The Magic - Take a leap outside your comfort zone

A few days ago I saw the photo below on Twitter and it’s been coming back into my mind over and over since then. The image says it all in such an amazingly succinct way.

Every time it comes to mind I have a bit of a think about my life and the times that I got out of my comfort zone and found the magic.

Allow me to illustrate this with just a few magic moments in my life.

One such time is when my rotten kids gave me a gift, it was to swim with sharks. They knew, along with anyone else who has known me for any time at all, that I’m terrified of sharks. Some early experiences in my life firmly wedged that fear solidly into my brain.

I’m terrified of shark

Don Reid Swimming With Sharks

It took me 3 months to finally take the plunge and go on my swimming with the man-eaters jaunt.

Absolutely terrifying!

I hated the entire experience and would never repeat it. BUT… it was pretty magical and it’s something I’m proud I did and it’s sure something I’ll never forget.

That’s me totally freaking out because I knew when the camera was pointing at me a shark was within chomping range.

My hands are like that so the shark doesn’t mistakenly think I want to feed it

10 year romance ends

Another big magic time was back in 2009 when I was at the end of a 10 year, very rocky and traumatic relationship. I knew I had to put a lot of distance between myself and my ex or we would reunite once again and repeat the whole sad thing yet again.

I put a few boxes together of things which were important to me, into storage.

Packed a backpack, gave away the rest, including my beloved BMW and flew to Turkey.

That was the beginning of my amazing vagabond lifestyle and it really is magical.

Don Reid at Angkor Wat

Goodbye car and boat

Vagabond Life Begins

Backpacking around Turkey was the start of a whole bunch of adventures. After Turkey I flew to Riga, Latvia in the Baltics and lived there for 4 months. While there I took a train ride to Saint Petersburg and then down to Moscow.

Since then I’ve wandered all over Europe, USA, Mexico, Bahamas and even touched on Africa with a day trip to Tangier. In South East Asia I’ve lived in the Philippines, been all over Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and now live in Cambodia. One of the highlights of this magical kingdom is visiting the ancient metropolis of Angkor Wat.’

Definitely a “must see”and should be on everyone’s bucket list.

Owning an internet based business has allowed me the freedom to travel wherever and whenever the mood takes me. Once I sailed down the mighty Mekong river from Phnom Penh to Saigon, another time I drove from Dublin to Brussels in a less than legal Mercedes.

Batu Caves – Malaysia

Not long ago I flew to Kuala Lumpur to meet my son who had spent some time in the UK. I figured this was a great opportunity for the Reid boys to spend a few days together.

After a couple of days sampling the delights of the city and in particular it’s night life, we decided to get some culture and went on a tour to Batu Caves.

While there we climbed 272 steps up to an ancient Hindu temple guarded by a gigantic golden statue.

All along the steps there are dozens of very angry monkeys. One actually chased us. Magical hahaha

The reason for mentioning this little mini-adventure is to illustrate that having the freedom to make choices at the drop of a hat is definitely worth any pain you might go through to achieve it.

Freedom is having the ability to make choices

There have been so many adventures in the last 5 years, some of which I wrote about on my blog, although I’m so lazy at writing I haven’t updated it for a long time.  That’s not really the point though.

The point is that if you have a dream, no matter what anyone tells you, it’s NOT going to happen while you stay in your comfort zone. You need to go and meet the challenges you face and only then will you be able to conquer them and grow.

Everything in life worth having requires effort and discipline to achieve it, if it was easy, everyone would already have it right?