Falling Head 1st in Love with Travel

But today is going to be a special episode you guys it’s going to be a hybrid episode it’s going to be half rampaging and appreciating and half classic halftime talks. What we’re going to be talking about today is one of my most most would have ever said most, most sincere topics travel. Let’s send it to our sponsor. Today’s episode is brought to you by capturing creatives. Imagine on one hand you have Superman and on the other you have Clark Kent, who is the true persona. Clearly it’s Superman. And for you that tuned in tapped in, in the zone creative seatbelt is your true Metro persona. The challenge is sometimes we get turned around in the phone. How do we fix that? That’s what catching creative steps in is an online community dedicated to examining and uncovering the creative process that gets us there by interviewing exceptionally talented individuals across all creative spectrum to make sure you’re there day one front row center seat ready to rock caption creatives launches, but a caption creatives.com Sign up.

You could tell I really enjoyed making that commercial. And I did. So in today’s episode, we’re gonna be talking about travel. You know, it’s a hot topic right now, Huffington Post Evany, all these other outlets are talking about urban travel. And it’d be remiss of me not to tell my story when I got started. So mine inspired a couple of you, you might have an impact on it, you might get some ideas, you might be willing to send me some ideas for some ideas. Okay, so traveling for me began when I was a young kid, my father was an Air Force, and we were stationed in England. And so that was the first time I was able to spend time outside the country while I was young, kindergarten, and so the third grade, I got to see another country, I got to see how other people live.

Granted, it’s still an English speaking country. But we were across the pond as they would say. And we came back to United States in like 1985 or 1984, one of those years. I didn’t travel again internationally until 2004 2005. And it began when I was a member of this audio program. It was self help. It was personal development. It was like getting a master’s in life. I had subscribed to Nightingale Conant. So that’s Nightingale. conant.com They still got some tremendous audio products that will be that food for thought. And I list I used to subscribe it was a weekly tape they’d sent me it was the Achievers program or something like that. And in this tape that I got, there were these two guys it was Steven wicked and Togo.

I forget the guy’s first name, but it was the togo wicked. And they described setting goals, setting challenges, reviewing all the things that they had accomplished within a year within a fixed time period. And every Christmas they would get together. And when they got together every Christmas, they review the stuff and then they say hey, let’s mix it up. What if we go to another city? And so they started going to other cities for the togo, wicked, Christmas dinner, right? And so eventually, after maybe a decade, several years, they said, Hey, let’s do the toga awake at Christmas dinner abroad. And so they went to Austria, and they had this amazing experience. And the way that he described it activated something in me. It made me stop listening to that when it was finished, and dare to dream.

I commend it to the world to my Friends to the universe, that I’m going somewhere for New Year’s. And so I had dinner with a friend within that week and I proclaimed, hey, I’m going to travel internationally for New Years. And it was decided that friend ended up coming with me. So I made it happen. I didn’t have any money. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. But I was determined to travel, I was determined to travel. So eventually, the clients came in, the money came in and I went to Italy. I went to Rome, Milan, Florence, Siena, Pisa, it was the first time that I was in another country with another language and that whole speaking like a caveman, you’re using your hands, you’re, you’re using, you’re drawing stuff in the air because you don’t speak Italian, or you don’t speak the native language of where you’re visiting.

And I’ll tell you what, man that first 15 That first 20 minutes, okay, that first several hours, let me be honest, was very, very uncomfortable. But at the same time, it was uncomfortable, it was also exhilarating. I close my eyes on every opportunity and, and pictured myself in relationship to the world. And I took another second and I pictured myself in relationship to my home. And I was like, Man, I’m halfway across the world. And it doesn’t feel like you’re halfway across the world. When you’re halfway across the world. Feels like you’re here because you’re always gonna be here, here is where your feet are. But I was halfway across the world. My nose is open, I’m seeing art. I’m a graphic designer, by trade, and so to see boated Shelley’s, the birth of Venus, that was the opening screen for Illustrator blew my mind.

To see the Sistine Chapel blew my mind, the greatest piece of art I’ve ever seen with my eyes. Is Michelangelo’s David. Simon, wow, this is like genius, on on 100 million. And in that moment, I knew I wouldn’t be a traveler, for the rest of my life. If whatever you call the Creator, if your way, Jesus, God, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, whatever you call this Creator, who created this planet, this world that we live in, every every part of the world has a different landscape, and has a different culture, who’s inhabited that landscape in Maine at the roll? My eyes deserve to see that what you see on TV and what you see in real life. When your feet are there, when you’re talking to locals, and when you’re relating experiences across the board is priceless.

After that initial trip, those who know me knew that that was all I talked about. Again, later that year for Thanksgiving, went to Paris, fell in love with the city. And in a Paris Cafe while my brother and best friend were at the hotel, catching some z’s, I said, You know what, you’re only in Paris. I haven’t been in Paris before. You got to soak it up. I went to a restaurant, I broke out my journal. And I wrote in my journal, and what I wrote in a journal affected the rest of my life. I said, Paris is awesome. Wouldn’t it be nice to live here? And then the next sentence changed my life. I wrote with this sentence, I’m going to make it happen.

So six months later, seven months later, after I wrote that journal entry was Thanksgiving. 2005. I moved to Paris. And a lot of people you know who travel who who live abroad who are expats for a certain amount of time. The common question is, why do you do this? What do you do? Why do you why do you travel? I don’t get it. Why do you go here? Why here? And an answer that was within my heart and is still in my heart today. For the reason I travel and I visit places. I don’t go there for what I can see. I don’t go there to really just take it in. Why I go there is for who I can become. Not knowing the language not knowing the geography, not knowing the food going into a grocery store and not recognizing anything in this grocery store but Coca Cola over time.

You evolve, the person who gets it, who’s able to move and maneuver do, you know, seemingly random conditions is a different person. When I came home from that Paris exertion, I realized that I was able to read people a lot better than I was before I left, I realized that to speak and communicate in another language, you’re looking at visual cues, you’re looking for the nuances, you’re able to problem solve your mind collapses around trying to critically think your way through challenges. And so not only these, but there are so many benefits to traveling. You want to represent your culture, you want to represent your family, you want to represent yourself around the world. So when somebody sees the next guy that’s just like you, you’ve paved the way.

And so there’s a lot of people who’ve paved the way for me, I’ve inspired a few people to travel in knave sense lat man, not slaps me, Dave lapped me, they travel a lot more than I do now. But I still I still get it in. Recently, I just came for Columbia, South America is one of the most beautiful places in the world, I recommend you, you get off the internet, you get off the Travel Channel, and you book a ticket. Because I am like, if you can’t hear it in my voice, know that I am passionate about traveling, you get to see all types of cultures, you get to ask questions from people on the ground. While the TV can feed you a lot of accurate information, they can also lean it in with a bias what affects typical Americans may not affect African Americans in the same way, it may not affect other people in the same way.

And so this whole world, and traveling within it has taught me that I am a global citizen. I’m not just a labelled African American, I am not a New Yorker, just because I live in New York now. I am not just 100%, an African American American, whatever those labels separate us, I look at myself as a human and a citizen of the world. Just because you draw a line doesn’t necessarily mean that you can separate the humanity of the people living on this planet. In this humongous world. vast oceans, great landscapes. At worst, it may take you 30 hours to get halfway around the world. 100 years ago, 200 years ago, that expedition would take months, upon months. We get to see cultures, we get to experience foods, we get to see landscapes we get to take in activities that aren’t available to us where we are.

America is humongous traveling across it is almost like traveling internationally. Going to Europe is different. Going to South America is different. I haven’t been to Africa, and I hear so many great things about Africa. Going to Asia is really awesome. You get to see and experience things that typically are things that just that distance alone, you don’t get to see. You see the zoo in Thailand, you can actually hang out with the Tigers. And so I want to close this episode. I hope you hear my passion. I hope you hear that this is an option. I hope you hear that. There’s a level of experience of excellence that you’re capable of that traveling internationally, if you’re not a traveler, can open up it can make you see things differently can make you appreciate things different.

Don’t wait to the end of your life. Don’t save this for that 60s, Twilight of your life because of some things that you need a physically fit body to do. And when you’re traveling on the road, those who travel know this, that you see people without the means to travel, finding the means to travel. It’s like you’ve been on the road for a year. I don’t get it. How did you do this? Well, I taught English. I swept up. I you know, I did odd jobs. People are traveling and they’re making it happen. A lot of times that we’ve become so burdened by our debt, and our monthly bill responsibilities that we’ve priced ourselves out of travel. I continue nothing you can do besides investing in yourself and this is the ultimate investment in yourself.

You get to see the world and experience a new part of yourself and watch how you respond to things and watch how you adapt to cultures and watch. Watch yourself. But I love travel Clearly, and this has been another episode of halftime talks. Once again, this episode is brought to you by capturing creatives, the online community where creativity is the premium, where we uncover the creative processes that get us in the zone. Make sure you go to catching creators.com So you can be on that front row when it launches.