Sitting in the back of a 4-wheel-drive pickup, making our way through the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan where Moses once led 300,000 Israelites out of Egypt, it was hard to stop reflecting on what I might be doing at home in this moment if I were not here.
Would I be bathing my children? Paying bills? Arguing with my neighbor over whose side of the property line a tree just fell onto?
If my hair weren’t wrapped in a Bedouin scarf to keep it from tangling in the fast-moving wind from the back of this truck… if the sun wasn’t warming my face in the nicest of ways… if I weren’t among friends seeing this beautiful area for the first time… making our way to the best place for sunset photos… what would I be doing right now at home?
And the answer is probably—planning another trip.
The truth is, you don’t have to go far to get a bite from the proverbial travel bug. Even if you don’t have the money, you can take a trip near you and feel the same.
What you can’t do, however, is let yourself succumb to the powerful strength of boredom and what happens when you let daily habits stop you from making better choices.
Sure, TV is fun. Facebook is rewarding and easy to check on your phone from time to time. But what if, instead of one night of TV, you researched a place to visit near you and you got outside next weekend for a change?
What if you wrote an article about the place you choose?
What if you took photos?
What if you spent the evening researching 360-degree photography and how to make a fun $300 – $3,000 in a single weekend with it?
What if you tried video?
We’ll be talking about all these things at our next live event in St. Louis this Spring.
You can research these things one at a time and learn how to change your life with them. Or you can join us in St. Louis and our pros will show you how to do all of the above. But what you can’t do is keep sitting still.
A single click and a commitment to spend just three days with us in St. Louis is all you need to totally and completely change the way your days look from here on out. It’s an investment that pays for itself many times over… and it takes just three days of your time.
We record each and every session and you get those recordings for life, too. Which means you can come once and then refer back to the recordings as often as you like in case you miss something.
And, most importantly, it’s a built-in friend network, too. Some people tell me they find life-long travel partners at these events. Others say their success is largely due to the helping hand and encouragement they got from other attendees working towards similar goals.
One day I’d love to see your hair blowing in the wind from the back of a pickup truck sailing through the Wadi Rum desert. I’d love to see you on a camel in Petra, drinking tea with the Bedouins, breaking bread with friends from around the world. And then I’d love to hear how you sold the photos, videos, stories to magazines, stock agencies, tourism boards, and more.
“Joe,” said one of the guys who works at the hotel where we stayed, “I see your photos all over Jordan now.”
“Thank you,” said Joe. “You’re right. I sold them to the tourism board, and I’m seeing them everywhere now, too.”
“It’s nice,” the worker said. “Your pictures are famous. And you are famous here.”
And isn’t that cool, too?
You can make an income from these things and then you can also make yourself a little bit famous and your pictures recognizable to friends.
Sure beats watching TV and scrolling through Facebook!
[Editor’s Note: Learn more about how you can fund your travels and make an extra income with photography, travel writing, blogging, and more in our free online newsletter The Right Way to Travel. Sign up here today and we’ll send you a new report, Five Fun Ways To Get Paid To Travel: A Quick-Start Guide, completely FREE.]