Date Yourself Instead - The POWER of solo traveling

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Ahhhh. SOLO TRAVEL. One of the most highly requested topics I get asked to cover is my experience doing shit alone. And yeah, it can be intimidating, scary and crazy to go off on adventures completely solo. In this episode, I talk about a few experiences I've had solo traveling, the lessons I've learned, my honest thoughts on it, and a wild story time about my study abroad journey in Australia. I'll definitely be recording a part two. Xoxo.

The first experience I had solo traveling was when I decided to study abroad in Australia for a year. And the reason I count this as my first solo travel experience is because while my entire junior college class was going to Florence, Italy, that was like the place everyone decided to go for study abroad from my school. Very popular study abroad spot, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm Italian. I should have done Florence. And I was kicking myself later. You'll find out why.

But, you know, I decided to take a leap of faith. I pride myself on being unique and unconventional and different. And I was just stubborn, I guess, and wanted to do something different from everyone else. I didn't want to go to Florence because everyone I knew was going there. So I decided to go somewhere where no one else was going. Not one other person I knew from my school was going to Melbourne, Australia. So naturally, I was a bit intimidated and nervous and I was 19, so I was very young, but I wanted to take a big risk for some idiotic reason and go by myself.

So it was really my first solo travel experience. I don't remember being that scared. I think when you're young, you have less fear. You know less, so you have less fears about what could go wrong. And for me, I was just like, let's do this. I'm ready to experience a country on the opposite side of the world. Let's just go to Australia and see what happens. I never did any intensive research going into it. That was my first huge mistake. There was no Instagram, there was no social media, there was no TikTok to base things off of.

It was like, you Google things. That's the best you could do. So I just Google shit. I saw some nice beaches and I was like, all right, I'm in. Let's go to Australia. And I end up arranging this entire study of raw trip by myself. Keep in mind, I have never been really outside of the US.

Like I've gone on family vacations. I've done many trips. I've gone to Florida. I've gone to California. But I never did an international trip like this before in my life. So I'm just trying to plan everything completely on my own because I'm a stubborn fuck.

And I don't know why, but especially when I was younger, like when I was 19 and 20, I didn't want to listen to anyone ever. I never wanted to take anyone's help. I always wanted to do everything my way. I could always figure it out. I didn't need anyone's guidance. You get the point.

So my school offered a guidance counselor to help me plan this whole study abroad trip to Australia. And I was like, no, I'm good. I've got it. I've got it under control. I could figure it out. So I applied to this university called Litrope. Now, in my mind, I've already painted Melbourne in my head

as what I see on Google images. Okay, this dreamy version of New York, coffee shops, restaurants, bars, cool nightlife, you get the point. And that's what the city of Melbourne actually is. And I thought I had applied to college in the city of Melbourne. The same way a student who goes to NYU in New York is applying to be in the center of New York City, right? So I think I'm applying to this school in the middle of Melbourne. And I was super confident about it. I like had a whole itinerary planned. I booked my flights myself. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking, but I thought I was gonna get the real Melbourne Australian experience, but no.

I fucked everything up. I was so stubborn by not asking for help and it completely bit me in the ass. Latrobe is literally a school in the middle of fucking nowhere. And I found that out after I had already landed. And I was transported from the airport in Melbourne to a rural farm in the middle of nowhere with kangaroos hopping around and e-mooes, these giant walking birds walking everywhere. It was nuts.

And I had no idea what hit me. I felt like I was living in an alternative reality where I messed up my entire study abroad experience and I did. I completely fucked up. And even when I speak to Australian people now they're like, what the fuck is Bondora? That was the city where the school was. They're like, why were you there? What's Bondora? Why did you go to Littrobe? What's wrong with you?

I'm like, I have no idea how I ended up there. So although the university experience was not at all what I had thought I signed up for, I was fortunate enough that I did have the flexibility to travel to different parts of Australia, which I'm gonna count as the real solo travel experience. I literally went everywhere.

I went to Brisbane, I went to the Gold Coast, Canned Sydney, Byron Bay, I did the most. I did everything I could in my power to get out of Bundora, where my school was because I kid you not, it was so isolating and I was so isolating and I was so depressed. So any opportunity I had on the weekends,

I would fly out to different parts of Australia. I was really just trying to make the best of everything, but yeah, essentially, I messed up my entire study abroad experience. It's like the equivalent of someone applying to FIT, Fashion College in New York and expecting to be in the center of all the action. And then they accidentally apply to upstate New York school,

like Binghamton, where I went to college, where there's like a Walmart, a small strip of bars, and one movie theater, and you're like, damn, I better make some friends as soon as possible, or I'm gonna be really depressed here. So long story short, I ended up having the best time when I was outside of the university, when I was traveling through Australia. So when I was in the Gold Coast area, I stayed in a hostel and met a ton of people that

way, including this guy I started seeing briefly. He was from Germany. Then when I was in Sydney, I met a lot of friends there in Hostel's partying. And then when I was in Kansas, I stayed at another hostel. I think I met a group of guys there as well and a group of girls there. And we would just all go out together and have fun. And it was such an enriching experience to be able to have this freedom at such a young age and just learn more about myself and be in a new country and make mistakes and learn from

them, even though at times I remember feeling extremely anxious and stupid and discouraged because I didn't expect the study abroad experience to go the way that I had planned. I envision my life walking through the streets of Melbourne City living there. And it's very different when you live two and a half hours outside of a city. So it wasn't what I expected, but I was also forced outside of my comfort zone. And that's why I wanted to make today's episode about solo travel and pushing yourself far outside of your comfort and pushing yourself in a new direction where you could actually

grow and learn and embrace new experiences and not be afraid to fuck up and not be afraid to make mistakes along the way. I think a lot of people fear traveling alone because they're afraid of something bad happening. They're afraid of everything going wrong. They're afraid of being lonely and miserable in a new country and not being able to get themselves out of the situation or they're not gonna meet people.

And listen, everyone's experience solo traveling is gonna vary. Everyone's experience going to a new place solo is different. It could be so intimidating. It can be really a test of how well you're able to handle new situations and new experiences on your own. And for me, this whole experience was exactly that. And I put myself in the situation.

I did it to myself. I took full responsibility and accountability for that entire chapter of my life. It was a year of learning, and it was a year of growth and transformation, but it was also one of the hardest years of my teenage life. I missed my friends at school in New York. I wanted to turn back around and get on a plane and go home dozens of times, and I got

myself in sticky situations that I'm not entirely proud of, which maybe I'll mention, I guess I'll just say it right now because why not? Once I got more settled into my school at Latrobe in the middle of nowhere, there was not that much to do. So yes, I was traveling on the weekends to try to get out of there, but I still had to go to my classes.

So during the week, it would be brutal. It was definitely rough. So once I got more settled, I did meet a guy who lived in Melbourne. He was Turkish and we were pretty much dating for the majority of my time while I was at school and attending my classes. We didn't have any of the same classes,

but I met him because he worked at the coffee shop on my campus, and I'm laughing because looking back, I'm like, I don't even know if it was a real relationship or not, but it was just so intense. The connection was so intense. It was one of those situations where I don't even know if we were really dating or not, because I knew there was a time limit. I knew that I wasn't gonna live in Australia. I knew I wasn't gonna stay there, so I didn't wanna dive too deep into anything with anyone. But it was one of those situations

where we just ended up hanging out a lot on campus, and it turned into this whole situation where we were basically boyfriend, girlfriend, but just never verbalized it. And he used to smoke so many cigarettes. I think smoking cigarettes is a pretty common thing in Australia. And he would smoke like two packs of cigarettes a day. And eventually I started smoking cigarettes with him. Not every day, I wasn't like a smoker, but that was my first cigarette with him.

I had never smoked before that. I'm against smoking cigarettes. It's so bad for you, obviously. And please do not judge me. I'm judging myself right now as I'm talking, but I was in 19, okay. I was young and stupid and naive and I was in a different country. I was vulnerable. I had like study abroad goggles on where Everything didn't feel 100% real if that makes sense. Nothing felt

grounding, nothing felt normal. I was very outside of my element. So I made stupid fucking decisions and I ended up smoking. Apparently, you acquire a weird alter ego when you study abroad. I've heard from a lot of people they've had similar experiences where you're just in a new country. So you take on this like different persona and you're just not yourself. So take that information and you know, try not to judge me, but whatever. I'm judging myself because I just, I think it's, it's not a healthy habit to have. And if you do smoke cigarettes, I'm sorry, I'm not really judging you, but it's like, it's not healthy. And I'm sure if you do smoke cigarettes, you know that already. So this isn't new information. But anyways, that was my first real solo travel experience.

And it opened me up to a world of new possibilities. It opened me up to this idea that there is so much out there that we don't know about. There is so much out there. There are so many people in different places around the world living completely different lives from anything we've ever known. And what you're born into, the environment and the place that you're born into, is all that you know. So in order to really enrich your mind and expand your mind, sometimes stepping out of your comfort zone and going to a new place is really beneficial. Now, I know not everyone has the luxury to travel halfway around the world and take all these glamorous vacations.

I understand that, but I do think at some point in life, if you have the money and the time to invest in even just one trip, just one longer trip where you could take some time to really get to know yourself in an entirely new environment, it's worth every penny. And at this time, I wasn't making money. I was a college student. I didn't really have a job. I don't remember what I was doing, but I did not have a lot of money. That's all I know, at all. And I still was paying for everything that I could pay for for myself. So my parents did I could pay for for myself.

So my parents did help me pay for the study abroad experience. However, all the other expenses that came with it I was paying for and I did end up paying for all the expenses that came with my school in general for the four years of college. So I had to find ways to supplement my lifestyle and I remember I would sell all my shit on eBay. That was one way I acquired enough money to travel and do the things I wanted to do when I was much younger. So I was just desperate to get out of New York at the time, I guess. So I started selling everything I owned on eBay before I left for my study abroad trip. So that was how I got some money. I started solo traveling and it really just opened my brain up

to an entirely new lifestyle and new experience. Was it terrifying in the beginning? Was I anxious? Was I worried about the unknown? Of course. I was going through so many different emotions at the time. I remember just getting on the flight and shaking. I had like four huge pieces of luggage with me. I didn't know when I was going to come home. Everything was kind of moving so fast.

It was my first real big trip out of the country. And I remember once I even landed in Australia, my phone wasn't working. So I didn't have cell phone reception, and I couldn't get in touch with anyone. So I was asking people, physically running up to people and asking them for help on where to go, what bus to take, how to get to this hostel. I didn't know how to use a paper map, okay? I don't know how to follow a fucking paper map. Who knows how to use those? I mean, maybe back in the day, it was super common because you didn't have the cell phone, but I didn't know how to read a map, okay? I remember I was bugging out because I couldn't figure out what direction to go in.

I'm holding a fucking map in my hand and I'm like, this isn't going to work for me. So I just had to go up to people and ask them where to go. And that ended up working way better and a bunch of people guided me and helped me to where I needed to be. And then eventually I got settled in. Eventually I got to my school and everything was fine. However, it was intimidating. It was nerve-racking.

It forced me out of my comfort zone. It forced me to deal with new emotions that I had never experienced before. And it forced me to grow and level up and mature in a totally different way. And that's why when people DM me and ask, how do you solo travel, aren't you nervous, aren't you afraid? I had to train myself and train in condition my brain to not be afraid or to be less afraid, I will say. Cause sometimes I still get nervous.

Sometimes I still freak out a little bit if I'm going somewhere new that I haven't been and I don't know anyone, it's still nerve-wracking. It never goes away. That feeling of being a little bit nervous to get on a plane and go somewhere new never goes away, especially if you're completely by yourself. But you kind of have to train your brain to not be scared. You have to force yourself to do what feels scary. And I always think of life like a blank slate. We have the power to be anyone we want to be in this lifetime. We're more than just the person that other people identify us as.

When I was growing up, my parents, not intentionally at all, but they kind of sheltered me because they wanted me to stay close to home. They wanted me to get married and live on Long Island with the rest of my family. They wanted me to stay near them. And I never went on international vacations with my family. I never got on a plane often with, I didn't get on planes often with my family. We didn't do a lot of family vacations.

We did do some, but nothing that I could recall where I was like, oh, this is my first real memory of stepping outside of my comfort zone. I had to break the cycle of being so comforted in New York and force myself out of that in order to evolve as a person. And it wasn't easy because, you know, I had my parents also saying, oh my God, it could be dangerous.

Why are you going to Australia? Why do you have to go so far away? Can't you just do it everyone else is doing and go to Italy? And I was like, no, I want to do something that's going to push me outside of my comfort zone. There were good parts to it and there were bad parts to it. And either way, I don't regret the experience that I went through.

But tying this back into what I was just saying, we are more than just how people identify us. We can become whoever we actually want to be. And when you see past your own ego, it creates this mentality of unlimited possibilities and abundance for your soul. Energy is constantly changing. And you can switch up the energy in

your life and change the entire direction of your life by one small decision. We are so much more than our ego and the identity we've created for ourselves. And it's easy to say, you know, I'm a New Yorker, I live in New York, I was born and raised here. I could have given myself that narrative and stayed here and stayed comfortable and not done anything when I was 19. But I chose to leap outside of that box and take the risk. And even though it wasn't exactly what I had hoped for and envisioned as my experience, I still don't regret a thing because I think it was part of shaping me and who I am.

And the beauty of it all is by the end of that experience, not only did I make new friends and learn a lot and go through different relationships that taught me a lot about myself, but that is where I started my Instagram. So Instagram was extremely new at the time. No one was using the app. And there were a lot of days where I had nothing to do and I had a lot of free time on my hands in between classes. And I was isolated in the middle of fucking nowhere on a farm. So I decided to go all in with my Instagram

and I started posting recipes on there and I started posting fitness content. And that sparked an entirely new chapter of my career. So there was a lot of benefits to spending time alone, to learning more about myself, because I was able to start a new chapter of my work life, as well as get to know myself on a deeper level. I wrote this down in my notes this morning, because I wanted to share it on the podcast. You don't have to identify yourself as the person you were last year, last week, or even a minute ago. You have the power to decide who you are and who you get to become each and every day.

When we operate from a place of ego and purely our ego, it can instill negative feelings within us because we're taught to fear things as human beings. As the book, the greatest secret notes, we're afraid of bad things happening to us. We are afraid of illness. We're afraid of getting old. We're afraid of dying. We're afraid of losing things we have and not getting the things we want. Constantly, humans live in a state of lack, believing that there's not enough money, time, energy, love, health, or happiness. However, when we operate from a place of being a pure, free soul and we don't worry so much about our ego, we allow ourselves to let go of this idea of fear or anxiety

or caring what other people think. When we operate from a place of love and bliss and peace, and we trust that the universe is constantly here to provide for us and give us everything we've ever wanted, that's when magic starts to happen. We spend so much of our energy and time worrying about the future or making up this false perception of ourselves that we've created in our minds, instead of living in the present moment and embracing our soul as a spiritual energy that has

the ability to do whatever we want to be free and to be in a state of love at all times. We often trap ourselves from our ego because we're fearful of the unknown and we're fearful that if we make a decision, it's gonna be the wrong decision. And if we jump on that plane and go to a new country by ourselves, all hell's gonna break loose and we're gonna regret it

and we're gonna have the worst time or something terrible's gonna happen to us. These are all normal thoughts. However, I can say with certainty that nine times out of 10, I've never regretted jumping out of my comfort zone. Even though the beginning process of it all was terrifying, I've never actually said,

oh my god, why the fuck did I go there? Why did I do this? There have been moments for sure. I'm not going to say everything has always been smooth sailing, but I still have taken lessons and learning experiences even from the fuck ups, even from the mistakes while I was traveling solo. So that being said, after that entire first experience, being on my own in new country, it opened up a can of worms.

I don't know if that's the right expression. It opened up a door. It opened up a portal of new and incredible possibilities as far as travel was concerned for me because not a lot of people know this and this is the first time I'm really going to talk about it. But I was terrified to fly. I was terrified of airplanes. I was terrified of the entire process of flying and getting on the plane and hearing the people on the planes say, you know, in case of an emergency, you got to know how to blow up a life vest and jump off the plane. Like, it was my biggest fear, okay? You get the point. Not my thing.

So when it came to flying, I just avoided it at all costs. Up until my 20s, and being 19 and going to Australia, that was a huge flight. And I just tried to sleep as much as possible the whole way there. I was trying not to think about it the whole way there. And that was the first step of getting over my fear of flying.

And then once I got back and I got back home, I fell into my college routine again where I was studying, I was working at school, and I wasn't really traveling anymore until I graduated university. Then I met a guy who was the most adventurous person ever, and he was not afraid to fly at all, and he kept pushing me on trips

and pushing me out of my comfort zone, and I needed that so badly. I needed someone to shake me up and force me to do it. Because otherwise, I would have still probably never continued to travel. But yeah, I had this crazy, crazy anxiety every time I was up in the air. And especially with turbulence, I don't know, you get it.

A lot of people are afraid to fly. It's a very common fear. But for me, it was debilitating. And it prevented me from taking the leap of faith and going to new places and having new experiences. It was a huge block getting in the way of living my life. So once I move past these travel blocks, and I realize that life is short, and life is too beautiful beautiful and we should be able to live life without fear. That's when I really started to go all in with traveling. And there was a significant relationship that I had that I've mentioned before where I was traveling with my partner for a while,

my ex-boyfriend. We traveled together. I don't know why I just said my partner, but my ex-boyfriend. We traveled together. I don't know why I just said my partner, but my ex-boyfriend, okay, we traveled together for a few years and then there was a point where we broke up. And I had to learn how to be completely on my own again, like the time I was in Australia. So in my mid-twenties, I started making the most of my life by taking solo trips and when I went through my last breakup,

I knew that I needed to experience different places on my own in order to evolve and in order to break myself out of heartbreak and break myself out of loss and constantly getting in my head all the time and being anxious and not willing to take risks because I was trapped in a situation that was toxic and it sheltered me and it made me feel small and solo travel just really opened up this new version of myself that I never would have met otherwise. When you're constantly surrounded by people that are making you feel small or just making you feel confined to your environment, especially when you're in a toxic relationship and you feel like your growth isn't necessarily supported in the best ways, it's hard to break out of your shell.

It's hard to do new things. It's hard to just get up and go somewhere because you feel almost mentally and emotionally trapped. And it's kind of hard to verbalize unless you've experienced it before, but I've been in so many different situations where I would limit my life and limit the journeys that I would take myself on because I was with someone else and I was catering to someone else. And I realized that experiencing things on your own is a crucial part of not only self-development and learning how to love yourself and date yourself, but it just changes the game. It changes the course of your life. It makes you appreciate the beauty of life in general just so much more because

you open your perspective up every time you go somewhere new and you refresh your environment. Now, as I said, not everyone has the luxury to be able to just hop on a plane and go somewhere all the time, but that's why I always say try to take yourself out somewhere new, even if it's in your hometown, even if it's in the city that you grew up in. Try to just immerse yourself in something new to switch up your routine, just to give yourself a fresh perspective on something. If you've been doing the same thing on repeat for six months straight, just do something a little bit outside of your normal routine and watch what happens. It changes the chemistry of your brain. It changes your perspective. It makes you feel more alive.

It makes you feel more hungry to do new things. It's something you kind of have to train yourself to do. Now I don't know if this is appropriate for this episode, but I think it is. I am going to read you an excerpt from my book. I think solo traveling has also allowed me to embrace my inner child. I used to ice skate as a kid growing up and I would always get these like intense flashbacks of me ice skating whenever I was feeling really anxious or stuck or lost in my life, I always think of this one memory of me ice skating because it was a memory I was truly free and happy.

And it was a memory before I ever entertained the idea of a man. So you can understand why it would be a freeing happy memory because it was before I learned of the concept of getting into a relationship or having a boyfriend. And the idea of ice skating to me brings up all these happy memories. So whenever I feel kind of anxious or lost, I always think of that small child ice skating. And it might sound a little corny, but just remembering that version of me when I was free and I didn't allow the opinions of others to affect me, I didn't allow my fears to affect me, I didn't allow a man to affect me.

It's just liberating. And if you have any core memories like that from when you were a small child, try to replay those memories in your head when you're feeling anxious or you're feeling stuck or depressed or lost because that can spark new creativity in your brain and it can help your brain focus on the positive

and focus on happy things instead of getting sucked into a spiral of what's currently happening in your life. Every time I'm going through something difficult, I think of happy memories from my childhood. And it really does help. But anyways, I hadn't ice-skated in years. And I went on a trip to Finland a couple of years ago when I was 27 and there was an opportunity to go ice skating. And at first my initial reaction was no, I don't want to go ice skating, it's fucking cold outside. It's snowing outside and my hands are frozen and it's, I don't know, I was just making all these dumb, lame excuses

instead of being grateful and appreciative that I was even there. And I sat with myself in my hotel room for a few minutes, really thinking about my life and thinking about the person I was and how I was being so pessimistic and negative about such a beautiful opportunity and an experience and thinking of how there's so many people who would love to experience ice skating in Finland because how many people can say they've done that unless you're from Finland. And in that moment, I had to ask myself, what would my inner child tell me to do right now? Would she say, stay inside and mope around and be miserable because you're cold?

Or would she be free and excited and happy and grateful to go outside and play and ice skate? So I got myself up from my bed and I got dressed and I put on ice skates and I went outside and I started skating, listening to the sounds of the wind and just bringing myself back to those early childhood memories changed my brain fundamentally. I started envisioning a better life for myself. I was imagining all these wild things. There's some ice skating. I'm like, oh my God, I remember when I was younger and I was so happy and I was free and I was creative and I was playful. And I didn't let anyone tell me what to do and I didn't let anyone stop me from being happy. And now I'm 27 years old. I've had all this shit happen to me. I'm in a fight with my ex-boyfriend. I'm in toxic friendships.

I'm not happy with where my life is headed. And I just realized that I had all this garbage sitting in my brain for so long. And that is when I realized that going back to things you were doing when you were younger, when you were more free and happy, is the key to getting your adult self back on track. I realize that there's something so beautiful about releasing the negative energy that chains you and binds you to your current reality.

If you're currently going through a period where you feel stuck and you're an adult and you miss being free and happy as a child, go do something that a child would do. Go to an art class and paint. Go bowling. Go to a pottery class. Go to an animal shelter and play with some kittens. Do whatever it is your inner child would want to do. Ask yourself, what would my inner child want to do and do it?

Do the activity. I promise you, it'll make you feel amazing. You do not have to suffer any longer. That's something I learned from expanding my horizons and immersing myself in new experiences while solo traveling, even if I didn't want to do something, practicing gratitude and understanding that you're never gonna have the same moment again,

so you might as well make the most of it, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, even if you're in a bad mood, try to practice gratitude in those times. That's what I took from solo traveling because not everything is always gonna be perfect. As I said earlier in this episode, not everything is going to be perfect, smooth sailing, where you're going to be happy 100% of the time, even if you're on a trip, even if you're in

your dream destination. You're still a human being and you're still going to experience ups and downs because solo travel isn't there to completely get rid of every single thought that's going through your brain, but it could help you shift realities. It could help you shift your mindset. It could help you shift your brain chemistry. You can set your mind and your soul free with the power of thought and the power of changing your environment.

That's the beauty of solo travel to me. Is being able to switch up your environment, have a new experience, and allow that experience to teach you something and shape you into the person that you truly want to become, into a better version of yourself. You can choose to immerse yourself in a freer version of yourself. You can choose to immerse yourself in new creative energy and become more of a free spirit when you're in a new environment. And that was a core memory just being in Finland and ice skating and taking myself back to childhood memories. That fundamentally changed me. And I'll never forget it.

And Finland was such a special trip because, first of all, it's beautiful there. It's such a beautiful, beautiful country. And the air is fresh and the snow is just pure and it's just, it's truly remarkable. And it was one of those trips where I can't believe I even got to experience it. But that being said, I truly believe that I could have also had that experience anywhere if I had just allowed myself to. We often block ourselves off from feeling happy

when we're stuck in the same place for so long. And that's why I say, even just trying to change up your routine once in a while can really help. And it could shift your perspective and make you feel good. I had stayed stuck in repetitive toxic negative patterns in my brain for so long leading up to that trip in Finland, but when I was on the ice and I forced myself to put on ice skates and go, even though initially I had no intentions of doing so. I was connected to my inner child again. I remembered the five-year-old girl swiveling across the ice with my ice skates and laughing

because I was just having so much fun and I had no worries in my brain. I had no stresses in my mind about this guy that didn't want to be with me anymore, or all the work that I had stacked up. I wasn't worried about petty arguments, about toxic relationships, about the money I owed to someone, about the tests I failed on. All these things as an adult can creep up on you and weigh on you. So heavily. So when you try to connect to pieces of your inner child again and go back there, it can make everything feel light again. And solo travel has really taught me how to do that. Now, a recent solo travel experience I

went through was when I went through my breakup and I went to Tulum and I had a very spiritual healing experience there. I love Tulum and for those of you who haven't listened to the I did mushrooms in Mexico episode, I highly recommend you go listen to that if you are interested in learning more about to loom and the experience I had there because it was truly one of a kind and magical and it's not to promote drugs, it's not to promote mushrooms, it's not to say go do it. I've just taken a lot of learning lessons and life experiences and I've learned a lot through being in Tulum. And now it's becoming very touristy, not gonna lie, but back in the day Tulum was a very low key place that not a lot of people knew about and because of the rise of social media,

it became very trendy. So it is a little bit different now, but back in the day, it was a very, very spiritual and healing place. And I transformed time and time again being there. I've been there five times. And every time it was a new transformative experience. Sometimes I was with people and sometimes I was solo. But the last time I went there, I was solo. I was going through the hardest break up I ever went through and I was in the worst

pain of my entire life. And I met a group of people there that changed the course of my life that actually sparked this whole idea for the podcast where I met this girl, Diana, and she told me that she met this healer that changed her life and helped her with her anxiety and depression. So she gave me this woman's contact and I ended up doing this mushroom experience that fundamentally healed me in ways that I didn't know I need to be healed, healed my relationship with myself, but also helped me heal my relationship with women in particular. I think I've always had a lot of tension with women growing up in my life and partly was because I always had a man in my life.

I always had a boyfriend since the age of 14, so I never allowed myself the opportunity to be vulnerable with women. I only was vulnerable with men. And I also grew up a two older brother. So that played into it. And my relationship with my mom wasn't necessarily super emotionally intimate. It wasn't super close. So I always struggled with having female friendships. And this trip, in particular, changed everything for me, changed the whole course of my life and matured me in different ways and also opened me up to the idea of being vulnerable in front of women, even though I had had passed experiences with women that weren't positive, it cleared all of that out for me. So, I wouldn't be the woman I am today if I hadn't gone to Tulum alone that time.

And this isn't to say book a flight to Tulum right now and go because your experience is gonna be exactly what mine was, obviously you need to pick a place for you that you feel called to go to. I always tell everyone this because I get a lot of messages on my Instagram, where should I go solo travel? I don't know where to go. I don't know where I'm gonna feel safe.

First of all, you need to do your research, ask people that you know if you know someone has been to a certain place, ask them for help. I always ask people for their honest feedback and opinions on places. If I haven't been somewhere, I was thinking about going to Bali, I reach out to a ton of people on Instagram DM. I asked a few friends that I know that have lived there before. It doesn't hurt to ask people. And just a mixture of doing your research and being, you know, smart about it. And

also trusting where you feel called to go, trusting your intuition and where you actually feel called to go on a trip. I always felt called to go to Mexico and to Lumen particular. It's a very interesting place for me because I always feel like I transform when I'm there in some way, shape or form. And for those of you who are into astrology and believe in astrology because I do, there's a thing called astro-cartography where you could look at certain places on a map according to your birth chart and see what places are best for you to travel to. So for me, Talum actually runs through my chiroline and the chiroline symbolizes healing and transformation. And my Venus line is also there, which is all about love and relationships and beauty and feeling confident. So my Venus and my Kairan line run through Tulum

and it's a mixture of exactly what it describes. I don't know if it's coincidental, you could say it is, but I've had so many beautiful memories there mixed with a lot of pain and healing. And that's kind of what I was looking for at that time in my life or at those times in my life. Now, London, for me, because I just did a solo trip there recently and I'm planning on going back very soon. London runs through my Venus line and Venus is the plan of beauty and love and prosperity

and so many amazing things. It's a very positive influence. So when I'm in London, I have also had incredible memories and experiences there. However, no two people are the same. So I always tell people, trust your gut, trust your intuition, and if you feel compelled and called to go somewhere, that's your intuition speaking to you. So don't follow exactly where I went

and follow my itinerary because everyone's perception of a different place is going to be different and everyone's experience is going to be unique to them. So I never tell people where to go travel. I just say follow your heart, follow your gut and follow your intuition. And if you are interested in the whole astro cartography aspect of it, you can either ask someone to read your chart, you can Google people that read astro Cartography, go on Fiverr or something, I don't know.

Or you can go on this website called AstroClickTravel. And that's what I use, and type in your birth info and then tap on different cities. And you could see the information about each city and how it relates to your birth chart. So that's a good way and indicator of where you could travel to, where you might have a good positive experience. And with that being said, I think that concludes today's episode.

Thanks as always for listening to the podcast. Be sure to rate it on Apple and Spotify. And if you haven't already, be sure to follow me on Instagram, Atlas, or at date yourself instead, and send me a DM if you've been loving the podcast. And if you have any questions, you could always ask me on DM as well.

I love you. Thanks for listening as always. And stay tuned for next Monday.