Every travel is a journey to your own self. An opportunity to take off the clothes of routine, to wipe out the burden of daily life and tear the chains of habits. With every mile that you travel away, you get distant from one of your personalities and get closer to your other one – the pure, true self. For it there is no ego. It just doesn’t exist. In order for ego to exist, there should be an environment that nurtures it. When you travel, everything changes – constantly. You don’t stay in one place long enough and you do not need to choose a mask. You do not need to communicate with the same people and you do not need to play roles in order to keep your fragile essence – safe. None of them is beside you long enough to make such a huge step closer to you.
You travel and it feels as everything you had a moment ago is a part of a past that doesn’t belong neither to you nor to this life. It is just a memory for something that used to be – somewhere and sometime.
You get in situations where you do not have an automatic, pre- learned behavior. The moment finds you unprepared and you react according to the situation. You get to see yourself in a different setting and you reveal parts of your character and yourself, that you didn’t even suppose you had. Your actions are not dictated by your stiff convictions. You are everywhere and you are nobody – you visit a lot of places and nobody knows anything about you – you do not need to fit in other people’s expectations and you have an opportunity to draw your own and new frame. Such a frame that gives you space to move freely and it doesn’t suppress your true self. It doesn’t matter at what time you wake up or go to sleep. Actually, you don’t even have an idea what is this – time. At that moment it doesn’t exist.
Time is a necessity of civilization and an tool of the ego – to chase goals. Now you are free from ego and time is useless. You are not chasing anything, because you never know where you go. Did you forget? You are living just for the moment – you grab the towel and flip flops and you go to a solitary beach. There, you meet people that life would never take on your path, if you don’t get out of your routine day in the city. You talk with them and it doesn’t matter that it has been the afternoon has already passed and you are still finding something new and exciting to talk about – nobody and nothing awaits you. It is just another day, another opportunity that you can use according to the situation and not up to the habit.
Thoughts that always run through my mind every time when I travel. I get back home with a weird feeling. No matter where I travel,, I always love going back home. But there is something strange in being away for a couple days and then returning back – to put the key in the key lock and turn it. To pass through the threshold and enter into the home that you left a couple days ago, yet it seems so different. You take a look at the table – it is still the same and the books that you pushed, while you were rushing when you left are still there. There is not even a trace from something different, yet it doesn’t feel like that… because your home is the same but you are not. You are changed. A couple days are more than enough to force you to travel through the depths of your soul and rearrange everything inside. Then you go back home and you try to get back in the old rhythm.
Yesterday I got back from the seaside. I was there for three days. Another adventure with Ivaylo. Three days, where so many things happened that I could not fit them in a post. I could write a book for every journey that we take.
Still, I took pictures and videos for you. I did it so I can remind you that a person with a goal, always finds a way. A lot of people let the environment remodel them. A lot of people are a product not of their own dreams, but a product of other people’s expectations and occasional situations. No matter where we go, we see what we are looking for.
For the one who wants to be healthy, athletic and fit, there is always an opportunity to move, to eat healthy and find a great company for the workouts.
For the one who wanders, there is never time for physical activity, the right foods are always scarcity and there is never somebody to train with you.
A lot of people say that life is not about workouts and nutrition. And that is true. Life is in being goal oriented, consistent, driven and willing to make efforts. It is about making one step forwards, towards yourself – every single day – and revealing what you are capable of.
Thus, workouts and nutrition are not the lame, boring hour in the gym and the tasteless, plane food on the table. They are an occasion – such that we create.
I am happy that Ivaylo is by my side and that he accepts me just as I am – illogical, often times confused, constantly searching and so damn stubborn. He and I are the perfect couple – my consistency and discipline, broken through the lenses of his creativity and complete denial of routine.
That’s why when he is around, being in shape is exciting – the hikes where we always take “the short” route, that takes us through areas that even a dinosaur would find challenging, yet we still manage to pass through.
A dinner that is planned to be at home, in the usual setting and suddenly we happen to be sitting on a cliff, just after the sun has gone down and the moon path lightens our “table”- made of a shopping bag and a newspaper.
The times when traveling to the sea takes us 9 hours, instead of four, not because we drive really slow, but because we visit a basketball gym in a city on the way, where Ivaylo used to play and he decides that he wants to take me through the places he has been. Then on the way back we went through the gymnastic gym and I tried rope climbing for the first time in my life and I am hooked.
Then we visited a village that I mentioned I liked and we took a long walk there.
Using the gas stations, so we can do handstands, burpees or push – ups.
What bothers most people to stay in shape while they travel is their expectations – that everything needs to be just the way it is in the city. That is far from reality. What matters is to choose the optimal.
On the beach I didn’t have 10 kettlebells, a rack with 20 dumbbells, three bars and a bunch of plates. I had one kettlebell and two bands. Completely enough so I could do a great workout. What I needed to do was to change the exercises, change the number of sets and reps, the length of the rests and the tempo. Thus, after 45 minutes of working out my body felt happily tired.
I always try to use the environment and what is in there – if there is a swimming pool and a sea – I will swim more.
If there is a lot of stairs in the hotel or in the town – then I will go there and do an intense work out there. That is how you train in one of the most popular sightseeing in Bulgaria – Balchik Palace.
If there is different sizes of wood – then I use them for weights.
If there is a steep hill – sprints are calling for me.
If there is vast alleys and beautiful nature – I will definitely go for a long walk.
What if traveling forces me to eat outside? Then, great! There is eggs, meat, fish, rice, potatoes, salads – everywhere. Every grocery store has raw nuts and fruits.
Yes, they might not be prepared as I would cook them at home and they might be not bio or organic. Yet, the body would work better with an egg (that is not organic), then it would with pizza or ice cream. And if we accept that all the food is not with good quality, then what do we do? We choose the one that is closest to the best food. Well, sometimes you risk what happened with our breakfast (in the video below)…. 😀
…they gave us raw eggs instead of boiled.
Everybody will be understanding and bring you just boiled eggs if you ask. They won’t put vegetable oil on your meat or they will take away corn from your salad if you ask.
Everything is a matter of choice.
Traveling doesn’t bother me and it never takes me out of shape. Actually, I always feel better and I get back home with more ideas and more enthusiasm. Traveling is not something that takes me out of shape – it is an opportunity to look on my convictions and my methods through a different perspective – to remove something and add something else and at the end of the day increase the rate of my progress and help me get closer to whom I wanna be.
