As Aerosmith so eloquently put it, we’re “back in the saddle” again…and we’re ready to rock it!
After taking a short sabbatical to move to San Francisco, have some rest and relaxation, and experience new things, we are back in the saddle bringing you fresh exciting new content here at InspirationTheRide.com.
This new content, as always, will be coming purely from our spirits and quest to help humanity live a fulfilling, rewarding, and extraordinary life. We are re-charged and have many ideas for varying forms of content we will be providing in the coming months that we hope moves and inspires you.
With our move to San Francisco, we have once again recreated our lives in the vision that we created for ourselves. In the process of our re-creation and re-birth, we have gained new insights for living that we want to share. We literally manifested every single aspect of our new life here. You can do the same! (as we mentioned in our vision binder article 🙂 )
Photo Copyright Elliot Lozano 'Golden Gate' San Francisco, CA USA
With spring just a few days away, let us all be reminded of its essence signifying coming out of hibernation and into a period of renewal and change.
Let us use this period to live, laugh and love as if there might not be a tomorrow.
Thanks for all your support and we look forward to connecting with you soon.
(As an aside, the photo from above is a picture of Terrah taken in Brazil while she was traveling there for four months. You can read more about her experiences there in her popular article 13 Life Lessons Learned from My i-to-i Travel Experience.)
“What good is a man that won’t take a stand? What good is a cynic with no better plans? I believe in a better way.” – Ben Harper ‘Better Way’
We stumble across many inspirational artifacts from all areas of our life on a regular basis. Artifacts ranging from personal experience, travel, arts, music, movies, and the list goes on.
We wanted to share some of these pieces of inspiration more frequently at InspirationTheRide.com in addition to the longer articles and ideas we write about.
We were listening to random music from our music library the other day and Ben Harper’s Better Way song played randomly.
This time we heard it, we really heard the words.
You know how you can have an experience, read a book or watch a movie and learn something different each time? Well, that’s what happened to us with Ben Harper’s song and we wanted to share.
For us, this piece says to always seek a better way and never settle for what doesn’t make us happy. Let us all seek fulfillment in our lives and a better way for humanity.
So, without further ado, please listen to Ben Harper’s Better Way and be inspired and moved to believe (and act) in a better way…
I am grateful for everything that has come into my life during these 27 years on this earth. Everything that has happened to me has shaped me into the person I have become and am becoming.
I am grateful to my wife, family, friends, and experiences.
And, most of all, I am grateful to becoming more aware of embracing uncertainty in life to be able to live my life as completely as I can. As Jack Canfield said in The Secret, “Imagine yourself driving from LA to NY at night. How would you do it? You would have your lights on and the road would be unfolding 200 yards at a time.”
Photo Copyright Terrah Lozano, 'Road to Jeri' Jericoacoara, Brazil
Embracing Uncertainty
Let’s think about this. You only see a small portion of the road for every 200 yards. You can’t see the entire way. So, at each 200 yards, you have to re-assess the situation. You have to see if there is ice up ahead, roadblocks, traffic stops, is your exit coming soon? Sometimes we all plan this down to the smallest detail. But sometimes it’s more enjoyable to just embrace uncertainty and allow things to pop up in life.
If you had asked me a few months back if I was going to be a writer/blogger, I wouldn’t have known.  I honestly didn’t know a whole lot about blogging and becoming a writer was something I saw in the far future.
The path that led us to this juncture in our lives, to this blog and many other things, came from embarking on a spiritual quest and following our intuition.
A Story:
A few months ago my wife Terrah and I decided to make some changes in our lives and moved apartments. Shortly after our move was completed, Terrah got sick (which is unusual for her) and this slowed us down from working on what we had pre-determined were our plans. When she got sick, we took the signal to mean that the universe, God, Budda, Allah, Rah, Krishna, Higher Power (whatever you call it) had grander plans than we did for our lives.
The universe led us to the next feeling that acting on our original plans didn’t feel right with our Being, our gut, or our instincts (whatever you want to call it). So, I felt the need to read more about intention and manifesting in our lives.
This signal led me to finding and subsequently reading Wayne Dyer’s The Power of Intention. Subsequently finding this book after feeling this intuition could merely be called a coincidence. I don’t believe it was a coincidence because I believe everything happens for a reason. (And if you are reading this now and something pops out at you, will you take it as a coincidence and brush it off like Scrooge and say, “Bah Hum Bug”? or will you embrace your intuition and act?)
Anyhow, long story short, by embracing uncertainty and intuition and ACTING upon those feelings, the path of reading Power of Intention took me to discovering blogging. A series of seeming coincidences collided to produce the manifestation of my passions through writing and helping people.
In this article, I provide some insights in the form of life lessons I learned from my travel experiences. Travel to me is a vital component of living a fulfilling life experiencing the world.
You probably know someone who has spoken about having a travel experience. It might be you, it might be your son or daughter, or someone else close to you. I hope through writing about my experience it enables you to approach this conversation from a different view.
If you are hesitant and afraid of allowing yourself or your loved ones to travel, please be open to obtain a new perspective of the life experience you or they could gain from it. The hesitations and fears will never be eliminated, but through proper research and education, I hope that you are able to contain them. One such program that I utilized that may help contain your fears was i-to-i.
A little background information…
During my junior year of college, I did a 6-month study abroad program in Europe where I was based in Rotterdam, Holland. When not studying, I would travel and spend my time in several countries including Ireland, England, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Turkey, Denmark, and Holland. I thoroughly enjoyed the unique cultures of each of these countries and it was then that I came down with the ‘travel bug.’
Everyone should have an experience like this in their lifetime, especially while in college. It should actually be a required experience because it is a real eye opener to look at your life from a different, outside view perspective.
You re-think everything and learn to follow your heart. This is a great characteristic to have while going through life. This study abroad experience, for me, was the start of a never ending travel bug that, like many others with similar experiences, will never go away (thankfully).
After my initial study abroad experience, I completed several more trips including going back to Turkey and visiting Mexico. However, after all this, I wanted a unique experience. I came across the prospect of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and a company that offered a quick way for me to get this certification by doing my training online. This company was i-to-i.
Photo Copyright Terrah Lozano 'Sarong of a Brazilian Flag' Salvador, Brazil
Through i-to-i, I immediately completed all the requirements including TEFL certification, several inoculations, visa work, red cross CPR training and many other travel related tasks. (Seem a bit overwhelming? Don’t worry because i-to-i provided a checklist depending on the country and program you chose to get it all done.) I then decided to enroll in one of the volunteer programs offered through i-to-i.
In late summer of 2004, I was off to Brazil for an 8-week volunteer experience teaching English to Brazilian teenagers. I had also scheduled in an extra few months of solitary travel afterwards (which I recommend for you as well) in which I traveled around the vast country of Brazil visiting its towns including Olinda, Jericoaracoara, Recife, Joao Pessoa, Salvador, Lencois, Ilheus, Rio De Janeiro, and many others along the way.
Like all travels, my experience in Brazil led to many unexpected turns including discovering a favela (a Brazilian slum) in which the community lived and thrived on a landfill. I was able to visit this community as a side project each week to visit the children and bring food. These experiences were incredibly humbling and can never be replaced.
Now, here are 13 life lessons I gained from my i-to-i travel experience:
Walking away from your daily life gives you an opportunity to really find who you are and what your passions truly are.
I have the opportunity to get to know something new about myself each time I travel. When you are experiencing something new you see yourself in a new light. You enjoy things you maybe never saw yourself enjoying and this is how you find your passions. You are able to look inward and find yourself.
To take control of your life you must take that first bite out of that huge elephant called information and action. Everyone faces similar obstacles on how to digest and implement the gauntlet of new information and ideas that we are constantly exposed to and expected to consume. We are faced with information overload almost daily. The problem isn’t having enough information, the problem is sorting through it for information implementation. Not only must we read, watch and learn from many sources, we must also implement the relevant information into our lives.
Knowledge without action is useless. It is through action that we grow, our lives get better, and we attain a sense of fulfillment.
, “Imagine yourself driving from LA to NY at night. How would you do it? You would have your lights on and the road would be unfolding 200 yards at a time.”
. Subsequently finding this book after feeling this intuition could merely be called a coincidence. I don’t believe it was a coincidence because I believe everything happens for a reason. (And if you are reading this now and something pops out at you, will you take it as a coincidence and brush it off like Scrooge and say, “Bah Hum Bug”? or will you embrace your intuition and act?)