Day 263: Travel stress

24062013

Go see all the cool things! Through a camera lens!

In the past couple of days I have been dealing with a new kind of a stress factor. I have been staying in the house of a man who is a really active traveller himself, and him giving me all these travel tips triggered some kind of a travel stress in me. There are thoughts telling me I should be doing a lot of things, I should be moving all the time, I should be making sure I squeeze out all the experiences I can from the time that I've got – and at first I moved according to this. Then when it was no longer possible for me to be tirelessly active all the time and I stopped doing so, I started having pains. The thoughts were still there, now with blame, telling me I SHOULD be doing things, really, I SHOULD! And my neck and shoulders have been reacting in similar ways as within work stress, getting unusually jammed and tense and causing me massive headaches – and I have been resistant to give myself rest because it has felt like “a waste of time”. Now that the owner of the house is back and there is another couchsurfer here with me I notice them causing me more stress, because now that I am no longer alone I have someone to “report to” - as if they were watching me, assessing my way of traveling, judging me if I'm not as active as they would be. Essentially I am judging myself as I have set myself an ideal of an “active traveler” and constantly resent myself when I'm not living up to it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a “traveler ideal” for myself based on what I have seen others do, not realizing that I am basing a goal for living, a principle, on what others appear to be with no knowledge of what their inner experience is – in other words, what their motivation to be “active travelers” is and how they actually fuel their actions.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel stressed about not reaching up to the level of those around me, fearing that I will be seen as a “lousy traveler” - as less than others – and that I will be judged according to what others see of me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “active traveling” to be “the right way” of traveling – that which I “should be” doing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “inactive traveling” to be “the wrong way” of traveling – that which I “should not be” doing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “the right way of traveling” to consist of being in movement from morning until evening, reaching for new experiences, going to exciting places, exploring all possible activities, socializing with all the people you meet, sleeping as little as possible to maximize your waking hours – not realizing that this ideal is simply not possible to live according to as the physical capacity of a human being is limited.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to set myself an ideal that is impossible to live up to.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel guilty for not living up to my traveling ideal, not realizing that it is such that no one could do without self-compromise.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “the wrong way of traveling” to consist of not utilizing the possibilities of your travel environment as effectively as possible by taking time to rest, relax, not be in a hurry and focus on one thing at a time, and not planning your next move constantly to make sure you don't waste any time – not realizing that I have demonized all the things necessary for a human being to function properly and to actually take in one's environment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stress about my day not going “according to plan”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with fear of failure whenever I consider resting, not doing anything “special” or stopping to enjoy something, and whenever I find myself in a situation where I have not planned what to do – not realizing that I limit myself from actually living the moment that I have.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think of resting as “failure”, not realizing that if my body is in need of rest it is advisable to do so for the sake of my own well-being, my well-being actually being a kind of “success” in itself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think of stopping to enjoy something as “failure”, not realizing that stopping is necessary for me to actually experience and explore the moment I am living, and that without stopping I am never really HERE.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think of not running after new exciting experiences as “failure” with the reasoning that I am thus “wasting” the opportunities of my traveling - not realizing that even though I am currently traveling and spending a lot of resources on doing so I am still the same kind of a physical being in a physical environment as I was back home, and that no matter where I am on Earth I will always be living within this one single NOW-moment of breath, and that this moment will always contain varying opportunities and possibilities, and that I need to choose which possibilities to seize according to what is best for ALL, this including my own well-being – and that thus there is no such thing as “failure”, there are simply different kinds of choices that serve different kinds of purposes and bring out different outcomes.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive traveling to be about “special experiences”, not realizing that all experiences are of the same value when experienced within and as the physical instead of enhancing and diminishing them through the mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify traveling being about “special experiences” because I am spending a lot of money on traveling, thinking that I have to get my money's worth out of this trip – not realizing that I am motivated by fear because money is something that is scarce and valuable and because I worked a lot for a long period of time to have enough money to do this trip, and that I am now afraid that all that effort will have been in vain if my experience is not “big enough”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stress because of money.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that money at the moment being the “unavoidable evil” I have got to learn how to live with it, which means that I cannot continue to see myself as “less powerful” than money because money is a man-made agreement which I, as a part of the human race, can in fact influence.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stress about spending money on traveling because I have been afraid of my own survival before, during and after the trip.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with fear every time I spend money as I fear that I am making “the wrong choice” and digging my own grave. *[An interesting point to elaborate on – the moment of giving away money and the reactions within it.]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that all the while I travel I am not in a different reality where life would be about chasing after “special experiences”, as this is not the case in my “normal life” either. *[The term “normal life” needs more investigation, “normal” here being stagnation as opposed to “traveling” which is movement.]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stress about making the most out of my life because I fear that when I die it will not have been the “best it could have been”, not realizing that there are no such things as “the best life” or “the worst life” - there are just different kinds of lives, all with equal value, and a myriad of factors that contribute to what the “life story” and the lived life experience become.

I commit myself to support myself to live each moment from the starting point of breath by returning myself to breath and thus to myself whenever I notice myself not breathing.

When and as I see myself thinking “I should be [doing something]” OR experiencing it in my flesh as tension around my neck and shoulder area - I stop, I breathe and I realize that the use of this word and/or the according experience in flesh is/are a sign that I am pushing myself towards an impossible ideal. I ask myself what it is that I fear and what it is I am trying to be/become. As I reveal my hidden fears and desires to myself I release them in breath within and as the realization that there is nothing I “should be” doing, ever, and that there are simply possibilities and choices between them. I commit myself to reconsider the activities at hand from within myself and as myself while taking my entire physical existence into consideration.

I commit myself to take care of myself by giving myself enough rest, thus showing myself mercy instead of cruelty.

When and as I see myself planning my trip (or my life) ahead by any amount of time, hours, days, weeks or months – I stop, I breathe and I realize that by doing this I am escaping and abusing the present moment. I ask myself whether it is actually necessary to plan what I was planning, and if not, I ask myself why I was planning what I was planning. I ask myself what I fear and what I desire and how these plans would serve them – how would I avoid what I fear with this plan? How would I reach what I desire with this plan? As I bring these hidden motives to surface I release them in breath. I commit myself to give myself the time I need to bring myself back to stability and back to breath before I continue with what I was doing.