Alone in Chiang Mai

I’m finally here!  Settling in on the other side of the world in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  I plan to be here for three months and then spend time travelling around Asia…. ALONE!

So many people have told me how brave I am; what courage I have; how they couldn’t imagine doing the same.  Yes, I bucked convention; and quit my job and my very comfortable life to travel.  At 42 years of age, this is hardly sane behaviour.  I have built a very successful and secure life over the past 20 years; and decided to step out of it into the unknown.  “But WHY?”, you ask.

Well, I need to take you back to a conversation I had with a friend about three years ago.  But first, let me give you a bit of background; I have always enjoyed travelling; I have always been curious of other cultures; enjoyed eating foreign food; meeting people who are different from me; and seeing the beauty that is present everywhere.  But, regrettably I have had limited opportunity to do much travelling.  My worldly footprint is still very small.  There are many reasons that prevented me from travelling much; but I really only want to focus on one of those reasons today: FEAR!

So back to my conversation with my friend.  She is very well-travelled; and can also travel comfortably on her own.  On this particular day, she was telling me about a trip to Bali which she decided to do on a whim, on her own a few years before.  I was not in a good space at the time, still dealing with the aftermath of my divorce.  I was feeling incredibly insecure; and my self-worth was at an all-time low.  I was also doing a deep analysis of my life; and the meaning of life.     During the conversation, my friend suggested that I should consider doing a similar trip on my own; it would be healthy for me.  When she said that I knew, intellectually, that she was right; and that I could only grow from such an experience.  But, from an emotional and psychological level, the thought filled me with such anxiety that it felt like a knot in my chest squeezing my heart and would eventually kill me.  In that moment, all I knew was that it doesn’t matter how healthy this could be for me, I would NEVER do it – it was too far out of my comfort zone.  I had the most incredible admiration and envy for my friend who was so brave.

As I write this, I am sitting in Chiang Mai.  I’m not on holiday.  I didn’t take a few weeks of leave to visit a country to return to my comfortable job.  I am here contently embracing the unknown.  It is not without fear; but that fear no longer has the power of me that it once had.

So, what changed that I am now doing the very thing that made me anxious a few years ago?  Well, the past few years I have been on the most incredible journey of self-healing and personal growth.  During this journey, I did a lot of self-reflection and introduced a number of practices that helped me build the confidence to find my courage and take some very brave steps in my life.