Stepping Out Of Your Comfort Zone

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The world is much more extraordinary then we can possibly imagine. This personal story I share here is about breaking out of your comfort zone. I believe we live a thousand lives through other people’s experiences and I hope this empowers you to release yourself and explore new worlds!

“Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer” – Unknown

I’ve always enjoyed being in my little world, my Safe Port* but life has so much to offer, I just
had no idea. Ambition wasn’t exactly my strong suit back then. Stepping out of my comfort
zone was something I looked at with resistance and fear. A great opportunity never comes alone, there are always risks and changes, decisions to be made and suddenly an urge to pull back from the unknown.

My experience taught me that the true richness of this world (other than our family) are the memories we have and the friends we’ve made. Travelling gives you all that and even more:
you are exposed to different cultures which open up your eyes allowing you to see things from
different perspectives. You meet people with whom you share experiences and get to learn new exciting things. You may also even discover amazing new flavors by trying out different cuisines. My own personal big discovery was something which I can no longer picture living without … Portobello Mushrooms! You must be thinking: “Seriously?” Yes, we don’t see mushrooms very often here in Brazil, haha.

When I first left Brazil to meet my ‘darling Lisbon’ I felt something great inside me. The mixture of simplicity and natural beauty made me fall in love right away with the City of the Seven Hills*. From that moment onwards traveling become a meaning of life and each destination a different chapter of an exciting adventure story.

There’s a wonderful world just outside your door, but its dimension depends on your
willingness to explore it. Leaving my hometown wasn’t an easy decision, I felt alone a few
times, I missed the old me, my old life, my friends and the comfort and safety of an expected
future. But, in the meantime, I’ve met exceptional people, been to extraordinary places and
learnt a lot about life and its magnitude. All this has made me who I am and I feel very
fortunate to have lived it all, but there is so much more yet to be lived. My little world back home still belongs to me, but I no longer belong to it. I’m too big to belong anywhere.

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*Porto Seguro (Safe Port) is a city located in Bahia state, Brazil. The place I lived in my childhood, also the place where Brazil was discovered by the Portuguese. When the Portuguese expedition first arrived in Brazil, they spent two days looking for a place to establish the settlement, until they found a safe harbor which they named Porto Seguro (Safe Port).

*City of the Seven Hills – The legend says that Lisbon was originally built over seven hills. This is still one of the city catch-lines, as you can easily check by the bus tickets being named nowadays as 7 Colinas (7 Hills).