Blog

Travel is a dream for many people. A dream that they delay because of fear. Financial fears, safety fears, and languages barrier fears tend to be the biggest hurdles for aspiring travelers, so in this article, we’ll discuss some actionable steps on how to overcome the fear of travel. These tips will help you stop delaying and start exploring sooner rather than later.

By putting in a little work and completing the downloadable worksheet at the end of this blog, you’ll be ready for your first trip in just a couple of months. So let’s dive in with the first step!

Step #1: Define Your Fear

I’ve talking to several people about starting long-term travel, and quite of few of them have expressed fears about starting their journey. Interestingly enough though, each person has a different fear.

Some had financial fears and were worried about going through all their savings and not being in a good place financially after their travels.  

Some had fears about safety. They are worried about theft, illness, accidents, and even kidnappings! Yikes!

Some are worried about the language barrier and really don’t want to have any lost and translations moments.

It is important to clearly define and narrow the scope of your travel fears, because you can’t address your fears correctly if they are not clearly defined.  

Remember that fear is not necessarily a bad thing. Fear is a useful tool for alerting us to issues that may legitimacy need our concern.  However, it’s important to not go in circles worrying about your fears, you need to do something about them. You need to answer them.  

Step #2: Answer Your Fear

When you answer your fears, you are simply coming up with a reasonable solution for your fear. This solution will help you work through your fear so that it is no longer a block.

How to Overcome Financial Fears

If you are constantly worried about having enough money to travel, then you should answer that fear with your plan to save, to downsize, to budget, and earn extra income for travel. Living your dream of travel doesn’t just happen. It does take some intensive planning, but the effort is worth it because your planning will lead to the trip of a lifetime.

To conquer your financial fears, determine how much money you will need. Will you be gone for two weeks? Will you be gone a year? Make your weekly/monthly budget accordingly. Once you know how much you will need per week or per month. You will know exactly how much you will need to save to get there.  

Saving up for long-term travel where you will have to quit your job can indeed be scary. The good thing is that jobs are plentiful right now so use that to your advantage. You can look for a higher-paying job so you can save faster, or you can look for a second job to increase your income. You can also look for short-term contract work. The benefit about short contracts is they typically pay more and they have built-in time off so you can travel immediately after the contract is over.

The abundance of jobs also means that it will be easy to find another job once you return from your long-term travels. Just remember you can always get another job, but you may not always get another year.  Time is not renewable.  Money is.  So always value your time much more than your job.  

How to Overcome Safety Fears

If you are worried about safety then research the top 10 safest countries in the world and start your travels there.

Each year the Institute of Economics and Peace creates the Global Peace Index. Their research ranks 163 independent nations based upon crime, domestic disturbances, and terrorism. On the Global Peace index, my home country of the United States of America, ranks 122. That means that there are 121 countries that are more peaceful than the U.S. Therefore, statistically, I’m safer when I’ll traveling than when I’m at home. I know that every nationality can’t say the same. I mean if you live in Iceland the most peaceful country in the world it might be hard to use this list for travel inspiration. However, for me, this list makes me feel much safer and much more at home in the world.    

So, I really encourage you to look at comparative studies like the Global Peace Index here. It really is a tremendous and objective resource for seeing how safe and how peaceful your chosen destination is.

How to Overcome Language Barrier Fears

If you are worried about the language barrier then your short-term solution could be to learn how to use Google Translate so I can use it whenever needed to communicate with locals or to translate signs and packaging.  Your long-term solution could be to learn the language.  Lost in translation moments do regularly happen to us, but I must admit, it’s not as big of a problem as I thought it would be. The things I need to get done, all get done despite the language barrier. So, please don’t let a language barrier hold you back from traveling. It’s really not as big of an issue as you think!

No matter which fear you have though, answering your fears is essential because without clear solutions, you are creating a block. Your brain will continue to worry again and again until you answer its concerns, so go ahead.  Define your fear and answer it! 

While answering your fears may not silence them completely, your answer will significantly reduce your worries. Every time the fear arises is your mind, use that answer to bring you a bit of comfort and to decrease your anxiety about travel. In this way, you can move forward and take the next steps.  

Visualize Your Travel Goals

Balance is key, so now we just dealt with the negativity of our fears.  Now, we need to spend a equal amount of time with the positive side, our travel dreams.  So I want you to dream big! 

Make a list of places you want to go and things you want to experience if fear was not holding you back.  Imagine how great it will feel when you finally see the pyramids of Giza, when you finally take that hot air ballroom ride in Cappadocia, or when you finally go scuba diving in Thailand. 

How does imagining yourself in these amazing locations make you feel?  Is it exciting?  Is it inspiring?  Live with the inspiration for a while.  You will need it for your next steps.

Now, we may have visualized big, but as a general rule, we want to start small and build like a snowball until we have an avalanche of confidence and feel comfortable going any and everywhere.  

Plan a short trip for your next big holiday weekend.  There’s usually a holiday weekend every 2 to 3 months, so don’t delay.  Start planning it today.  You can plan a domestic trip if you still have a lot of anxiety about travel or you can plan a trip to a neighboring country if you want to really challenge yourself. 

The trip can be short, just 3-5 days for adventures, and it’s not necessary to include friends and family on this journey either as this is just an exercise for building your confidence.

Start planning this trip on paper first.  Where do you want to go?  What do you want to experience?

I caution you on one thing though.  Don’t get stuck trying to choose the perfect destination.  There is no such thing as a perfect destination, and many people create unnecessary blocks trying to pick the perfect place.  It doesn’t matter where you start traveling, it just matters that you start.

Once you pick a destination, use resources like Trip Advisor and travel blogs to research the attractions that you want to see. Research the type of hotel you would stay at. Will you choose the budget friendly options or the high-end one?  Write down the cost of the flights, the hotels, the attractions, and the restaurants you plan to eat at. Also verify if there are any travel restrictions that you need to be aware of.

Once you have all the facts written in front of you, it’s easier to say yes to an experience.  It’s easier to request time off of work.  It’s easier to book that plane ticket and hotel room.  Knowledge gives you power.  Your research and preparation are the keys to answering and overcoming those fears.  It will also get you so excited that it will be easy to take the small but powerful first steps. 

Taking a Tour

Tours are another way to start small.  Sometimes the act of planning a trip can be overwhelming to some people as it is a lot of moving pieces to consider. However, when you book a tour the majority of the planning is done for you.  You just have to show up and your local guide will take care of the rest. 

Tours are a great way to see a lot very quickly, and you don’t have to worry about traveling alone because you will have a whole bus of people to travel with.  I’ve taken tours through China, Italy, Thailand, and Greece with Gate 1 Travel, and have had an excellent experience every time.  

During these tours, you will learn so much from your tour guide, and your tour guide will be a great resource for making you will safe and comfortable in a foreign land. Soak up as much knowledge as you can from your tour guide, both about your destination and about trip planning. Learn from how tour companies structure trips so one day you will be able to replicate that structure as well.

Taking tours really built my confidence as a traveler. After taking a few tours, I felt confident that I could plan a trip by myself.

As a general rule, I feel very comfortable traveling without a tour now, but there are still some countries that I don’t feel comfortable traveling in independently.  We really want to see India and Egypt but don’t feel comfortable going alone, so I will probably book a tour for those countries. So even though I still have some fears about going to certain places, I’ve answered my fear with a solution of taking a tour.  I’m sure once I take a tour, I will feel comfortable going back to these countries independently.  

Independent Travel

After you’ve done your short trip and taken a tour, you will have all the confidence you need to travel independently for a week or two.  Plan a one to two-week journey through Europe and see how you like it.

Once you successfully navigate Europe continue to challenge yourself with independent travel through South East Asia, or through Latin America.

Remember that courage is not something you are born with. It’s a muscle that you build slowly with small trips, with tours, and then with independent travel.  As you travel you will see that it really isn’t as scary as you thought it would be.  And you will feel comfortable taking that next step and planning longer and longer trips.  

Preparing for Long-Term Travel

Now, some people are okay with short one or two-week trips, but they are scared to take the plunge and travel long-term.  Traveling long-term involves a big commitment.  When you travel for years at a time, you need to quit your job, sell your house, your car, and tell your family goodbye for while.

But don’t get so stuck focusing on what you will lose that you are not thinking about what you will gain.  You gain invaluable experiences that will help you become more adaptable and help you think outside the box.  You’ll gain knowledge about countries and cultures different than your own.  You will learn to adapt in any situation.  You will get your time and freedom back.  You can go where you want when you want.  You will have less stress and find peace. 

If you are called to long-term travel.  Listen to that call!  Remember that not everyone has the calling to travel. Millions of people have never and will never travel internationally because that’s not their calling.  But if your calling is different, don’t deny your calling. Honor it by following through.

Plus, know that travel is not permanent.  Even for me, I want to travel for a few years, but my real goal is to find a country where I want to relocate permanently.  So this is just a 2-3 year venture for me.  I know I will eventually have a house again and all those things that symbolize stability.  But know that I feel stable right now living out of a suitcase and changing Airbnb’s every week.

Stability is an internal affair, not an external one. The so-called stability that most people think about is your job, your house, your commute, and your exhaustion at the end of the day is just a routine that you are comfortable with. The thing is you can get comfortable with any routine of your choosing.  It does not have to be a traditional one.  You do not have to live the pattern everyone else lives to have stability.  

I look at my traveling years as if I’m going off to university.  Think of how much time and money people sacrifice for getting a degree.  They uproot their life for 2-7 years to learn and grow into who they want to be.  Well, that’s exactly what you are doing when you decide to travel long-term. You are spending my time and money giving yourself a self-guided, self-taught degree in international living. 

Meditation

I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t mention meditation.  Adding meditation to my life and learning about mindful living really helped me to break through my fears, listen to my calling, and take the leap of faith into long-term travel.  My biggest fears were always financial fears of not having enough money to travel.  Meditation helped me realized that I already had enough and that I could afford to travel if I really wanted to.  I started going to a meditation group and reading books about meditation that were invaluable for helping me reduce my fears and anxiety.  If you want to learn more about how meditation changed my life then please check out the full article here!   

Final Thoughts on How to Overcome the Fear of Travel

Just like you can talk yourself out of something, I believe that you can talk yourself into something as well. Why not use the power of self-talk to overcome that fear of travel and do what you always wanted. Answer all your fears and don’t let them be a block to you any longer. The whole world is open to you, and there’s no better feeling than to walk off an airplane into a whole new world and a whole new way of life.  It’s a privilege that you shouldn’t deny yourself any longer.

Want more travel inspiration? Check out more of our great articles!

• 10 Things Travel Teaches You
• How to Pack a Suitcase
• The Ulitmate Guide to Working Abroad