Expanding Comfort Zones With Travel
It’s been awhile since I’ve released a Motivational WebTV episode but I’ve got some interesting video footage from a 10 day trip to Asia visiting three different countries – China, South Korea and Philippines. It’s really the footage I took in Beijing, China that I’m going to use but it will end up in at least two entertaining episodes including the one here.
If you have been following my Motivational WebTV series, you know that I have always considered international travel as a way to expand one’s comfort zones. The more foreign the country, the more comfort zone expansion.
With this trip, I ventured into two different countries, China and South Korea, where I do not speak the local languages – namely Mandarin and Korean. I did get some friends to help me with foreign language cheat sheets with useful phrases in these languages prior to my trip but I certainly could not hold a conversation in these languages.
Instead of taking organized tours with English speaking guides, I chose to explore and sight see in Beijing and Seoul myself. It would have been much easier to have somebody taking me around and explaining things in English but I wanted to expand my comfort zone more and do it on my own — plus it would save me a lot of money too.
In fact, I was successful in touring the Great Wall of China myself and saved a bundle by not using an organized tour group. I have enough photos and tips to do this kind of tour which I will summarize in the next Motivational WebTV episode after this one.
Crossing Crazy Beijing Traffic
For this episode, I’m going to show you just how crazy that Beijing city traffic was and how I sort of risked my life crossing a very busy street. Beijing is known for its size, conjestion and air pollution. The air was so bad that my allergies acted up again.
But as you will see in this video, I managed to get across the busy street in one piece even though the cars, buses and even bicycles do not yield for pedestrians. What I did was follow the locals whom I assume know what they are doing since they navigate through the crazy Beijing traffic every day.
Here is the video;
Even though I cannot read Chinese or speak Mandarin, I was soon able to navigate myself from the Beijing airport to the city centre where I was staying and use the public transit (namely subway) to see the city sights like the Forbidden City and get out to the Great Wall. Of course I did prior research to see where the routes were but at the end, I had an enormous sense of satisfaction that I not only got around the sights myself, but also did it at a fraction of the cost I would have paid if I went with organized tours.
The next Motivational WebTV episode will be awesome photos and video from the Great Wall of China! It is not to be missed.
Share This Motivational Video With Others
If you know others who would like this motivational video, please share it with them. There are buttons on the blog post to easily share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and by email. All past episodes are at my Motivational WebTV Archive.
The last episode before this one was actually a rare one featuring a Dose of Motivation about No Regrets in your life.
Feel free to share below in the comments area what you feel about the crazy Beijing traffic and maybe how it compares to your city.
Wow, looking at this video, I can’t imagine an entire family crossing the road at once. It may be safer to pay for those expensive group tours to get around Bejing.
Oh for sure. Families with smaller children are best ferried around in a private van or cab around Beijing.