I’m in the travel state of mind. It’s not only because I have been traveling a lot as of late, London two weeks ago, currently in North Dakota (yes, North Dakota). I’ve also been pretty inspired by a pretty impressive lady who did what many of us would love to do…we dream of doing…but never do. Joslin Higgins picked up, quit her job and traveled around the world. In fact, she left just about a year ago.

Let’s take a moment to talk about the amount of guts it takes to travel abroad alone. A lot. Then there’s the reality of leaving a good job (one that she is really good at, by the way). In this day and age when we seem so focused on getting ahead professionally, that takes a tremendous amount of bravery as well.

I felt so much better when Joslin admitted what I had been thinking since she set out on this trip, which is the definition of the word “adventure.” “It’s easy to say you’re going to do something. It’s another to actually pull it off,” she told me. But pull it off she did. She saved and planned and made her dream a reality.

For a planner like me, that phase of the adventure would be crucial. For Joslin, the serious planning began when someone told her about the around the world airline ticket, there’s a bunch of them out there, but she quickly realized that she did not want to be constrained to travel solely in one direction (i.e. east or west). What’s the fun in a straight line when you can zigzag I say. So Joslin decided to plot her own points. And here is how it came to life:

“When I decided to quit and travel, people asked me why I was doing this. Eventually the only answer I could think of that was honest and encapsulated how I felt was, ‘why not?’ Joslin told me. That became her approach to everything on the trip—why not skydive? Why not go spearfishing? Why not swim with dolphins? Why not eat crickets, frogs and duck bones?  This became her mindset for everything on the trip.

She set some things up in advance (teaching English in Thailand for two months) and she was just winging it for others (as she traveled through Europe she visited friends she had met on the first part of her journey), “No one has everything figured out, it doesn’t have to be the perfect thing,” she told me about her trip. Regardless of where she was or what she was doing she says she was present, and really living, each and every moment. She told me that she cried every time she left a country

The children Joslin taught in Thailand

It’s a huge understatement to say that Joslin learned an immense amount on her adventure, but two things really still sand out to her today. One is “how truly warm people are across cultures,” she told me. She only visited four English-speaking countries. In each of the other countries she had, at times, to rely on strangers for assistance. She said she was always met with a warm smile and generosity by people who had very little in common with her, the biggest difference being language.

Great Barrier Reef

After speaking with Joslin and looking through tons of her pictures, one thing struck me about the overall benefit of international travel no matter how long or short your journey is: how much understanding it provides. Things that are foreign to us, cease to be “weird” and just become different, as Joslin aptly put it. When we travel to other countries and meet new people, we gain an understanding of other cultures we do not get from sitting on our couches. Our world view changes and broadens, and we can better understand and sympathize with the world and our fellow inhabitants. How many conflicts could be avoided if we took a little bit more time to understand the others’ point of view, background or beliefs?

Joslin doing yoga in Thailand.

After 22 countries, four continents and nine passport pages worth of stamps, Joslin is back in the States now, but only temporarily. Having traveled around the world, she realized she wants to live abroad. So now she is back at the planning/saving stage, plotter her next point and planning her next adventure.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect to be pretty amazing,” she said. Truer words were never spoken. You could be talking about an around the world adventure, a vacation, your life, or one day in that life. What’s your dream? Is it a trip around the world? Starting your own business? Writing a book (guilty)? What’s holding you back?

That’s right. Nothing. Let’s get to it.

 Many thanks to Joslin for sharing her stories and pictures with me.