People have been asking me for travel advice for years now, ever since I first started squashing down all the excuses to put it off and made travel a priority for my family. I constantly get DM’s asking for travel advice from acquaintances who see me as some kind of authority on the subject. Like a broken record, I’ve heard repeatedly, “You need to start a travel blog!”
How many times do you need to hear something before you start to believe it?
I have been threatening to finally give in to my dream and start a travel blog for years and never followed through. I can come up with many practical reasons for my lack of commitment to this promise such as not having enough time as a working single mom, not having knowledge on how to build a website, not being an avid enough traveler to have enough to write about… but those are all just excuses to cover up the real reason I haven’t done it. Truth be told, I am just scared.
I am scared that what I have to say isn’t important and no one will read it. Or worse, people will read it and think it’s trash. I’m scared of the same thing as anyone who puts their work out into the world to be judged and scrutinized. What if I’m not good enough?
Well, I’m finally ready to say that I’m tired of the exhausting cycle of self-doubt that keeps me from doing things that I love and sharing those passions. I would never advise someone else to not do something because they are afraid of being judged by others. I can be found saying, “Who gives a crap what anyone else thinks?” pretty dang often. My kids can attest to that.
I always tell people to go after their dreams. I always tell people that what they have to say matters, that their thoughts and feelings are no less important than anyone else’s, that they should just go for it, whatever it is! So why do I have so much trouble believing those same things for myself?
Anxiety? Fear of failing? Imposter syndrome? Check, check, and check.
But, I’m ready to shut all of these self-sabotaging trolls down. I’m ready to ask what if I am good enough? Unsurprisingly, not trying has gotten me nowhere, which is obviously the exact opposite of what I want as a traveler and, as you know, is pretty much the whole point of traveling: to go somewhere.
So I am finally committing to something I have been keeping on the shelf for too long. I’m ready to put myself on the map both literally and figuratively. I hope that what I share helps others who also have a dream of seeing and experiencing all that the world has to offer. I hope my unique perspective brings something to the table that can encourage, inspire, and educate my readers. And I hope I inspire them to tell their self-doubt demons to go fly a kite as well.
As parents, I think it’s common for us to put our dreams on the back-burner as we sacrifice the impractical in order to be care-takers and providers first. But we have to ask ourselves if this is really serving our children (and ourselves) in the way that we think? What if, instead, our children watched us realize our dreams? What example would that set for them? I suspect it’s actually the very example all of us want our kids to witness.
What dreams have you been putting off because of your own self-doubt demons? Have you interrogated your own reasons for doing so and discovered that they are excuses that can be squashed? What does taking the first step toward your goal look like?
You don’t have to move mountains today, or even tomorrow. But you do owe it to yourself to make your own dreams a priority. As Nelson Mandela said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
