WHere?! Nomad Local Blog

“Where did you stay all these days?” asked the border police between Macedonia and Serbia. When I told them I’d been at a friend’s house, they almost didn’t let me through. “You cannot stay here for more than four days without reporting your stay,” they said. After an interrogation, they let me go with a warning.

During my Cultural Journey, I realized there were many unknowns. I didn’t know I had to report my stay in Skopje after four days, and neither did my Workaway host who lived there.

The question is: what did I learn? Well, mistakes can cost you, and in a Cultural Travel, resources are precious. But the more important question is: how do I avoid repeating it? And if I do repeat the same mistake, does that mean I’m not learning? Not necessarily.

The Error-Learning-Strengthening Cycle

Recently, I’ve heard from Couchs that smart people learn from others’ mistakes to avoid them. However, the ability to learn doesn’t work the same for everyone.

If you don’t learn from others’ errors, it doesn’t make you less intelligent. Sometimes, you need to experience mistakes firsthand to realize you’re vulnerable to them. When that happens, you can either take them in two ways: in the negative way, as frustration, or in the positive one, as a strengthening experience.

Also in WHere?!: Cultural Travel as a Discipline: The Importance of Physical and Mental Training Before the Journey

When traveling, I was often advised to leave hours ahead of time, but my arrogance, thinking “that won’t happen to me,” led me to miss more than one bus. Sometimes, it was inevitable, as each situation was different. Once, I arrived two hours early and still missed the bus.

In this case, I had learned from my past mistakes, but other situations brought new errors I couldn’t prevent. So if no one has made these mistakes before, someone will eventually be the first.

“”The strength gained through mistakes and learning prepares us to face the next error.”

Mistakes are part of life’s natural process to learn. We are human, and imperfection is part of the journey. Committing mistakes during a Cultural Travel, mistakes make us stronger. It give us the awareness to recognize when wer’re doing the things wrong based on experience and allowing us to correct our actions in time. In this way we make the mistake-learning-streghtening cycle.

Mistakes as Growth

I was sure I’d catch that bus. I was staying with my Couchsurfing host in Liverpool and had 25 minutes left, enough to walk. My backpack was heavy, and I soon realized I was cutting it close. I arrived just when the bus was supposed to depart, but it was gone.

After asking around, I found out it had left early. That bus was my ride back to London, and I had to wait until midnight for the next one. I made a mistake about something I didn’t know, something no one had told me before.

“To pass through the Error-Learning-Strengthening cycle, we need to detect and admit the error. But it’s only through correction that learning happens.”

The strength gained through mistakes and learning prepares us to face the next error. Accepting that we are vulnerable to have mistakes helps us manage emotions. Such as frustration, fear of failure, or fear of error because we understand that committing mistakes is normal.

What matters is what we do after accepting the mistake. To pass through the Error-Learning-Strengthening cycle, we need to detect and admit the error. But it’s only through correction that learning happens. This is where we realize that to learn, we need a real change. And that’s growth.

Only then do we stop repeating the same mistake. This prepares us to face future challenges; we learn that it’s fine to have errors. But we also need to change to grow. With humility, we accept that we will commit mistakes while traveling, but these mistakes will make us stronger.

I write this blog to help the community avoid the mistakes I have made. Nevertheless, you will make other ones, and in doing so, you will change and become better. So your learnings will help others who want to travel like you.

In the end, to pass through this cycle completely is not easy. Although, it’s worth it and it will help you in any part of your life when you back home. As I mentioned before, that’s why a travel changes you to better even if you are not aware of it.