Tourist Attitude

TOURIST: Mario Chamorro

Please get Lost - Pic courtesy of Kta Vela

Being lost can help you to find yourself. I am not good at planning trips ahead of time. In fact, I usually prefer to travel by myself in order to inconveniencing fellow tourists due to my poor planning skills. As a result, I often get lost. At the beginning, this used to bother me. Now, getting lost is something that I really enjoy.

The Tourist Attitude helps you to take advantage of these types of situations. Looking back, every time that I got lost my creativity and resourcefulness increased significantly. Every time I got lost, I always ended up finding amazing places, meeting incredible people, and having fantastic adventures. Seriously, it’s okay to be lost, even in your day-to-day life. Once you accept that you’re lost, you start looking for new paths that you never imagined before.

In the words of Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan, “There are thousands of paths. They all lead nowhere. You must ask yourself one question: ‘Does this path have a heart?’ If it does, the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.” Having the right attitude will help you take advantage of being lost by finding a new path — one with heart.

TOURIST TIP: take a random train or subway and stop at a random station that you have never been to before. Ask an stranger there about cool things to see in that part of the city, and take a picture of something that catches your attention.

TOURIST: MARIO CHAMORRO

Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk

 
Have you ever felt the need to approach a random person on the street who catches your attention? Have you ever wanted to tell someone you already know about your thoughts, or, to share your ideas with others? Most of the time, you don’t take initiative because of your own fears. Finally, a few minutes later you start feeling regret and thinking, “if only I had the courage to take action, maybe something amazing could happen.”

The Tourist State of Mind is a great motivator to start taking actions by allowing ourselves to take chances in all sorts of situations in our daily lives.

HOW TO DO IT?

There is no a real secret, but something that has worked for me has been to take courage for just ONE MINUTE. For instance, I always thought the best way to improve a company where I used to work was to let the CEO know how unhappy the employees were. I was always waiting for the right occasion, but I could never find the right moment. Finally, I decided to take one minute of courage. I interrupted his lunch and told him about the issue. As a result of that conversation, the company adopted new measurements to improve employees’ well being.

Recently, I met up with a person who I had admired for more than 15 years, but never had the guts to tell her about it. This time, I decided to activate my Tourist Attitude for one minute of courage. I told her about how I felt, and we ended up going out for an incredible afternoon together. Getting up the courage for an act like that can be scary, but the relief afterwards — and the reward — can be huge.

Just think — One minute of courage can change the course of your life. Only ONE MINUTE! The results could be positive or negative, but getting a real outcome is better than waiting and worrying. Stop thinking and start acting. The greatest results require some risks, but only you are capable of making it happen. Be a tourist for one minute to let people know what you think. A lot of amazing things are waiting for you out there!

TOURIST TIP: Think of someone that you wanted to tell something that you feel for them. Use your tourist attitude for One Minute of courage to call our talk to them. Remember, ONE MINUTE is all it takes.

TOURIST: Mario Chamorro

A few months ago my friend Dan Paluska and I were kindly invited by Manon Slome to be part of her wonderful art project called: No Longer Empty. Little did I know about the challenge that I was going ahead of us, but decided to use my Tourist Attitude to embrace this experience as a new adventure, and immediately started working hard on creating a remarkable exhibit. As of today, we are still working on some final details, but we are in a good shape to launch our “Happy Room”. During the month of April we will be visiting several places in the Bronx to collect messages of happiness that will be used as part of the exhibit. Stay tuned! (for more information about this exhibit, you can click here.)

Tourist Tip: challenge yourself to create some art on a community project. Everybody has the potential to become an artist, everybody has the gift, and it’s time to share it with the world.

TOURIST: Mario Chamorro

Nieneke_TA

The other morning while I was commuting to downtown, I saw a couple of cute girls that looked a bit disoriented. I approach them to offered my help and that’s how I ended up meeting my new friends: Nieneke and Leticia who where visiting NYC from the Netherlands. Before our conversation started I was a bit hesitating to approach them, but luckily I decided to use my Tourist Attitude to break the ice by introducing myself on a non very conventional way. At the end of the subway ride, we exchanged emails and a day later we hanged out for a long period of time. Actually, we discussed the possibility of traveling together to the Caribbean in the near future.

Tourist Tip: My mom used to tell me: “Please TALK to strangers!” because as an only child, that was a good way for me to don’t get bored, and thanks to that skill, I’ve been able to meet fantastic random people all around the world such as Nieneke and Leticia who definitely made my day.

TOURIST: Mario Chamorro

Few weeks ago I decided to activate my Tourist state of mind to contact one of my favorite artists named Jonathan Harris. His response was incredibly amazing, and we have been emailing each other since then. In fact, when I emailed him for first time, he immediately encouraged me to be one of the early testers for his new master piece called:Cowbird, Since that day, I started a new diary to document my life, and challenged myself to take at least one picture per day combined with a story. (you can check the results here).

Jonathan is a fantastic human being that combines art and technology to show us our human side. His projects are both inspiring (the “Balloons of Bhutan ” project, made in the last Himalayan kingdom) and empowering (the “We feel fine, which scans the world’s blogs to collect snapshots of the writers’ feelings).

Being part of Cowbird made my day to day more interesting, because of the “Here and Now” effect that this particular challenge unconsciously produces on my mind.

You can also see some of Jonathan TED talks here.

Tourist Tip: Start your own Cowbird diary. I totally highly recommended!

TOURIST: Mario Chamorro

This afternoon I got this video from Sunnie Tölle who is the founder of the Happy Hap Project. The Holstee Manifesto is a truly master piece that inspire us to stop for a second and think in what is really important in life.

Tourist Tip: Happy biking day!

TOURIST: Mario Chamorro

I saw this video few weeks ago at TEDxCambridge and totally felt in love with it. I’m definitely going to include skydiving in my New Years resolutions for 2012.

Tourist Tip: Skydive like a fly!

TOURIST: Mario Chamorro

Ten days ago I decided to use my Tourist state of mind to accomplish a simple but meaningful task: to surprise one stranger per day with something awesome. As of now, I’ve carried heavy boxes for a maintenance Mexican lady in the street, have bought ice cream for somebody that said “I wish I had an ice cream”; gave my subway card to a Lebanese guy who was in a hurry, among others.

Our famous friend Gregorio Uribe (who just released his new album) gets on board with TA and records above’s video for us! Thank you Gregorio, we love you man!

Tourist Tip: take the 7WDC. There is nothing lo loss and awesome adventures ahead!

I totally encourage to check our Gregorio’s new album that was launched today. It’s simply AMAZING! You can find it here.

TOURIST: Mario Chamorro

TEDx events are fantastic scenarios to share ideas that are worth to spread. I’ve been following TED.com for the past 3 years and have been fascinated by the amount of great talks where I learned about science, technology, and sociology among other topics that have inspired me to create ideas such as Tourist Attitude.

I’m very happy to report that I have been invited by the selection committee of TEDxBogota to present Tourist Attitude in December 12, 2011 at Julio Mario Santodomingo’s public library. Now is the time to think deeply about how can I fit all the things that I’ve learn from Tourist Attitude in less than 18 minutes.

Tourist Tip: create your own TED talk about something that you’re really passionate about and present it to a group of your friends or family. It can be anything!

TOURIST: Mario Chamorro

Mario's Mom

One of the things that used to bother me a lot when I was a kid was being asked by my mother to stand up straight every single minute of my life, especially in front of my friends or even worse, in front of a girl that I liked. Little did I know that my mom intended to empower me instead of embarrassing me, correcting my posture that was totally key for gaining confidence in myself.

Now think for 5 seconds, about what is your body posture when you’re visiting a new fantastic place….. When you’re a tourist, your body posture is totally open to the world. Some of the magic behind all these positive feelings that we have when we are tourists comes from our body posture. Also, it has been scientifically proven that body postures that convey competence and power changes our testosterone and cortisone levels, increases our appetite for risk, and causes us to perform better in job interviews, and generally configures our brains to cope well in stressful situations.

TA_Posture

Tourist Tip: wake up from your desk, open your legs and arms as broad as you can (similar than the above picture) and think for a second how you feel….