Lesson #1: Excitement is contagious.
In some ways, telling people we were going to leave our jobs and travel around the world seemed just as scary as, well, leaving our jobs and traveling around the world. It was crazy, right? The people who know and love us were going to tell us we were crazy.
We hatched the idea of going around the world on our drive from Washington, DC to my parents’ home in Nashville, Tennessee for Christmas. We talked about it to each other non-stop for the next several days. Could we afford it? Could we pull the trigger and do it? Where would we go? Is now the time? The more we talked, the more excited we got. It felt like the exact thing we had to do.
On the last day of our trip, we visited our friends Katy and Michael at their beautiful house in Nashville. Katy and I had gone to high school together, and they had pretty recently moved back to Tennessee after years in Ohio. We were talking about living in DC, and they asked if we expected to be there for a long time.
Rich and I looked at each other, he nodded, and I took a deep breath: “We are thinking about quitting our jobs, taking a year, and traveling the world.” I fully expected our lovely catch up to get super awkward as Katy and Michael realized that they had invited fully unhinged individuals into their home to eat brunch with them and their two young children.
“DO IT,” they said together. “You should totally do it. Please do it. That’s so exciting. Do it.”
And with excitement and relief, we shared with them all of the things that we had been sharing with each other about how we thought we could make it work and why now is the time. They encouraged us and shared thoughts of their own.
We got in the car and debriefed how well our first big reveal had gone! But surely Katy and Michael just happened to be our most open-minded, magnanimous, supportive friends. How will we tell our parents? How will we tell our bosses? There’s no way completely changing our lives can be met with such little resistance.
And this is why this is lesson number one: every. single. person. we have told has been excited for us. Even our parents who most want us to be safe. Even our bosses who are losing two good employees.
Telling other people that you are about to do the thing that is the most exciting thing to you makes other people excited too. It’s contagious.