What is travel coaching?

When you hear the words 'travel coach', does your mind automatically take you to an image of an actual coach travelling down the motorway, taking passengers from point A to point B? Perhaps you are thinking of a travel agent, someone who tells you where you should go for your holidays? Technically speaking, a travel coach is neither of those things, but you wouldn’t be judged for thinking it so, because travel coaching is a fairly new concept that only a handful of coaches specialise in. 

Let’s start with what a coach is. Traditionally, a coach is someone who helps another person to achieve specific goals or results in both their personal and professional lives. Their role is to help someone to succeed at something. There are just as many areas that coaches specialise in as there are areas of life, because we all have unique experiences that add to the depth of the service we offer to others. Some of the different areas that you may hire a coach to help with could be business, career, health, fitness, sports and confidence - to name a few.

People would usually hire a coach in order to save themselves time and energy, to feel supported and to know that they have someone to keep them accountable and on track with reaching their goals. Travel coaching is a focused area of coaching that aims to help individuals to reach specific travel-related goals.

Individuals travel for all kinds of reasons, be it for work, to relax, to discover, to see family and friends and in some cases - to find themself. When thinking about travel the immediate questions you start with tend to be around getting advice and opinions on where to go, where to book, what to pack - which is all really important, but when a travel coach steps into the process of planning, the focus turns to what is it that you want to gain from your travel experience.

Identifying your ‘why’

The difference in the quality of people’s lives more than often comes down to the quality of the questions they consistently ask themselves, more specifically, questions related to discovering their purpose and what it is that makes their heart sing. If you don’t know your why and you don’t have a clear vision of what you want to achieve, you’ll allow other people and circumstances to direct the course of your life and ultimately the outcomes too.

Identifying your 'why' allows you to regain personal power and shift the momentum into the direction that is best for you.

A simple way to get started with this at home is for me to ask you the following questions:

1. What gets you feeling really excited about life?
2. What gives your life meaning?
3. Who do you want to become?
4. What are your personal values?

Now, reflect upon your answers and finish this sentence: I want to _______________ because _____________.

Gaining confidence

Self-confidence is when you feel sure of yourself and your abilities, it is a feeling of trust and a deep knowing that you are able to accept situations and take control. Travel requires a certain level of confidence just to get started on moving your feet towards somewhere new. Once you have reached that place where you can confidently start to experience new surroundings and languages, you will then find yourself in a position where it is time to ‘level up’ again. This time, to boost your confidence to a place where you can fully immerse yourself in new cultures, meet new people and enjoy your experiences knowing you have complete trust in yourself. 

Your mind controls everything that you do. What you think, what you feel, how you learn and of course, all of your memories. This means that in order to gain confidence, you need to shift your patterns of thought into a new and empowered way of thinking. Confidence coaching is integrated into travel coaching to allow you to get into a confident mindset for travel and all the wonderful things you will gain from it. 

Overcoming fears

Fear is a pattern that your subconscious mind has learnt, and fears are also one of the main culprits in holding people back from going after the life they really want. Our life experiences shape our current realities and how we see the world, both good and bad. People, every day are successfully overcoming their fears and are taking back control of their lives. Travel coaches work with fears on many different levels, and because they have done extensive travel themselves, they will likely have also experienced the same fears as you at one point or another throughout their journey. 

Having a professional at your side, supporting you and challenging you, can completely change the way you experience travel. It positively impacts the way people heal, it allows them to create cross-cultural friendships and expand individual awareness. 

Preparing for cultural challenges

Possibly one of the most influential and diverse challenges you face when travelling is the cultural difference. I personally credit these experiences as the main contributor to elevated self-awareness and personal transformation. For some, these challenges can be a shock to the system, so being prepared for this can really help you to adapt your mindset so that you can spend more time learning and commingling into the new environment. 

We tend to be quite rigid in the way we see the world, the way we solve problems and heal. Our understanding of suffering and of success and happiness are limited, so when we meet with a different view, the depth of our understanding expands. Travel coaching helps you to get into a receptive place where you are able to process this in a way that feels right to you.

Staying local

You don't always have to jet off to the other side of the world to appreciate the benefits of working with a travel coach, in fact, there is much to be gained from mindful exploration during a weekend break away! When approached with intent you can turn a simple break into the start of a personal development journey, powerful reconnection with the world and yourself, or even a chance to de-stress and rediscover your purpose. 

Having a professional at your side, supporting you and challenging you, can completely change the way you experience travel. It positively impacts the way people heal, it allows them to create cross-cultural friendships and expand individual awareness. The ripple effect of this change flows far beyond what you can imagine. Therefore, travel far and wide but with intent and confidence.