Finding The Travel Molecule ~ Around The World In 80 Cruise Ships

Travel can alter perceptions and may even rewire your brain. Novelty and unique one-of-a-kind experiences raise dopamine levels, the chemical in your head that gives you optimism, curiosity and creativity.

This gift of pure attention is harder to achieve when your brain is ON French Fries--the default American mode, when your "chi" or energy is Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones.

State It Then Create It

Before you can take your path you must live it in thought.

My thought makes me travel and create archives of experience and expectation where I incinerate negativity and have a mindfulness of pure attention, without advice, without judgments-When I'm traveling, I am what I am right there and like some Starfleet Commander- I endorse Captain Kirk's recommended policy of non-interference with the internal development of alien civilizations. I must say, some of these places I visit, at least on the surface, look a bit like Mars.

Freedom is what you do to what has been done to you-even if what has been done is being born in America, the cultural equivalent of the geographically-desirable-places-to-live-on-the-planet lottery. So why squander your inheritance and live in The United States of Unconsciousness.

Wired Verses Tired-Grey Matters

The Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road but Neurons That Wire Together Fire Together and the best way to predict the future is to INVENT it. There is no absolute grid I live in where things occur independent of my own thinking about them. In the 70's The ME Generation was Old school selfishness--- I am the center of the world. That's tired. My New Wor(l)d Order says, I create the world...and more importantly my thoughts do too. Change your thoughts, change your world. That's Wired Thinking.

The 3 P's-Practice.Practice. Practice.

The hardest arithmetic I've had to master is the one which enables me to count my blessings. It requires a long apprenticeship (Think Gladwell's 10,000 Hours of practice rule or 10 years) Cruising around the world, provides a legitimate short cut for taking things with gratitude instead of for granted.

Despite the spectacular sceneries and itineraries. The universe is in our head,and not out there separate from us. In actuality, a world of our own making. We are co-creators of our world, and we can effect that world and the world of others, even at a distance.What the bleep? Read more HERE

The Persistence Of Norway

As the brain changes the mind changes, in practical terms each time you repeat a particular thought or action, and "use your marbles", you strengthen the connection between a set of brain cells or neurons.

Consequently, neurons that wire apart fire apart, and different thoughts create different pathways-.It has been over 60 days "vacation" from blue ocean cruising and the urge to sail remains. How do I explain this habit: Use it or lose it.

Traveling = f(dopamine flow); Money= happiness

"Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy travel and new experiences, which is kinda the same thing"

The need to break free and sail away is ancient, enduring and incessant. Voyages trigger a concept called psychological distance: Something about the experience of leaving your place creates a shock and awe, a pathway into a new perspective that floods the brain with ideas. For me, this shift in perspective starts as soon as I'm on a cruise ship . Ships are weirdly the most lucid part of my life. Every cruise I take somehow changes my life in some way.

"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea."-Karen Blixen (Out of Africa)

The actual cruise might be four days or a week, the anticipation of Norwegian Fjords cruise, for instance was months and the memory will probably last for years or forever. So, while I focus on the joy of the doing the cruise there is joy or anticipation and the joy of THE memory of it all the time.

Rudyard Kipling wrote "Milford Sound is the eighth wonder of the world.". National Geographic Traveler Magazine selected Norway as The Top Natural Tourist Attraction in the World. After visiting both, Norway in 2010, and New Zealand in 2011, I didn't need a second chance for 2012 SE Alaska Fjords to make a first impression--It has brought me back again to a place I have never been before...

I used to think working on cruise ships was bad, but I stopped thinking- I guess I have ship for brains!

You are HERE. Travel with ME...

The experiences at sea turned my can’t into cans and leveraged my Adventures (which was nothing more than bad planning) into serendipity a thousand unseen helping hands of allies, synchronicity, and the Michelangelo effect

I am adding The Panama Canal to this list

#9 I am adding:Alaska The Great Land-Action Plan to the list

1. Santorini, Greece

It only ends once-anything before that is just progress

Too much cruise ship? Quantity is its own kind of quality.

Go BIG or Go HOME

8. Honorable Mention-The Hawaiian Islands
1994-My First Ship -
A Rust Bucket- SS Constitution(a glorified ferry) with a lot of heart
known as "American Hawaii Cruises"

Around The World In 80 Cruise Ships

Wednesday, December 4, 2013