Solo Travel + Our Approach
Goals for Impactful Travel
Our Approach to Amazing Travel Experiences
As a solo traveler, there are many things to consider and prepare for when looking for an impactful travel experience. At the top of these is ensuring your travel is safe while being immersive, adventurous, and educational. Solo travel is about personal growth, and solo travel’s benefits are endless.
Below are some of the common goals for solo travelers:
Develop a Skill: Whether you are looking to learn a new skill that has been on your bucket list or you are looking to understand and learn a culture-based skill, this goal can have many benefits.
Understand Historical, Scientific, Religious, or Artistic Subjects: Expanding your knowledge on a topic or subject that is new or misunderstood will open your mind in new ways, leading you to develop new passions and ideas about the world.
Learn + Immerse Yourself in a Language: Learning a language can be difficult, especially when you approach a new language later in life. When you immerse yourself in a place with the goal of learning a language, you learn so much more.
Understand Environmental, Agricultural, and Natural Processes: This world is built up of beautiful cycles, nutritious and medicinal provisions, and diverse terrains and landscapes. Understanding how they all work together, how we can help them thrive, and how they can help us understand so much about the world and varying subjects is so important to personal growth and wellness.
Gain Perspective on a Specific Culture: Many groups of people and activities vary so beautifully. Understanding + seeing the beauty in cultures outside of your comfort zone can open your mind and lead to greater empathy and intense personal growth.
Explore Destinations + Accomplish a Themed Trek or Route: Exploring multiple destinations and getting around in new places can help with self-awareness, improve your problem-solving, jumpstart a new routine or habit, improve your health and wellness, and can give you a better understanding of a specific region of the world. Exploration can have a specific theme and center on specific subjects and activities based on an overall goal.
Make an Impact on People + Planet: Volunteering or working within a new community or cause can simultaneously help you achieve many mind and body goals. You are able to gain a new perspective on culture, learn a new skill, and helping others and the planet, all while expanding your comfort zone and social skills.
Embark on an Outdoor Adventure: Challenge yourself and your comfort zone by creating a goal to achieve a physical journey in nature. Climb and reach the top of a metaphorical and literal mountain, go off-grid, set a distance goal, and do while embracing the unfamiliar.
Learn New Forms of Mental Wellness Practices: Some can find it difficult to practice meditation and mental care. Learning new forms of meditation and mental care can help you tap into new habits focused on improving mindfulness, tranquility, and clarity.
Learn a New Form of Movement + Exercise: You can move your body to build resilience and strength in many ways. Different cultures and groups have their own forms from dancing, stretching practices, unique movements, sports activities, and more. Understanding different approaches will increase your health and wellness, change your routine and give you perspective on culture and destination.
Facing Fears + Problem-Solving: Fear and challenges can cause us to stay deep inside our comfort zone. Taking small steps to conquer a fear or turn the unfamiliar into the familiar by utilizing travel is a great way to remove the ability for avoidance. Changing a Fear or challenge to a Goal can lead to an empowering journey of personal growth.
Benefits of Solo Travel
All of these goals have one thing in common: achieving them benefits the mind, body, and soul.
Some of the benefits of impactful solo travel are:
- Understanding + Appreciation For the Environment + Nature
- Empathy + Understanding Of Another Culture
- Increased Courage + Purpose + Accomplishment + Empowerment
- Reduce Symptoms of Stress + Anxiety
- Develop Mindful + Healthy Habits
- Understand Different Ways Of Living
- Change Attitudes And Routine Behaviors
- Form New Ways Of Problem-Solving
- More Positivity + Creativity
- Improved Wellness +
- Physical Health
- Improved Relationships + Conversations
- Build Trust In Yourself And Others
- Become More Social + Understand People Better
- Face Fear
Common Challenges When Solo Traveling + Our Approach
The beauty of impactful travel is not the absence of challenges but being prepared to handle those challenges feeling empowered, educated, and prepared, We understand the common challenges of travel for solo travelers and to better help you achieve your goals and overcome your challenges, we built tools to help guide and prepare you for travel and accomplishing your goals.
Setting Goals
We provide goal-setting exercises and assistance to help determine goals and intentions for your travel and personal growth.
Understanding Strengths, Weaknesses, And “Achilles Heels.”
We discuss this in your exploration call and your travel desires + requirement questionnaire. Understanding what triggers or causes us to be put into a negative space can help ensure your travel is impactful but not overly stressful. We say “overly” because we can not guarantee an absence of stress while traveling. We encourage learning from stressful situations.
Building A Plan, Especially Around Goals
This includes determining your pace, goal-centered activities, and travel styles, such as transportation And accommodation types. We look at your travel desires, the time you can dedicate to travel, your comfort zone, goals + intentions, and an estimated budget to offer recommendations and itinerary design so your logistical plan aligns with your needs.
Overwhelmed By The Planning + Preparation
We will be there throughout the planning process, whether coaching you or designing and booking. We have tools to keep you from getting overwhelmed. When coaching, designing, and booking your journey, we take a holistic approach to ensure we design based on your goals, challenges, and travel desires.
Time
Whether it is coaching or designing and booking, our services save you time. If we look at it from a numbers perspective, detailed research, planning, and understanding of how to make your trip impactful can take approximately 6- 8 hours per travel day. There is also the added time of back-and-forth communication between you and experience companies, accommodations, destinations, and more. For a 5-day travel experience, you are most likely planning and communicating a whole work week (40 hours) before your 5-day travel experience. We eliminate much of that, no matter your Create Joy plan.
Cost
Create Joy uses multiple tools to monitor and track transport, accommodation, and tour costs to find the best price and overall experience for you. Create Joy also offers budget guidance and management to save time by monitoring costs and money, guiding you to or booking those savings. In addition, we work with your budget. Impactful, sustainable, and authentic travel and experiences do not have to be expensive, and you do not need to travel all the way across the world to find personal growth through travel.
Safety
Knowing that there is a net of safety as you go on your journey can make accomplishing your goals easier. We work with two reputable companies, Global Rescue and World Nomads, to insure you for your travel and experiences and provide security and medical resources during travel.
The Unknowns Of Travel – Unpredictable Situations + Potential Of Feeling Uncomfortable
The Unknowns of travel are an element of travel that makes it so beautiful. However, some unknowns can cause you to be in unpredictable situations, feeling uncomfortable and ill-prepared. We believe in preparing you with the knowledge that will help you approach unknowns informed. Our personalized guides educate travelers on everything from culture, laws, language, medical and emergency resources, safety resources, and more. Remember that handling the unknown leads to growth, accomplishment, and empowerment.
Language Barriers
We provide language resources to help you with the basics before your travel journey.
Potential For Loneliness
We can promise you that solo travel is anything but lonely. However, there are itinerary elements that can help you ebb the feeling of loneliness while you travel. We remind all travelers to go in with an open mind to be social and know that each new interaction is a chance for a clean slate, to be empowered, and to learn.
Travel Impacts On The Planet
We utilize the criteria utilized by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council to vet all destinations, accommodations, tour operators, and experiences. In addition, we calculate your journey’s carbon footprint and work with reputable offsetting projects to help you ensure your impact is net zero or minimal.
Applying Goals + Achievements + Learning Post-Trip
We built a post-journey reflection tool, which includes a compact journal you can take with you on your journey. Any desired notes and reflections from your journal get built into your Journey Packet, with images and your pre-travel preparation and guides. This becomes a resource for reflection. In addition, we meet with you once more to look at your comfort zone post-travel and reframe and set new goals for continued growth.
