Are you standing in the way of living your dream life?

After 5 incredible months camping in the New Zealand bush, the summer sun disappeared, and the weather came in.
Have you ever been in a tent while it rained all night?
The pitter-patter on the roof is like a meditative trance.
The tent lived up to its waterproof claims!

Camping and trekking in the New Zealand wilderness is one of the safest places on Earth. There are no scary scorpions, no snakes, no poisonous spiders, no wolves, no bears, no crocodiles or other man-eating animals. The scariest thing out there is you!

It’s like that time in the Sahara Desert. It was the quietest and calmest place on Earth. All that space and lack of outside stimulation. It’s just you and the universe and your thoughts.
Oh and the epic panorama of sand dunes to guide you along your meditative trance.

Your mind is a powerful tool.

Your thoughts and attitude are crucial. And, the statement “You are what you think.” might be a cliche, but it is critical.

Nothing is stopping you from living the life you want.
There’s nothing to stop you from being the person you need to be and doing what you desire. Nothing except you! Are you going to stand in your way? Are you going to stand in your way of living your dream life?

We didn’t stand in the way of living our dream life. That is why we abandoned our jobs and threw away our excellent salaries in exchange for living in a tent when we are not travelling the world.

Old School Camping

We set up camp on a private block in the mountains on the West Coast, South Island, New Zealand. With our 2 bedroom tent, the cooler full of treats and majestic views all around us, we didn’t move far from the base. To say it was a digital detox is a bit far from the truth as the cameras were madly clicking. Further, 4 years ago when we came here, there was no mobile data connection available in this area. We were truly disconnected. Now as the whole world reaches closer to connectivity, we have unlimited data.
Social media is fun and fills our minds with ideas about places and things to do like no decade ever before.
But, the view of the bush, the sea and mountains penetrate us with thoughts and ideas about life and charges our soul with peace and serenity.

As we heat our bath water on the campfire, we puzzle over how some people in the world survive without running water. We wonder how some people in the world still have no power or light to switch on. We take for granted the trivial details like permanent power and tap water. And did you ever think about where your poo goes? Well, after digging holes all summer, we sure did.

But we are the blessed ones who have a solar panel and had the money to buy it.

It costs you money to get to work

We are also lucky we don’t need to go to work.
When you’re camping, you don’t have transport costs to get to work. You don’t need to spend money on coffee to kick-start your day, and the cafe lunch with your work peers. You don’t need to spend money on new clothes that you need so you can look good in an office full of well-dressed people. Never mind the expensive rents of living in a city where there is work.

It costs you money to get to work, and when you remove all these costs, you find you are not working for very much after all. Never mind you sold your soul 40 hours a week. Plus, the 10 hours it takes to get there and back. And the 10 hours it takes to get ready for work. On top of that, when you minus the 56 hours of sleep a week you find that there is nothing left in the week except for the weekend! This is not wrong or right, this is not judgement, this is just… Not how we wish to live our life!

Living with Passion

We want to live our life with passion. We want to do things we are passionate about. This is what will set you free. But yes, you have to work to survive.

And if there’s no Passion? We had no passion while working for ten years for someone else’s dreams. We got through these ten years by having a plan. A plan we executed. We saved frantically for the future life we envisioned. The world we choose to live in where we explore and discover our thoughts, our wishes and passions.

This is what we love about travel. There is time for YOU! And time for you to think about yourself and what you want. Time to think about living your dream life!
We’re not talking about the 2-week holiday you take every year. You first need time to recover from the 48 weeks of work. You need time to rest and relax. On a 2-week holiday, you are usually too busy discovering fascinating new places and Living!

This is why we came to New Zealand and why we chose to live in a tent for five months. After exploring the world around us, we now find time to contemplate ourselves and our passions. It is liberating to be able to do this. Not worrying about going to work, about getting a paycheck, about anything except for living in the moment and exploring a world of possibilities.
Hope you get the opportunity to do this.
It is your choice to live how you want to live your life.
Make a choice, don’t let it be made for you.

Make sure that you’re living your dream life!

“Look at the people who live to retire; to put those savings away.
And then when they’re 65 they don’t have any energy left, they’re more or less impotent.
And they go and rot in an old people, senior citizens community.
Because we simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line.
We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at that end, and the thing was to get to that thing at that end.
Success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead.
But we missed the point the whole way along.
It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.”

Life is NOT a Journey – Alan Watts.

Thanks for reading “Are you standing in the way of living your dream life?”
May this year be the best yet.
May it be full of Love, Peace, and Happiness.
And may you be blessed with a life full of travels and adventures.

Are you standing in the way of living your dream life?”
Travel Bugs World