When I made the decision to leave medicine, I made an even bigger overarching decision about how I was going to try and live my life from that moment forward. I made the decision to follow my intuition, no matter what.
**As a side note, I realize that intuition can be quite a vague term. If you are interested in learning more aout my views on intuition and what I mean when I say that word, you can check out some of the other blog posts I’ve written on the topic.
When I left my residency, I made the decision that I was going to let my intuition lead me. Even if it feels like it’s leading me over a cliff, which is basically what it feels like now.
Except in this instance, “the cliff” is actually a country with a landmass greater than all of Europe that is home to 60% of the world’s Amazon rainforest.
Yupp, my intuition is leading me to Brazil.
And in this post, I want to share with you all HOW I use my intuition to make these big travel decisions. I also want to get real with you about what it feels like to “surrender” to my intuition in this way.
Because it’s not always this zen, buddha experience of going with the flow of the Universe.
Sometimes there is alot of resistance which translates into kicking and screaming on my end.
What does it mean to follow your intuition?
The best way I can explain this concept of “following my intuition” when it comes to travel is that I don’t feel that I’m actively deciding where I will go next.
Instead, I feel like I am surrendering to where the Universe is sending me. And that might sound weird, I get it . It still sounds pretty weird to me, to be honest.
Let me try to explain a little bit more.
When I am following my intuition with travel, I don’t feel like I am forcing anything to happen, but more going with the flow.
- If flights are super expensive or inconvenient.
- If there are alot of obstacles and paperwork to getting to a new destination.
- If it’s hard to find good information online about getting somewhere.
- If it feels like a struggle to get somewhere.
I usually just let it go.
For example, I was recently thinking about going to Bocas del Toro, an insanely beautiful archipelago in Panama, but it just didn’t flow.
There were too many requirements to cross the land border from Costa Rica to Panama that made the whole thing a headache. I decided to let it go.
Even though my mind wanted to go there, the circumstances weren’t aligning for it to be easy and breezy so I gave it up.
HOW BRAZIL POPPED ON MY RADAR
For almost every destination I end up flowing to, I usually hear about it initially from friends.
As I travel, I meet tons of new people, and one of travelers favorite conversations is talking about places they’ve traveled.
I can generally tell by the way someone describes a new place if it is somewhere I’d like to go.
When someone talks about a place in a way that intrigues me, I look it up on google images or Pinterest and that usually lets me know if I want to pursue it further.
So that’s exactly what happened for this upcoming destination. I was on the phone with one of my friends from Vietnam. She and her husband were currently living in Florianopolis Brazil, and she was beaming talking about it. She said “you would love it here”. It’s a place where the mountains meet the beach and it’s got an incredible expat community.
These are all things I tend to look for in my travel destinations. Beautiful nature. Welcoming expat community. Personal recommendations.
I looked it up on google images and was stunned by how gorgeous it was. Immediately I put Florianopolis specifically and Brazil in general on my list of places to go one day.
I wasn’t in a hurry at all to get there, but I definitely knew one day.
ALL THE SIGNS AND SYNCHRONICIITIES
A few months after that I was traveling around Costa Rica and I met this girl from Brazil. She told me about this private island 300 miles off the coast of Brazil which is one of two places in the world where you can see “spinner dolphins”. Then she started sharing about her country in general talking about how Christ the Redeemer is one of the 7 wonders of the world.
For some reason, the way she was sharing about Brazil just gave me this feeling of “I HAVE to go there”. It felt like there was this little puppy dog inside of me jumping up and down wagging his tail.
I think one of the ways my intuition personally speaks to me is through that feeling of excitement. Through that feeling of being pulled from the center of my chest. Through that feeling of awakeness and aliveness.
I knew for SURE I needed to go to Brazil someday, but still was thinking in a far off bucket list kind of way.
But the signs and synchronicities kept coming.
The very next day I opened up my computer screen to see a photo of this unbelievably beautiful waterfall on my screen saver. I did a factory reboot on my computer recently and still haven’t changed the screen saver or desktop image and so it’s still on the default settings. The default setting for my screen saver just plays random nature pictures from places around the world.
This waterfall was stunning enough that it caught my attention and I clicked on the photo to see where the heck it was. Turns out the waterfall is called Iguazu falls and just so happens to be in Brazil.
All of this was starting to add up and I was starting to think that I need to go to Brazil soon! I started checking flight prices, I told my family that I was thinking about Brazil, but I wasn’t ready to make the move just yet.
Then something undeniable happened.
I went to Starbucks Reserve in Seattle with my family and we ordered the “original” coffee flight to share. When the flight came out, it was arranged on a tray in a beautiful presentation. The coffee was in these adorable little serving pots with a gorgeous card in front of each pot with some information about the country of origin of the coffee.
One of my family members pointed at the card on the far right and said “Look, Chelsea! Brazil!”.
And yupp, there it was: a purple card with the word Brazil in large golden embossed letters.
It felt like such an interesting and beautiful sign from the Universe that Brazil was my next destination.
A few nights later I finally worked up the courage to buy my plane ticket.
But even after doing so, I was feeling some resistance and some doubt- wondering if I made the right decision or if I’m just being reckless and irresponsible.
The plane ticket was fairly expensive which freaked me out. I didn’t know anyone at all in the country (although that’s never stopped me before). The COVID cases and death toll is high. There is supposedly a Brazilian Covid variant going around and I won’t be fully vaccinated when I first get there.
All of these thoughts started to get to me, and I wondered if I should see about changing my flight.
But then the Universe sent me another sign, just for reassurance.
A few nights after buying the plane ticket, I got on a video call with a client. I gave her a quick update about how I am headed to Brazil soon and her eyes lit up as she pointed down at her shirt. She was wearing a Brazil soccer jersey.
I honestly couldn’t believe it.
Seeing her jersey felt like a sigh of relief.
An exhale.
A sign that, even when the doubts creep up and I get in my head about it, I’m still on the right track.
So, at the moment of writing this post, I am headed to Brazil TOMORROW!
I have NO idea what is waiting for me in Brazil, but I have a feeling that it is where I am supposed to be going next.
I share all of this with you because people have asked me on several occasions “how do you decide where to travel next”, and this is my long winded answer.
It kind of feels like the first Harry Potter book where Mr. Ollivander says “the wand chooses the wizard”.
I don’t feel like I choose the places where I travel, I feel like the places choose me.
And this is how it works when you are following your intuition.
I feel crazy most of the time. When I try to explain what I’m doing to other people, they don’t always understand. There’s aren’t always rational explanations for why I am doing things or going certain places. I get a lot of “why are you going there?”
But when I take a moment and check in with myself. When I sit alone in silence. When I give myself time and space to really be present in my physical body, I tap into this sense of calm and inner knowing that yupp, I’m on exactly the right path.
