I have had a lot of people ask me "how do you afford to travel so much?" And it's normal that the first thought that pops into someone's mind when they see photos of airplanes and mountains and far off lands is "money." That's what you needed to travel once - so much money. But from my personal experience, I know that this is changing. We live in a day and age where money does not have to be associated with travel, where freedom does not need to be associated with 'rich.' This misconception of money=freedom=travel stunts so many young people from experiencing the freedom they desire to have. I truly believe that when young people say "I want to make millions" they don't really mean that......they really just mean that they want to have the freedom that millionaires have. And I believe each person can have a taste of that through traveling. At only the age of 22, I've had the honor to travel the world and the country - making an income that would hardly be considered wealthy and still making it work. And if you would like to do something similar, before you do anything else, you must: Determine what your values are. To travel often as teenagers and now twenty somethings, Ryan and I have made choices that lead to the things we love. We don’t spend our money on things we feel don’t get us toward our permanent goal - which we have made travel. Now, if you truly value other things or even if certain circumstances (bills, school, job) do not allow you to travel, or you are just not in the season of travel due to life, children, etc....there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But we have decided that, as young adults, traveling is a huge value for us. We feel closer to our faith, to each other, and to others when we travel. So I skip out on things like cable, I shop at goodwill, we drove a beat up old car (darn those brakes), and I choose not to drive my car very often to save gas, I could have afforded a much bigger apartment and yet I choose to live in a smaller apartment. These are things that I am willing to compromise on in order to allow my larger goal to be travel and experiences. Put your money only where your values are. Here are some simple steps on how to put this in action: 1. Find out what places that you can go to that work around your schedule with job/school/commitments. Let's face it. Not all of us get to have a job that allows 3 months of backpacking in Europe. I get that. But there are a whole lot of places all around you that you could go on the weekend - hiking, backpacking, tenting, coffee shop exploring. Find some cheap places to stay and make an adventure weekend out of it. A cabin in North Carolina. A kayak trip down the Florida coast. Hiking and tenting in Georgia. A cute little B&B in the town over. Or, if you want a longer trip.... take a hard look at your calendar and find the two weeks you have off at spring break or the week you could take off from work during the summer. Then, determine where you want to go and start the financial planning process way in advance. 2. Don't let commitments become your excuse for not traveling. There's always time available for short getaways and for seeing something new within driving distance. You don't always need the big trips to find adventure. Be an adventurer in the little things - like weekend trips and nearby locations. But either way, if your heart values traveling, near or far, don't let anyone (not even yourself) talk you out of it. There will always be something more important and more responsible to do. 3. Find the things that you can cut out of your life that are less valuable than travel. Going to Starbucks everyday is not my dream. Really. It isn't. Sorry Starbucks. I love coffee, but I would much rather live out the dream of hiking Mount Kilimanjaro, exploring Galilee, and learning how to make wine in the country of Italy. So I take steps to cut out what I did not really want. Coffee more than once a week is cut out. I don't go to see movies in the theatre....I waited until they were on netflix or DVD. Chipotle runs are less important. Ways to save: Some simple figures Our apartment was $300 less a month than the average apartment in our city. That's $3600 a year. You’ve got a pretty good chunk of money there you can use for an international trip…and we used that to go to Spain. Cable is about $100 a month. That is $1200 for a year. That's another really great chunk of money that you could use for an in-country trip…and we used ours to go toward our Washington trip and hiking in the North Cascades. Let’s use your phone bill as another example. You can get unlimited talk and text on a cheap phone for $25 a month, while many are spending $60-$80 on their phone with data (and the iphone cost too, of course). Ryan chooses to have a cheap phone and we use my phone for data, so he saves about $600 a year on that…..which can be used for various weekend trips, camping trips, and other fun experiences. There are so many other awesome ways to save money….but you have to understand where your priorities are. What personally makes your life full? You can't have everything so you must pick a couple things you value or your money will be spread thin between too many things. 4. Spend time searching for the cheapest options. Research: Let's say you decide where you want to go, you start cutting out things to save for the trip, but now you actually have to start buying the plane ticket and booking the hotel.....things get a lot tougher! The problem is that most people just accept that they have to pay a lot of money to go anywhere and they over pay on things...making it truly impossible to ever go anywhere. Most times, spending a few hours doing research (google, baby!) can save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. I have found that tour companies and booking through fancy websites can often pack on the dollars, so research your own trip and do the planning yourself. It may be more work at the beginning, but it's always fun in the end. You don't have to stay in a $200 hotel in each place. Be creative. When my husband and I travel, we rent vacation homes by owners and try to keep it under $70 night. The result = a whole house that feels luxurious and authentic compared to a hotel room at a portion of the cost. Airbnb is our favorite website for finding affordable home (sometimes even yurts, treehouses, campers, and caves!) that are unique and fun! Other times when we want to go even cheaper, we stay with friends....and sometimes we just rough it and sleep in our car. Determine your values...again: When you begin to travel you should also determine what your main value is. You can't do everything - so what would make your trip the most full? For me, I love exploring coffee shops and going hiking in the outdoors. You may want a really great spa experience or time on the beach. Maybe you just want to experience the local food and feast the days away. Whatever it is, pick what will make your trip the most full for you and don't spend money on too many other things. 5. Find creative ways to travel There are so many ways to travel that don't always involve the normal methods. I once traveled out of the country with a tour company after I had won a video contest talking about why I loved to travel. Ha! Don't be afraid to apply to things like this. Submit videos. Get creative. Network with others who like to travel. Teach english in another country. Volunteer with an organization you believe in. Film a travel documentary and fund it using kickstarter or gofundme. Start a business that involves travel. There are so many unique things you can do....don't limit yourself by only thinking in the traditional mindset. 6. Understand that travel teaches you things that nothing else can. It's easy to think, 'I'll travel when I'm older,' but traveling truly taught me some of the most important lessons of my life. Though I got so much from my college education, nothing could have educated me more than sitting down to a sabbath dinner in the heart of a Jerusalem with newfound friends, hiking through old war bunkers on the border of Syria, learning how to make wine in the vineyards of Tuscany, listening to our Spanish neighbors sing and pray as we fell asleep on the rooftop overlooking the Alhambra, watching the sunset over Morocco, riding in a tap tap in Haiti, holding the hands of a child in an orphanage, laughing with new friends in Israel. Perspective is everything. And everyone has a different viewpoint and a unique story. Travel allows you to glimpse into another's life for just a moment and see their heart as if it was your own. And when you do this, you learn how to love them. You see them and you love them for their similarities and their differences and you grow more than you ever thought you could. *Some of my favorite online resources for traveling:
Airbnb Roadtrippers Bootsnall Priceline Urbanspoon Kinfolk City Guide Couch Surfing Gogobot
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As I grow up, I find myself wishing so hard to be a child again. As I age, my personality traits become more extreme: workaholic, driven, obsessive, perfectionist. Traits that can certainly be given as a blessing, but can be used as a curse if I am not careful. And with my drivenness comes another repercussion that I knew not when I was young: anxiety & fear.
As a child, I was carefree and so in love with Jesus. So unhindered by the things of the world, because I was not forced to truly live in the world. But as we become adults, living in this world becomes important and we begin to find our place in society….often taking on the traits that society breeds. I have found that the more driven I become, the more anxious I am. Lately, I have struggled with this more than ever. I manage a lot of people within my company and we are growing, so there is always something to fix. It could be 10pm at night and I could be watching a movie with Ryan, but still I feel this urge within me to forever check my email, to forever fix things, to answer asks, to keep working because something in me finds false value in that. And when I do these things, I am very vulnerable to Satan’s attacks because I am not working out of a balanced overflow of God’s rest in my life. He attacks me by using anxiety - a feeling that causes us to have no hope for the future and to wish the certain event we are fearing to be over. But if I were to haveanxiety over multiple things - my job, my tumblr, my lack of organization.... am I not just wishing all of these things away? Hoping they will all be over so I don’t have to feel fear anymore? What sadness to wish your life away because of fear. Anxiousness can be at the root of many problems. It can cause you to act in ways that are normally not yourself, because really you are just reacting out of fear that is rooted deep in your life. As I was reading the word the other day, I came across a verse that I hadn’t noticed before. In John 16, Jesus is speaking to his disciples about his death and how they will experience great sadness……but there will come a time after his resurrection when it changes. In verse 22 he says that after his resurrection, "no one will take your joy away.” This verse is rich with implication that there is a permanent joy that will come after Christ’s resurrection. This will happen when they are given the gift of the Holy Spirit. Reading this verse was a little lightbulb for me. So often I justify my anxiousness as just the suffering of what it means to live on earth. I really can lie to myself and forget that I truly have control over the way fear sucks the joy right out of me. I should be fighting for that joy. What Jesus is saying in this verse is that a time is now here where we can always have hope….because the essence of hope lives inside of us now as the Holy Spirit. So when sin comes and sadness comes, your permanent joy should well up inside of you. This is crazy amazing to me. I have joy living inside of me, etched into my DNA, hoping always, living wildly free in the love of my savior. But how do I access this joy? When I get over-obsessive about my job, or worried about how pointless I feel my situation is, it is easy to build a cage around my mind, almost protecting these anxious thoughts….because sin feeds off of it. How do we break that cage down and allow the joy that is within us to bubble over? Some things that God’s really been teaching me lately are these three things: 1. Thanksgiving changes things. When I stop worrying about my worry problem and just start thanking God for stuff in instead…..my heart changes. Philippians 4:6-7 says "Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” It can be a cliche verse in the Christian world, but this verse seriously holds the key to setting me, and perhaps you, free to lead a life that is etched with permanent joy. How do we not worry about anything? We pray. How do we pray? With thanksgiving. We see Jesus demonstrate this time and time again. When he spoke with his Father his prayers were rich with thanksgiving. This thanksgiving is what changes our hearts. It breaks the stone away until our heart becomes flesh again. When I allow fear and anxiety to creep into my life, I can almost feel my heart become stone. I do not want to pray. I don’t really care about anything except myself. I can scream and cry and beg for change in my life, but my own heart only really changes when I stop yelling thousands and thousands of words and just utter the small phrase in my hoarse voice - ‘thank you.’ Thanksgiving allows the flood gates to open and it gives you a vision and a hope for your future. Thanksgiving through prayer allows the peace of God to guard your heart and your mind. It will destroy the fear that tries to creep in and it will allow the permanent joy, which is given to you by the Spirit, to flourish. I challenge you to take a week and just thank God. Worship him for what he is done in your life. I guarantee that you will be so busy noticing the beautiful things God’s given you in your life that you will start to forget how to be anxious. 2. Rest changes things. This is a discipline. This is hard. In our culture we are taught that rest = lazy. We are one of the most overworked cultures of the world and our media and our technology is teaching us that we don’t ever have to turn off. This is so hurtful to our hearts. I have felt the effects of this in my life and it has wreaked havoc. I bounce from work task to work task, getting more done than most and priding myself on it. When I get home, I run to the gym. Then, I get on my tumblr, I answer asks and write blogs and stay busy. Even when Ryan comes home and wants to rest, I often need to find something to do while just sitting on the couch. I play with my phone. I check my Facebook. And our culture glorifies this trait as the mark of a well put together and successful woman. But this causes destruction. If your success does not yield growth, joy, and the presence of God in your life.....it is not success. God himself taught us in the beginning of Genesis that rest is important. Not just physical rest, but mental rest too. The battle is all in the spiritual world, so shouldn’t we think it was important to rest our hearts and our minds as well? Hebrews 4:9-11 says, "There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.” Without rest, we fall into disobedience. Why? Because we do not have time to be in God’s presence, to let our hearts heal and refresh, and to refocus our hearts on the hope and permanent joy that the Spirit has put within us. The idea of rest means that you take time away from your job, from technology, from busyness, and you allow Jesus to heal your heart. As I put up structure in my life for this, I have decided to only work 5 days a week. On Saturday, I try to take that day as a day of rest. I go read a book. I go on a hike and pray. I do something my heart loves that is away from media, technology, phones, work, emails, and I just allow my heart to be a child again. On Sunday, I give that day back to the Lord as a day to serve and thank him for what he has done for me. (and I have accountability in my life to make sure I keep doing this....it's way too easy to try to go back to being busy just to be busy!) With this implemented in my life, my heart feels more childlike than ever before. I can work hard through out the week without fear, without exhaustion, without the idea that I am drowning, and I can rest assured that Saturday is a day where I will be a little kid again, where my heart will be ministered to by the Spirit and my permanent joy will rise, giving me strength for the week ahead. 3. His presence changes thing. In Psalm 16:11 it says, "You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” In Jesus’ presence there is fullness of joy. When we allow for rest, we are able to also rest in his presence. He is then able to show us who we really are. This life is one reality. But there is a whole other reality, the true reality, of who we are really called to be in the spiritual. As we enter into thanksgiving and we implement rest, we need to learn to just stay in his presence…..because that's where we will see who we were meant to be and the hope that is to come for us. This will always well up a permanent joy inside of us, as our perspective will change and our hearts will begin to see the freedom we were called to walk in. Faced with the life that the world presents to us, fear and anxiety and worry are normal things, things that any hard-working person should have to deal with. Right? I don’t think so anymore. As I begin allowing thanksgiving to become a lifestyle, as I begin to take time to rest and be the child I used to be, as I take time to just be with Jesus and allow him to speak to my heart……there I find fullness of joy. The joy he talked about with his disciples. The kind of joy that stems from hope that is from his grace. That joy no one, no man or spiritual force, can ever, ever, ever take away from me. -Chelsie |
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