well as my monthly Spotify subscription. What I do have though, is a goal in mind. And a work ethic that would knock out Tyson if matched up in the ring.

When it comes to doing what you love or achieving your goals, it needs to be a relentless and daily pursuit. A friend asked me the other day, “Glo, what keeps you going?” I didn’t think “coffee” sufficed as an answer, so I explained how I never let the good get to my head or the bad get to my heart. If you stay true to yourself and always find the good in the worst of situations, every day becomes a blessing. Change your thinking. Change your life.

So what is it you want to do? Where is it you want to go? And when will you turn that wish into a reality by taking the necessary steps to get there? Time will pass anyway, might as well spend the one life you have doing what makes you happy. And for me, that’s traveling. It’s never the end of the world when there’s evidence that you’ve at least tried. My failures don’t define me any more than my successes do.

What do define me, are the homeless people I’ve interacted with in foreign countries, the backpackers I met that surprised with me with a home-cooked dinner one night, a lady I chatted with while climbing a mountain who later invited me over for tea, dancing down the middle of the street and inviting people to join me, watching a sunset from 1,000 feet in the sky, pretending to like rugby while trying to make sense of said sport in a pub, awkwardly avoiding eye contact with hot guys, trespassing through private property to get a perfect picture, laughing at my inability to be normal in public, giving hugs to strangers, and overall, just returning from a trip more enlightened, enriched, and fulfilled than I was before.

So what do you travel with? A passport of pages or a passport of purpose?

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