Lifestyle

How Travel Can Positively Change Both Your Life And The World

by Jorge Branco
Stocksy

In the past, I wrote about why you should choose your travel destination with purpose, and how I was embarking on a mission to help others do the same. I had no idea where my journey would bring me, but I trusted my gut to find the right path.

The year that followed resulted in a real-life dream, full of peak experiences and lasting relationships, all while building a platform for others to experience a taste of this dream life.

The 2014 highlight from that trip proves I lived the life and walked this path. I can verify that discovering epic adventures and helping improve others' lives will clarify and improve one's purpose and life goals.

Fate brought me to the Fiji Islands two weeks into my journey. I always thought of Fiji as this majestic paradise, and I felt an overwhelming desire to buy that $150 ticket, leaving from Sydney.

I lived like a surfer dude, a Fijian squatter, a jungle villager and all-around badass explorer. Not even an infestation of lice could stop me.

National Geographic would be proud. I was blessed with a unique, less-tracked path through the Fiji islands that was filled with epic surfing, waterfalls, sliding down natural waterslides and building bonds with villagers. My five-month experience with Fijian people and places provided me with the expertise and confidence to run the wildly successful World Travelers Association: Epic Fiji trip.

Having organized and completed a successful trip, I wanted to repeat the same process in another country. I learned from hanging around yachties that one could, with no experience, leave Fiji with some class.

I made friends with captains and my sails literally blew me toward Indonesia. Bali can be exactly like Julia Roberts experienced it in "Eat, Pray, Love."

You can replicate the combination of personal, professional and spiritual opportunities I encountered in Bali to grow in your own life. A special part of my four-month Bali life was volunteering at an orphanage.

Relating to the young kids, I built a trusted bond by speaking the language of the world: love. Playing soccer with those superstars was more fun than catching swell days on world-famous surf breaks, like the ones I had at Uluwatu. Leading by example rendered another successfully planned and executed trip: World Travelers Association: Bali.

World Travelers Association (WTA) is gaining momentum in providing unique, purposeful travel experiences, and providing opportunities to get more out of a vacation abroad. Balancing epic adventures and paying it forward to others provides the synergistic effect of improving pieces of our world.

It starts with ourselves and ripples to the people we meet now and in the future. The vision of traveling for purpose is for anyone embracing change to a meaningful existence.

A more interesting life that falls outside of one's comfort zone allows creativity and non-traditional ideas to flow without limitations.

Get out of the monotonous grind because it will not transform you into the badass who lives within all of us. Life is about going on more adventures, being around good energy, connecting with people, learning new things and growing.