Visualizing Your Way to Travel?

I subscribe to the belief that meditation is helpful to reduce stress, clarify goals, and become more comfortable in your own skin. When I do it for just a few minutes a day, I feel more centered and content. However, I also get lazy or busy or prefer distracting myself by spending more time trying to figure out who is part of the Oceanic Six on LOST than I do on the art of meditation.

However, I recently decided to start making a list of certain goals I would like to meet, including personal fulfillment. I then started visualizing some of these goals and how they would make me feel. Well, some of you may know I live below an elderly couple and their 40-something year old daughter. They spend their days fighting, screaming, and stomping around from the time they wake up until bed. It's worse than living below college kids. We haven't moved because we like our space and are both gone frequently and occasionally we get waves of silent relief.

In any case, I put the word 'Quiet' on my list and imagined how peaceful it would be to not have obtrusive neighbors. I had also been thinking about an anniversary trip with my husband come April. For the last 2 years, we've been able to go abroad to Rome, Venice, Edinburgh, and Dublin. But this year travel wasn't looking possible due to time constraints, general budget, and the fact that we have a wedding in Scotland to attend in the Fall. We had discussed returning to Montreal because of its close proximity to New York and our newfound love for the city. However, we haven't been able to motivate ourselves to move forward on plans due to our busy schedules as of late.

So a few interesting things happened this week. The elderly couple upstairs? Gone. No idea where they are and when they're coming back, but I've only heard their daughter make a brief ruckus when returning home. It's been absolutely and completely silent. In the past, we've gotten brief waves of relative quiet when they're watching a movie (with the noise bleeding through our ceiling) or are too tired to argue. But it's never been so still and serene in the nearly 3 years we've lived in this apartment. I've also discovered that I no longer want the TV on morning, noon, and night to distract myself from their noise and negativity. I've been enjoying days of peace and quiet, reading, blogging, and catching up on freelance projects.

My stress has dissipated, I've been more content, and arrived at work yesterday feeling refreshed. At the end of the day, my editor approached me and asked if I wanted to take a short press trip to Montreal and that she could probably arrange for my husband to tag along. The dates? Our anniversary weekend.

In addition, I'd recently been wishing I had more return visitors to my site. I use a stat counter that allows me to view the number of returns. Instead of lamenting my fate, I started visualizing waking up and seeing the 'return visitors' number growing every day. Yesterday I woke up and my returns had grown 5-folds.

I suppose anyone could argue that my neighbors will return any day now with a vengeance and that it's not unusual for a travel writer to get a travel assignment. Not to mention I do take the time to submit comments on blogs I enjoy with this url and submit to blog carnivals. Inevitably, I'd have to gain some return visitors along the way. All very true. But just because I'm visualizing it doesn't mean I think that sitting around all day and not taking actions will put my goals into motion. My thought is that I'm opening myself up to new ways of making those goals become reality. So regardless of why it's all happening, it's happening shortly after I visualize it, making me content and deliciously curious.

I'm going to keep travel on the forefront of my imagination.

Meditating for Beginners

• Find a quiet space
• Keep your back straight to avoid become sluggish or sleepy (you can sit in a chair if you like)
• Keep your eyes partially closed and focus on your breathing
• Breath through your nose and feel the sensation of it, listen to the sound of it, continue to let your mind let go of distractions
• When your mind does wander, simply return your focus to your breathing
• Continue meditating for at least 5 minutes a day, working your way up to at least 15 minutes or more

Visualization for Beginners

Visualization is an important tool in getting your mind to line up with what you truly want. When you visualize your life and actions in motion, you'll automatically start moving towards your goals with ease. You might even consider that the Universe is answering the call. Regardless of what you believe, it's a fact athletes, successful business people, etc. use visualization to achieve their goals.

• Start meditating for 5-15 mintues a day
• Write down your goals in a list and look over the list every day
• Think about your life in motion, achieving those goals
• Don't yearn for your goals as if they'll never happen or are torturing you. You'll end up believing it and putting those actions in motion.
• Think about how you'll feel by achieving your goals
• Imagine that you've already realized those goals
• Do not allow others doubt, or your own self-doubt, to distract you
• Do not get caught up in the how of those goals happening, trust that you will begin to see ideas and answers everywhere you turn

Check out this story about visualization and travel:

How to Slow Down in Life and Enjoy Travel

In my former life just a short year ago, I was a video editor. I worked on a few great films, some corporate videos, and on a lot of commercials. And I mean a lot. If I had to guess, I'd say upwards of 500. During this time, I enjoyed the seduction of technology. Of digitizing in footage, getting my hands dirty, and picking apart a story; or even better, creating one that wasn't even there through the manipulation of images and dialogue. I realized at some point that I was truly a workaholic and never said no to a job, outrageous client requests, abusive bosses, or overtime. A year and a half later, I went freelance and started working non-stop, fearing I wouldn't land that next job.

Video editing commercials is hard work. Advertising agencies don't just shoot a commercial and send it to air. It generally takes 2 weeks to 2 months to edit 1 commercial, get the audio mixed, color correct the footage, and make revisions. While it's true there are creative directors and copy writers to storyboard the commercial and come up with a genius plan of how it should look, paper rarely translates to video the way anyone hopes. Not to mention the client, say Sprint or Citibank, will often have a very specific agenda and want their spot to look a certain way, regardless of if their vision is practical or will fit into the :30 seconds allowed. In turn, the editor spends painful hours trying to make something out of nothing. Politics abound in advertising and you spend much of your time putting out fires and rushing to make deadlines. More often than not, your ego takes a tremendous blow on a weekly basis.

During my tenure, I regularly worked 9:30am to about 8:30pm nearly every night. This was a short day and meant I would get home before 10pm. I would work overtime at least once a week, but usually more. I would usually find myself in the edit suite at 12am or even 2am. I also pulled a few 32 hour shifts and 14 straight days in a row. I got paid tons of money during this time and rarely enjoyed any of it. Luckily (or unluckily) the editing companies would feed us breakfast, lunch, and dinner for free, but it also meant we never saw the light of day for 12 or more hours a day. I couldn't schedule anything with friends or my husband because I never knew when I'd be working. And when big accounts and deadlines for air are involved, you don't say no. I wound up stressed out, messing up on the job, sleep deprived, and abused myself by gorging on large lunches, desserts, and evening cocktails. I lived to go on abbreviated vacations in between jobs, only to start the cycle over again.

I became a video editor because I enjoyed telling a story and despite the fact that I had been writing stories since I was in the 4th grade, I didn't see how it would ever become a viable career and was rejected at every corner. However, by my 6th year in video editing, I couldn't deny that I was miserable, depressed, stressed-out, exhausted, and longing to write. I could never get my foot into the publishing world and started believing my talent was useless and that it wasn't in my cards.

I had hit upon a few small projects over the years. I had written 2 segments for a show on The Discovery Channel that I was also video editing and managed to land a few tedious copy writing jobs. One night, while my husband and I were watching television, I saw a commercial for kayak.com. I'm not sure why, but I got up from the couch, went to our computer and began writing an email. I let the PR person for kayak know why I should write newsletters for them and all the brilliance I could offer their company. My words were passionate and direct.

The next day, I got an email back letting me know they didn't use freelance writers. My heart sank. Briefly. However, this person happened to be going on maternity leave and wondered if I would pitch 20 ideas, of which 10 she would assign. I feverishly wrote in the late night hours after video editing and was assigned 10 more. Over the years, I've probably written over 100 for their company.

Writing for both kayak.com and The Discovery Channel led to writing for a kids' website and then ultimately freelance writing and editing at a family travel site. I eagerly abandoned the last of my video editing jobs, dove in and began the tedious process of updating thousands of articles. Every day I was afraid they'd no longer need my services and would let me go, only to return to advertising. I worked hard, and with passion, gradually working my way into writing news and deals pieces.Four months after I started, the editor sent me on my first press trip.

Since then, I let the preconceived notions of what having a good work ethic really means (not being a work-a-holic) and allowed my self-worth issues of being a writer fade away. I took control of my true goals and happiness and currently refuse to settle for a life of insincerity. Of ingenuineness. Of accepting that my spirit is troubled and ignoring it anyway.

Curiously, I now find that travel happens easily and naturally in my life, with or without money. If I'm longing for a break, a press trip comes my way. If my husband and I are feeling burned out, we find a way to finance a vacation by stumbling upon an amazing deal or thinking outside the box. If we're worried about him getting time off, a creative way to do so reveals itself.

Travel in and of itself is an evolution. You go somewhere else where your life seems to instantly transform for a short period of time. You become someone else, or a better version of yourself, and maneuver your days with renewed confidence. You come back with stories and knowledge and insight you didn't have before you left. And that experience tends to kick-start a desire to explore those transformations further in your real life. It's worth slowing down in life and giving yourself a chance to see the world from a new perspective.

Take it from someone who once spent 3 hours trying to edit a commercial while a client sobbed herself to sleep over a bad conference call, then asked my advice on how to get fired. I looked out the window to the bustling work-a-holics in Manhattan below, and wondered where I'd get to travel next.

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Travel Alert - Art Vacations

From edVenture, New Brunswick

Atlantic Canada's Riverfront Capital is set to become one of Canada's leading centres for vacation learning in craft and culture with the launch today of edVentures Fredericton, an innovative new program developed by Fredericton Tourism and it's cultural sector partners.

The edVentures Fredericton program, which will run from July 7 to August 22 in 2008, will be Atlantic Canada's largest vacation learning program.

More than 60 New Brunswick artists, like Trudy Gallagher, William Forrestall, Brigitte Clavette, Peter Thomas, Deanna Musgrave and Doris Norman, will teach five-day weekday, along with one-day and two-day workshops

The new program, developed in large part by Fredericton special projects consultant Nancy Lockerbie, features some of New Brunswick's best-known artists, offering more than 140 workshops in craft and culture. Courses range from pottery and jewellery making to rug hooking and digital photography. For a full list of workshops, visit the website.

"edVentures demonstrates in living colour what a vibrant, cultural City we have. We've got so many talented, creative people in our community and we're already known as a learning centre. By combining the strengths of our cultural sector and our tourism industry, we've created something truly exceptional," said Mayor Brad Woodside.

"This is among the most significant cultural programs launched in New Brunswick in the last decade or two. It 's going to be good for the arts community, good for the City and good for the economy," says Woodside.

The Province of New Brunswick is contributing $10,000 towards the edVentures program. Entreprise Fredericton is contributing $5000.

Partners in the new program include Fredericton Tourism, the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the University of New Brunswick Kings Landing Historical Settlement, the Charlotte Street Arts Centre and the Historic Garrison District.

The College of Craft and Design will offer more than 50 edVentures workshops this summer.

"The College is already a leader in craft education with its winter academic programs. We're excited to partner with Fredericton Tourism on edVentures. It allows us to offer a summer program with the same talent base of exceptional instructors," says NBCCD Principal Michael Maynard.

edVentures workshops will take place at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, Kings Landing, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and the Charlotte Street Arts Centre.

Fredericton Tourism has negotiated exclusive accommodations rates for out of town participants.

"The idea behind edVentures Fredericton is to combine an exceptional learning experience with the rich program of cultural and entertainment offerings the City has each summer and facilitate real connections to our community. We think we've developed something truly exceptional," says David Seabrook, manager of Fredericton Tourism.

When EdVentures participants aren't in workshops, they can take in summer concerts, festivals, outdoor films, heritage walking tours, haunted hikes wine-tastings, gallery tours and cultural lectures. Exercise enthusiasts can join local residents for free Tai Chi, yoga, group runs and walks, along with biking tours along the City's 82-kilometre riverside trail network.

To register for an edVentures program, call Fredericton Tourism at 460-2233 or go online at www.edventures.ca.