Leaders' Playground
What if work could feel like play? Join Irene Salter PhD for stories, science and strategies that help leaders thrive, not just survive.
Leaders' Playground
18: The five lessons travel taught me about how to live
I'm writing a book on the science behind why we travel. In this episode, I read the last four pages of my book and share five ways that travel changes us.
When we travel, there’s a sense of meaning and purpose.
When we travel, we are fully here, present and centered.
When we travel, we are open to new experiences.
When we travel, we slow down. We savor. We luxuriate.
When we travel, we expand our horizons and connect to something larger than ourselves: history, science, religion, culture, language, people, ecosystems, humanity.
All of those ways of being are more natural and easy when we're far from home, but it doesn't mean we can't also do them at home everyday. Join me for a very special close to Season 1 and learn more about how travel changes the brain, and how to bring those changes back home with you.
Resources:
For more information about my book: https://www.irenesalter.com/books
I highly recommend reading Vagabonding by Rolf Potts and Timothy Ferris and/or The Art of Pilgrimage by Phil Cousineau for how to make the most of your travels:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100247.Vagabonding
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144951.The_Art_of_Pilgrimage?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_12
If you're considering long term travel with kids, the book Wonder Year is a great "how to" guide: https://wonderyear.com/what-is-worldschooling/
For more on how travel can help you find happiness, read Eric Weiner's Geography of Bliss: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1918305.The_Geography_of_Bliss
For more on finding your WHY, watch this TED conversation with Simon Sinek: https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_to_discover_your_why_in_difficult_times?subtitle=en
And for how to bring travel home with you, there's nobody better than Pico Iyer: https://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_the_meaning_of_home_and_the_joy_of_traveling?subtitle=en
For complete show notes, transcript, and free downloadable resources go to: https://www.irenesalter.com/podcast
Welcome to the last episode of Season 1. I am wrapping up this season of Leaders Playground with the final pages from my memoir have Brain Will Travel. It's a story of a year of travel with my family, searching for the science behind travel makes us come alive and looking for ways to bring that feeling home. Why does it belong at Leaders Playground? Because these pages share my top five strategies for how to make everything feel more like play. The big things, like our relationships and our work, but also the little things, like just sitting at my desk. You want to hear the five lessons, the takeaway message of my whole book. Then keep listening. Hi, thank you for listening to the Leader's Playground, the podcast for leaders who wish their work could feel more like play. Leadership can be lonely, overwhelming and just plain crazy making. We are here to rekindle your spark. I'm Irene Salter, your host and a PhD neuroscientist and science educator with a passion for helping people thrive, not just survive. Please click that follow button so you don't miss a single episode. I'm writing a book and no, I'm not just saying that, like a lot of people do. I really am writing a book and I love the whole process of it. Right now it's in the hands of my agent. She is looking for a publisher. If you're that publisher out there, come and check out this amazing thing.
Speaker 1:Well, the book starts off with me, 10 years ago, working as the principal superintendent of a charter school, which honestly had me teetering on the edge of burnout. You know what? It wasn't the work itself that was the problem. Yes, being a principal and a superintendent is a huge job, big and overwhelming. But the real problem was that I was a hopeless workaholic, a perfectionist, an overachiever, and there were a whole lot of not good enough feelings burning down deep inside. So when my husband, jason, suggested let's take a year off to travel the world, after getting over the shock and incredulity, my wanderlust won out, because a lot of me wanted to escape from reality and another part of me saw this opportunity as this globe trotting search for happiness that I couldn't quite seem to find in my everyday life. So I said yes and, of course, once I was on that trip, as a neuroscientist I became utterly fascinated watching my brain shift and change. It was as if there was a scientist in me in a lab taking notes and recording my brain's firing patterns, as if I was a rat in the maze. And the rat in the maze was actually the traveler me exploring the world with my scientist me watching along.
Speaker 1:That scientist me was asking questions like how is my subject stress system responding to crazy travel day? What brain regions are lighting up that make that delectable meal in London so pleasurable? Ooh, watch this. She's being lowered into an Egyptian tomb by a hand-cranked winch. What neural circuits are being activated there? Oh, fascinating. Look how relaxed and centered she is in that Turkish bath. It's as if all of that damage that was done to her brain is unwinding. What neurotransmitters and hormones are in her brain and blood now? Ooh, look, family conflict in maze region 5.3. What's the neurochemistry of that? And, most important of all, my little subject seems to be changing her behavior. She's less overwhelmed and burnt out. She's less perfectionistic and overachieving. Why is travel changing that? What's the underlying neuroscience and psychology? And will it last? Well, you're going to have to read the book to discover most of those answers that Scientist Me discovered about Traveler Me.
Speaker 1:I'm not giving away all my secrets, but let me read you the very last four pages. It's both story and strategy and if you want, if it's safe, you could even close your eyes and follow along as if it were a meditation. Here we go. If I had to boil down what I learned from my gap year, down to its very essence, these are the five most important things. They aren't lessons, they're new habits, things I do when I want to make my everyday feel just as alive as when I travel. First, why Centered and purposeful, like in Istanbul. Second, I'm here, present and unplugged, like in Rome. Third, I'm open. I'm awake to delight beauty, emotion, play, love and awe, like I was in Paris, london, dundercon like the whole year, really like the whole year, really. Four I linger, I luxuriate in the flow of the moment, just like in New Zealand. And five, I expand. I'm connected to something larger than myself, like friends and family and community. I even made up an acronym to help me remember all five, because I'm an overachiever like that Whole W-H-O-L-E.
Speaker 1:This wholeness isn't a travel thing, it's an anytime, everyday thing, a way of being in the world. Amidst all of the doing, this aliveness, this wholeness, is my birthright. See, right now I'm sitting at my desk. The surface is a smooth dark chocolate with a tinge of red wine, as when the sunlight strikes, when I put my hand on the surface of my desk. The wood grain is subtle like a fingerprint. The desktop is slightly cool to the touch but simultaneously warm, like only wood can feel. What an ordinary everyday experience, just sitting at my desk with my hand on it. I've probably touched this exact spot many thousands of times over the years, but didn't once ever really think about it. Yet when I practice wholeness, this utterly ordinary everyday experience becomes extraordinary.
Speaker 1:The W in wholeLE stands for WHY. I believe that we are all, each one of us, put on this earth for a purpose, a reason to live, to feel alive in our bodies and minds, to shine our light, a light that we were born to shine. As I feel the warmth of my desk and think about the next words, the slow, steady thrum of my why pulses just under the surface of my skin. Since childhood, that thread has wound its way through everything, calling irresistibly like a siren song Purpose, ikigai, why, and I feel inspired. The H in whole stands for here, when I travel, I'm fully here, present and centered. I'm not dwelling on the past, not worried about the future. I'm right here, right now.
Speaker 1:It's so much easier to be here when traveling while someplace other than the everyday, where the disappointments, hurts and frustrations of yesterday compete with the fears, the to-do lists and the go mode of tomorrow. Yet all it takes for me to come back to the here and now is mentally spinning a slow 360. I focus on the surface of my desk. When my mind wanders, as it naturally will, I bring it gently back, like a stray puppy who chased a butterfly. Every sensory system awakens. My eyes trace the wood grain following the lines that seem drawn from an artist's pen. My fingertips feel, first with hard pressure, then gentle, then feel some more with the back of my hand, a palm, my wrist. My ears listen to the soft brush of skin on wood. The nose smells paper sweat, a hint of freshly sharpened pencil, like the smell of a classroom. The emotions feel calm, centered, peaceful. The emotions feel calm, centered, peaceful, like Istanbul, without actually having to be there, my vagus nerve purring contentedly.
Speaker 1:The O in whole stands for open when I travel. I'm open to new experiences, seeking them, craving them. It's Alison Gopnik's lantern attention, curious as a tourist. The what, if game feels like second nature. Who, what, when, where, why, how? Questions spill out like a five-year-old Naive. Eyes scan the world with genuine curiosity, without expectations. Which of these different emotions will appear today Delight, beauty, play, emotion, love, awe all of the above. It takes a force of will to stay open in my everyday, but as my senses play across the surface of my desk, I can explore with genuine curiosity, like a baby discovering the surface for the very first time, or perhaps like a scientist studying it for an experiment, or possibly like a tourist for whom the curator of a prestigious museum gave special permission to touch an ancient artifact.
Speaker 1:With my desk there's a soft beauty that I'd forgotten. The color is as warm and comforting as a hot drink and fuzzy blanket on a crisp autumn morning when the first leaves begin to fall. The sunlight glancing off my desk's surface would be captured by Rodin's paintings with a white gold highlight and a streak of burgundy fire. The lines are classic. The wood is almost like skin silky. Is it really wood? How does a surface have such a perfect finish, with no lines or edges? It doesn't matter. But now I remember why I chose this desk when I first bought it. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1:My medial orbital frontal cortex lights up. The L in whole stands for linger. When I travel, I linger, I luxuriate, I languorously savor every precious, irreplaceable moment in time like an expensive glass of wine. It's the opposite of go mode or no mode. It's slow mode where time, space and self evaporate into the mist. When we descend into that lost world, I flow with the current, letting the path open before me, following the most interesting alley, letting adventure carry me where it will. And I can do that right here, sitting at my desk. I close my eyes and breathe. I let the moment linger as I slow down, weigh down. The beauty of this moment, this placid, peaceful, priceless moment, radiates and fills my every cell. This single moment, just sitting with a hand on the desk, feels so quietly. Beautiful Moments flow into minutes, with only my breath to count the time. Self dissolves, space warps. Time slows dissolves, space warps, time slows. And finally, the E in whole is for expand.
Speaker 1:When I travel, I expand my horizons. I connect to something larger than myself and my everyday. There's history, science, religion, art, people, culture, purpose, ancestors, ecosystems. Humanity Self is but a single thread in that huge, larger fabric, small and insignificant yet at the same time expansive and tingling with life. In my everyday it takes more effort to expand. Sometimes I connect to science and go microscopic. I imagine what's happening at the level of the atoms at the intersection between my fingers and the desk, triggering every sensory nerve ending, starting a lightning fast cascade of voltage, gated ion channels, opening and closing, carrying that signal to my thalamus, sensory cortex, medial orbital frontal cortex and the reward centers. With this soup, spark, soup, spark, soup, spark, rhythm. Sometimes I connect to humanity and go big.
Speaker 1:How many others in the world right now might be touching a desk? What kinds of surfaces, what kind of hands? What might those people be thinking and feeling? When I expand, beauty turns quietly into awe. My soul lifts. Right now, with my eyes closed, putting my hand on this desk is just like putting my hand on the rough, sun-kissed stones of the Colosseum or the pyramids. It's like returning to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. I am alive, I am whole.
Speaker 1:A long ago day at the Wailing Wall, I made a wish and I think I now know what I wished for. I wished for wholeness for every person. I wished for everyone, down to the most skeptical of scientists, to know how to bring magic into their everyday, to feel Jerusalem in a desktop, to come alive wherever you are, to find play in the middle of the work, to thrive and not just survive. Wholeness is your birthright. You can be whole anywhere. Istanbul, auckland or right at home, somewhere in nature is a great place to start, like a local park or a backyard.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter where you can attend to anything. It could be a table or a throne, a priceless painting, a cup of tea, a stranger at Starbucks, a dear colleague, a breathtaking view, a single leaf. It doesn't matter what you can be doing, just about anything Walking, sitting, lounging, riding the bus, anywhere where you can just find a quiet corner in your mind. Why here, open, linger, expand, hear open, linger, expand this aliveness, this wholeness. It's within me, within you, within all of us, within our brains, wherever we may travel. And that's a wrap for season one.
Speaker 1:I would love, love, love to hear what you thought. What did you love about the Leaders Playground? What could have been better? What new content do you wish for? Please let me know so that I can incorporate your feedback into season two, which will be coming in 2025. Promise, please email me at Irene, at Irene Salter dot com, and let me know what you thought.
Speaker 1:None of this would have been possible without my amazing team. On sound editing and production was Tyler Lockaby, with graphics and web design was Robin Canfield and the wind beneath my wings, with all things, operations and hospitality, is Tessa Borquez. In the show notes, you'll find a link to more information about my book and resources on how to create a sabbatical or gap year for yourself. Finally, would you please do me two favors? First, do you know a leader or a friend who's surviving, not thriving? Maybe they need to learn how to be whole? If so, please text them a link to this show and secondly, please click that follow button on Spotify, apple, youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you so, so much for listening to Leaders Playground. I will see you in 2025. Until then, stay in touch.
