2013-04-15 09:49:31-04
Wandering Earl 
I know it’s scary. I know you’re worried. I know you’re ready to change your life and start traveling but no matter how badly you want it to happen, you just can’t take that first step. You try, and you try hard, but you just can’t get that one nagging question out of your head, that one question that stops you from walking out the door. That question is… âWhat if I fail?â Yes, what if you fail? Well, I’m here to tell you that you very well might fail. You might not achieve your goals. You might start traveling, quickly spend all of your money and be forced to return home, broke and without a plan. That’s just how life goes sometimes. However, I’m also here to tell you that if you do fail at first, who cares? So you have to return home and get a job. That’s certainly not the worst thing in the world, especially when you’ll have had some incredible travel experiences to look back on. And besides, you can always save up some more money and try again. I’ve failed. In fact, I fail all the time. Whether it’s failing to find a way to follow through with some of my travel plans, spending months working hard on new projects only to watch those projects fizzle and vanish or failing to achieve many of the goals I set for myself each year, failure is a part of my life. And I’m quite certain that failure is a part of many people’s lives, if not most. Of course, even though we all fail from time to time, the thought of potential failure is still not easy to digest, especially whenever we are thinking about making such a drastic lifestyle change as the one involved with long-term travel or whenever we are thinking about doing anything that goes against what we’ve been taught is ‘normal’. And that is why so many of us give up on our goals…we are simply unable to get beyond that fear. But that’s the problem. If we allow our fear of failure to stop us from trying new things and to keep us from jumping into the unknown, many of our wildest dreams and most of our biggest goals shall be left unachieved. At the end of life, there we shall be, repeating a long list of regrets over and over again in our minds. Being scared is not a valid reason to stay at home when our hearts and souls are telling us that we should be experiencing every corner of the world first-hand. We all worry, we all fail. We’re all human in the end. The difference is that some people say, “Well, I might fail. Screw it, here I go!” and then take that leap towards their goals despite their fear. And some people, upon failing, take a deep breath, stand up straight and try again. These are the kind of people who eventually succeed, the kind of people who recognize that worry and failure are a part of life, the kind of people who don’t let that fact stop them from making the most out of their short time on this planet. Which kind of person are you? Are you letting your fear stop you from traveling? For those who did take the leap, was it worth it?
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