The Only Way to Find Yourself is to Get Lost: Vagabonding by Rolf Potts.
9/10 - A fantastic guide to travel and living.
High-Level Overview
At first glance, Vagabonding looks like a book about travel. But beneath the practical lessons on financing trips and packing clothes lies a beautiful philosophy and attitude towards life.
This book’s message deeply resonated with me. It challenged me to deeply reflect on my values and the things I find important. It’s a fantastic read for anyone who feels lost, burnt out, or behind.
To vagabond to live our most authentic lives.
10 Ideas
Vagabonding is about being a student of daily life. It’s the practice of learning, facing fears, altering habits, and cultivating fascination with places and people outside your ordered world. It's an adventure in normal life.
The goal of Vagabonding is internal - to improve your life in relation to itself. The challenge in embracing this mindset is the vague feeling of isolation that comes with it. Private sacrifice and improvement don’t garner much attention in the world of mass culture.
The secret of adventure is not to carefully seek it out, but to travel in such a way that it finds you. Trust in chance and steer it in a way where you're always learning. Live your life in such a way that allows dreams room to breathe. Discover the potential for adventure within yourself.
Strike the right balance between finding yourself and losing yourself. It’s these in-between moments where real growth takes place. It’s only when you’re lost that you can truly begin to find yourself.
There’s a bias towards being rich and doing well rather than “living well”. The more we associate the quality of experience with cash value, the more we think that money is what we need to live.
Wealth is found not in what you own, but in how you spend your time. A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. Don’t be the time-poor: people who are obsessed with tending their material wealth and social standing that they couldn’t spare the time to truly experience the splendor of the world.
How much time do we spend playing the games of others instead of appreciating the world around us?
Never underestimate your ability to learn and adapt quickly. The important thing is having the courage and attitude to make up for any savvy you lack at the outset.
Life is happening right now. It’s the soft music, the chatter of friends, and the dull food. While we often ignore these, seeking simplicity affords us the time to seek meaning in an oft-neglected commodity: life itself
Vagabonding is not an escape from real life, but a discovery of the one you’re meant to live.