Why We Travel To Transform
What Cerené is really packing in our suitcase
Most people don’t expect their life to shift on a sand dune halfway across the world.
Or at the top of a mountain pass, sweat-soaked and surrounded by strangers.
But when you’re with us, it happens.
Not because the food is delicious (though it is). Not because the landscape is cinematic (though it is). And not because yoga in the desert will suddenly unlock the meaning of life (we make no promises).
It happens because at Cerené, travel is a method. A portal into a life we wouldn’t have imagined to be possible within the confines of the lives we’ve built around us, and sometimes, hide behind.
Comfort or Cage?
At some stage of our lives, we’ve all taken to excel and time-blocked our weekly routine with a color-coded spreadsheet.
What to eat for dinner on Tuesday?
Addendum A, page 2.
As much as we’re a fan of building habits and systems that support the organization and operation of our lives, somewhere along the line, autopilot kicks in and we live life for the next ten to twenty years from the same script.
For some, this is perfectly adequate. For others? We wake up one morning and realize we’re fluent in a life that doesn’t quite feel as though we’ve explored all there is to explore.
Being good at who we’ve been may have generated success, but it doesn’t give us access to what else might be possible, beyond what we already know to be true about ourselves and what we can accomplish.
Some call it a mid-life crisis. We consider it a signal.
And we’ve learned that the fastest way to decode that signal is to get people out of their existing context - into unfamiliar, enlivening territory - where new questions can arise.
Context as a Catalyst
Where we are shapes how we think…
Who we surround ourselves with and what we expose ourselves to influences who we become and what we believe is possible. We are who we are because of the contexts we find ourselves in and create.
When we’re standing in a 1,000-year-old kasbah or walking across a desert that doesn’t care about our email backlog or our nine-step morning routine, suddenly, we expand our world to 4:00 AM wake-up calls that don’t only involve worrying about our next big pitch or presentation, but to watch the sunrise over expansive dunes to listen to the world waking up to itself - both possibilities exist.
And when that happens, we begin to see what might be available, beyond the version of our lives that has operated on autopilot up to now.
This Is Not an Escape. It’s an Encounter.
Now, don’t make the mistake of thinking the lives we currently live need fixing…
On the contrary, many humans live perfectly comfortably - we have friends, family, success and stability.
We do not travel to retreat from what we know.
We travel to accelerate. To provoke insight. To shake loose the limitations that make perfect sense in our current world but don’t belong in our next one.
We create Experiences that challenge the structures we’ve outgrown. And we do it surrounded by people who are also ready to meet themselves in a new way. Not to abandon who they’ve been, but to access what’s either been dormant and underutilized or something entirely new.
Yes, we climb mountains. Yes, we move our bodies. But not because we’re trying to push people through something. Because when our body moves, our mind follows. And when the terrain shifts under our feet, we find new footing in the rest of our lives.
Why Travel Is a Necessary Ingredient
We can read all the books. Listen to brilliant podcasts…
But until we shift our contexts, possibility is still bumping up against the edges of our current world.
Our surroundings. Our calendars. Our commitments. All reminding us of who we need to be in order to keep up the life we’ve been living - a parent, a professional, emotionally stable, well-organized, prepared for everything, the glue of the family - whoever it is we are for the people around us.
Travel interrupts our script.
It forces our system to listen in a new way.
And that interruption is where possibility walks in.
We’ve seen it. We’ve designed for it. We’ve built an entire methodology around it.
When we leave the container of what we know, we have no choice but to accept that our way is not the only way, and that, perhaps, our way might be what’s keeping us stuck in a loop. We become experimental. Curious. A little bit disoriented, and that’s exactly where creativity lives.
