Today, I’m revisiting one of my favorite episodes of The Travelers, #183, an interview with Jonathan and Quinn Button from Life out of the Box, a company that takes the Tom’s shoes model — but instead of shoes, it’s local artiisanal crafts, such as bracelets and apparel, handmade by locals — and for each sale, a portion of the proceeds goes towards providing supplies to teachers in that very same local area. And I love this, not only because education is the most important cause, in my opinion, and so their mission is very close to my heart, but also that they literally followed Holocene’s 8-stage process to transform themselves from aspiring entrepreneurs to successful, world travelers and thought leaders in their field. They’ve found success and fulfillment in who they transformed themselves into using Curiosity and Creativity to find transformation. This is Holocene. So I’m really excited to delve back into this case study from episode 183, so you can see how this transformative experience framework works.

Creativity is the forgotten third act of transformative experience.

This is Season 3, Part 7 of 12, in which we move into the final part of every transformative story: Creativity. Despite how seemingly transformational a travel experience might be, why is it that most people never change after their travels and instead return back to living the same life and being the same person? It's because the most overlooked part of every transformational travel experience is also the hardest. What do we do when we get home? How do we hold onto the sense of self, our travel self, that we reconnected with on the road? How do we convert the inspiration to change into actual lasting change? This episode answers all of that and more.