Let’s talk about comfort and what it does to your mind.
As long as you’re out on the road, you are constantly driven by very basic survival instincts. You’re looking for somewhere to stay the night, something to eat and new sights to thrill your already beating heart. You care for your visas, your rare Internet connection or for your stomach adjusting to the new food. All this helps you staying hungry for all the comfort you can get and all the new friends you can potentially meet. Everything is valuable.

But once you’re back home, having a fixed shedule day by day, you run the risk of loosing your interest in new things. Luckily, we have the best idea for those who want to stay hungry and not fall into boring routines.
We’ve said it before and we’re saying it again: Join CouchSurfing!

Our first guest, only a few days after our arrival in Sweden (which was by then still a frozen country of ice and snow) was Breno Cola. Breno is our Brazilian friend who we met through this blog, and who later on started his own journey and ended up in Sweden. We had a great time together, eating dinner, driving around Gotland and sightseeing in Stockholm with Breno, who was fascinated by the beaches all white and cold and beautiful. We never thought it was funny to walk over an ice covered beach, but Breno opened up our eyes. Brazilian beaches are hot and filled with tanning ladies in bikinis. All of a sudden we saw the wonder that Breno saw.

About two weeks after Breno left, we invited our first “real” CouchSurfers, Katrina from Poland and Michaela from Romania. It’s so easy to think that it is going to be tiring, or too crowded to squeeze in two more people at our 30 square meters. Why does it seem so different from when we’ve been the ones sleeping on couches all over the world? Well, the perspectives changes as your lifestyle changes. It’s perfectly logical, it is probably very normal and common too, but it is just as easy as everything else to change by one simple step. JUST DO IT.

Bring people into your home! You don’t need to do it too often. Just give it a try, and find that it can be the greatest boost for yourself. Having CouchSurfers staying over really makes you see your own life through new eyes. We rarely feel particularly grateful for the drinkable tap water in Stockholm, but our guests from Poland made us aware of the fact that this is a privilege. We don’t notice how clean the streets are, but our foreign friends are amazed! It takes us two days back in Sweden to forget how rare it is that cars stop for you in a capital city, or that the air feels fresh, or that having supermarkets and bars and parks and our offices nearby are also luxury benefits. We would not ever visit all the interesting museums in our city if it wasn’t for our CouchSurfers.

This actual exchange is in fact so eye opening that our minds are full of new ideas when the week starts over again. We’ve been traveling all weekend without moving. And the fear about our own comfort and privacy is far away since the very minute our guests enter our home.

Is you apartment really too small? Or your schedule really too busy? Or is it just your comfort that is too high for your own mind to grow? Give it a try, invite a CouchSurfer, or put yourself available for coffee or a drink. Making new friends keeps your mind fresh, and you will find overwhelming appreciation from your guests. Plus when you eventually DO move, there will be couches waiting for you in other countries.

Here you go once more: CouchSurfing.org – the easies way to fight your own comfort and let your heart grow!