Lifestyle

If You Haven't Traveled, You Haven't Lived

by Gigi Engle

Travel is the juice of life. The adventures we experience live on in our hearts and memories forever.

The memories we create carry us through our most trying days.

Collages of photographs, Facebook time lapses, and endless stories make our lives three-dimensional and worthwhile.

It isn’t for the faint of heart to indulge in the wanderlust, to pick up everything and add another stamp on their passports in search of exploring an unfamiliar land.

It’s the brave who dive head first into other cultures, hungry for knowledge and experience outside of their own.

It’s the passionate among us who thirst for lessons only the world can teach them.

There's so much to experience in the world. Staying in one place and lusting over travel blogs is never going to satiate you.

And with T-Mobile’s Simple Global, you can stay connected with the ones you love all while seeing the world.

You'll have service in 120 countries. Sure, that means roaming -- but it's free! You can even make calls from every cool spots you discover with working Wi-Fi and you won't have to spend a fortune for a global plan -- it's already included. Not to mention, you'll be able to text from 30,000 feet up.

Your life will never be rich without the gathered, romantic observations waiting for you in far away places.

Don’t be afraid. Fear is poison for the spirit. If you haven’t traveled, you haven’t lived.

If you haven’t looked outside of yourself, you can never really know yourself.

Getting outside of what you know is the only way to truly learn about who you are as a person.

The most pervasive self-knowledge is only acquired through travel.

It’s about introspection and reflection. It’s about taking everything you’ve learned from other lands and seeing what you learn about yourself.

If you don’t challenge yourself, you won't know what you’re capable of.

You need to put yourself at risk to figure out where your breaking point lies. You have to step beyond your safety net to assess your resourcefulness.

You may be frightened, and it may seem overwhelming, but you'll be happily surprised.

You are not as meek as you think you are. You're no damsel in distress; you're a warrior with the will to survive and thrive.

If you don’t learn about other cities, you can never truly appreciate home.

How can you be grateful for what you have if you never know what it’s like to be without it?

By going to other cities, experiencing the languages of different people and seeing other lifestyles, you develop a frame of reference to compare to your own.

You’ll start to be grateful for your home in an entirely new way. Your home taught you to be who you are.

Your loved ones are the reason you are who you are today. You have to recognize there's life outside of your box in order to live your best life.

If you’re never scared, you can’t overcome.

Fear forms strength. If you’ve never been afraid, you’ve never tasted the headiest, most passionate depths of life.

Overcoming obstacles is how you pass from childhood into adulthood.

It’s how you master your skillset and traverse the unknown.

If you’re never completely, whole-heartedly terrified, you’re cutting yourself off from growing, and that's even more frightening.

If you don’t meet new people, you’ll miss out on meeting exotic, interesting friends.

The greatest friends are ones who have something to teach you. It’s the ones who offer a piece of wisdom that are the most valuable.

When you travel to new places, far away from everything you know, you’re the most adapt to learn.

You will meet so many new people from all walks of life, and each person will have some part of themselves to share with you.

If you never leave your backyard, you’ll deprive yourself of these incredible, satisfying encounters.

If you don’t traverse borders, you’ll be trapped behind boundaries.

There is nothing more smothering than staying confined to what you’ve always known, never breaching the walls that surround you in search of adventure.

Leaving your potential untapped out of fear is a wasted life.

If you can’t muster the courage to break free of your environment in exchange for new ones, you’ll always be naive and lost in a world full of wonder.