A few weeks ago I felt a crippling anxiety about my future.

I realized that months of travel had completely changed me. The girl who had been so focused on her goals was no longer the same girl that I saw in the mirror.

This girl had no clue what she wanted to do with her life. The aspirations she once had no longer felt big enough. She was lost, dazed and scrambling to make sense of it all.

For about four months I felt like I was running into walls. I would hit one, turn around hit another, turn around and smack my head on another, the cycle was ever ending.

I felt like I had gone all in on my dreams of traveling the world and I had failed. With my bank account dwindling and losing hope that I would never figure out what I wanted out of life-I felt like I was drowning in a pool of my own expectations.

Yesterday I had an epiphany.

What happened in five months of travel?

I had changed. My life had changed. My goals had changed.

And that was it.

As I ran into wall after wall, I was so stunned that I was really running into doors. Doors that had been locked behind me after I took that initial leap of going all in on my travel dreams.

The doors that I walked through are a clear representation of the life that I was living, the person that I was and the aspirations I dreamed of making reality.

When I decided to go all in on my passion for travel, I outgrew who I was, my old lifestyle and my goals.

Those doors shut behind me for a reason. What stands behind those locked doors is a life that is no longer on a parallel level to me.

What happened when I went all in on my dreams is that as a woman, I leveled up.

I became an entirely new person who was capable of so much more and had reached a new potential that she didn’t know existed within herself.

To try to walk back through those doors would be like demoting myself of the promotion that I just earned.

I have to redefine myself. I have to embrace the lifestyle change that I have brought into my life. Most importantly, I have to sit down and write my new goals.

This set of new goals makes my stomach flutter. I could have never imagined being a person who is focusing on aspirations that high and it all comes down to having taken the initial leap into an unknown world that incidentally ended up changing myself and my life forever.

The most important action you can take when dealing with a fear of your future is to realize that you’re actually scared of the unknown.

When you walk through new doors, you are on a brand new floor.

Your job is to explore that new floor. Turn on every light switch, look out every window and see what’s inside every single room.

The change that is happening in your life is beckoning you to explore within it.

Just remember: change is only as terrifying as you allow it to be.