When the Road Rearranges You
What travel removes — and what it reveals.
#41
I saved a post on Instagram recently because it captured something I’ve felt for years but never quite said so clearly.
It suggested that people sometimes change more through travel than through therapy.
Not because therapy doesn’t matter — it absolutely does — but because travel removes you from the structure of who you think you are. It strips away routine, roles, expectations. What some therapists call “identity pressure.”
When you’re far from home, you can hear yourself differently.
I know that’s been true for me.
It was during a week-long trip to Ireland in my early 20s that I realized my Master’s program in Clinical Nutrition wasn’t actually my dream — it was simply the next logical step. I left.
It was while away from my normal life that the quiet knowing about my twenty-year marriage finally became louder than my fear. I left that too.
And just two years ago, when I was downsized from my job three weeks into our six-month travel plan, I could have rushed back into another role immediately. Instead, I chose something riskier and truer: I stayed on the road. Tim and I traveled those months without the pressure of me jumping into the next “should.”
Each of those moments felt like a breakdown at the time.
Each became a breakthrough.
Travel doesn’t just change your scenery. It changes your perspective.
When you’re literally looking down at the earth from 30,000 feet, something shifts. Problems feel smaller. Options feel wider. You remember that your current circumstance is not the whole sky.
You are.
And here’s what I’ve come to understand — through travel and now through my new work — our thoughts shape our experience far more than we realize.
In this season, being part of a company that teaches the power of intentional thinking has stretched me in beautiful ways. The reminder is simple but profound: our thoughts create our feelings, which create our actions, which create our results.
Travel taught me that long before I had language for it.
When luggage went missing.
When the flies wouldn’t quit.
When I was exhausted from planning and figuring out yet another washing machine.
I could spiral. Or I could choose again.
Travel interrupted the mental loops I didn’t even know I was stuck in. It exposed the repetitive stories. It invited me to rewrite them.
That doesn’t mean ignoring reality. It means deciding where to place your energy.
There’s a phrase circulating in spiritual circles right now: “Go higher.”
For me, that doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine. It means choosing thoughts that create life instead of drain it. Choosing connection over outrage. Possibility over paralysis.
Tim is flying home to the States as this story is being released. I remember that exact feeling — being ready for your own bed, your own rhythm, your own ground again. I’ve been settled here just under a month, and I can feel how grounding that return is.
And yet — I can also feel the quiet tug of the next adventure.
It won’t be a long journey for a while. I want to devote real focus to this new chapter of work. So for now, the adventures look different. It’s finding charm in a historic town center. Listening to thunderstorms that remind me of my childhood from the comfort of my sofa. Celebrating with cheap caviar and crab dip from Whole Foods just because I can. Noticing how even small shifts in routine wake something up inside me.
Travel as the lens.
Life as the practice.
You don’t need a passport to interrupt your patterns. Sometimes it’s a new route on your morning walk. A lunch with someone you wouldn’t normally call. A decision you’ve been circling finally spoken out loud.
Travel accelerates growth.
But growth is available anywhere.
May you find the courage to step outside your familiar loop — whether that’s across an ocean or just across the street.
To the roads less traveled — at home or abroad.
To your highest and best,
Dianna
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