FInding The Travel Molecule
You Are HERE. Travel With ME.
Travel can alter perceptions—and may even rewire your brain. Novelty turns attention back on.
The Gift of Pure Attention
Novelty, movement and one-of-a-kind experiences create optimism, curiosity and creativity. The road changes the view—and sometimes the viewer.
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 associated here with 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 find a mindfulness of pure attention—without advice, without judgments.
When I’m traveling, I am what I am right there. 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 winning the geographically-desirable-places-to-live-on-the-planet lottery. So why squander your inheritance and live in the United States of Unconsciousness?
Wired Versus Tired
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 independently of my own thinking about them. In the 1970s, the ME Generation was old-school selfishness: I am the centre 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 Three Ps: Practice. Practice. Practice.
The hardest arithmetic I’ve had to master is the one that enables me to count my blessings. It requires a long apprenticeship—think Gladwell’s 10,000 Hours practice rule, or ten years.
Cruising around the world provides a legitimate shortcut for taking things with gratitude instead of for granted.
Despite the spectacular scenery and itineraries, the universe is in our head—not out there, separate from us. In actuality, it is a world of our own making. We are co-creators of our world, and we can affect that world and the world of others, even at a distance. What the bleep? Read more here.
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 more than 60 days’ “vacation” from blue-ocean cruising, and the urge to sail remains. How do I explain this habit? Use it or lose it.
Psychological Distance
Ships are weirdly the most lucid part of my life. Every cruise I take changes my life in some way.
The need to break free and sail away is ancient, enduring and incessant. Voyages trigger a concept called psychological distance. Something about leaving your place creates shock and awe—a pathway into a new perspective that floods the brain with ideas.
For me, this shift 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.
“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 a Norwegian Fjords cruise, for instance, lasted months, and the memory will probably last for years—or forever.
So while I focus on the joy of doing the cruise, there is also the joy of anticipation and the joy of the memory of it all the time.
Rudyard Kipling wrote that 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 Norway in 2010 and New Zealand in 2011, I didn’t need a second chance for the 2012 Southeast Alaska Fjords to make a first impression. It brought me back again to a place I had never been before.
I used to think working on cruise ships was bad, but I stopped thinking. I guess I have ship for brains.
The Experiences at Sea
They turned my can’ts into cans and leveraged my adventures—which were nothing more than bad planning—into serendipity.
The experiences at sea turned my can’ts into cans and leveraged my adventures—which were nothing more than bad planning—into serendipity: a thousand unseen helping hands of allies, synchronicity and the Michelangelo effect.
Alaska: The Great Land
An action plan written in ice, weather and scale.
Open Alaska StoryPlaces That Changed the Wiring
Seven destinations, one world cruise and a first ship with a lot of heart.
The Ship Is the Destination
The Oasis of the Seas. Remarkable. Too much cruise ship? Quantity is its own kind of quality.
Game changer: the ship is the destination. Remarkable. This 225,282-ton, 5,400-passenger colossus cost Royal Caribbean $1.4 billion.
It only ends once—anything before that is just progress.
The Hawaiian Islands
1994. My first ship. A rust bucket—a glorified ferry—with a lot of heart.
My first ship was the SS Constitution: a rust bucket—a glorified ferry—with a lot of heart, known as American Hawaii Cruises.
Travel Is a Long Memory
The voyage may last four days. The anticipation may last months. The memory may last forever. The ship moves through water; the experience keeps moving through the mind.