What Solo Travel Taught Me About Who I Really Am (Lessons From the Road, Part 1)

Have you ever asked yourself who you would be if you had no one to please, no expectations to meet, and no one watching?

Most of us haven't.

We're too busy trying to be the person we were raised to be: the good girl, the high achiever, the one who always shows up for everyone else.

And somewhere along the way, we lose track of who we actually are underneath all of that.

Solo travel changed things for me.

In this post, I'm sharing the lessons I learned when I finally stopped going through the motions and stepped into the most liberating, soul-expanding experience of my life: traveling alone.

These aren't just travel tips.

They're life lessons that completely reshaped my relationship with myself, my body, and my purpose.

Why I Started Solo Traveling

I didn't plan to become a solo traveler. It happened out of necessity.

By my mid-twenties, I had achieved what most people spend decades working toward. I had a thriving business, financial freedom, and a life that looked great from the outside.

But inside, I felt completely empty. I couldn't hear myself think.

I didn't know what I actually wanted — because I had spent my entire life doing what everyone else wanted.

I was the ultimate people pleaser. If my parents needed something, I dropped everything.

If my friends wanted to go somewhere, we went there.

If someone in my life was uncomfortable, I made it my mission to fix it.

My entire emotional state was dependent on the emotional state of everyone around me.

And it was exhausting.

So in 2022, I made a decision that changed the trajectory of my life: I closed my physical business, booked a one-way ticket to Hawaii, and stayed for a month — alone.

The Big Lesson Before All the Lessons: Emotional Codependency

Before I dive into what I discovered about myself, I need to share the most confronting moment of my solo travel journey — because it set the stage for everything that followed.

On an earlier trip to Sedona, Arizona (a place known for its powerful energy vortexes and spiritual intensity), I connected with someone who was a few steps ahead of me in life.

In the middle of a conversation, they stopped and called me out.

They told me I was doing something they recognized clearly: I needed them to be okay so that I could be okay.

My first reaction? Offense.

I thought: do you not care about my feelings?

But then they explained it differently. They said: "I'm not responsible for your emotions. If I need to go through something, I just need you to witness me — not fix me."

That moment cracked something open in me that I didn't even know was sealed shut. I had spent my whole life managing the emotions of people around me — not because I was manipulative, but because it was the coping mechanism I had developed to feel safe.

If I could keep everyone around me comfortable, then I could feel okay too.

But that pattern was quietly destroying my ability to know myself.

6 Things I Discovered About Myself When No One Was Watching

When I arrived in Hawaii with nothing but a backpack, a travel hula hoop, and a month of free time, I had one mission: find out who Shanon actually is.

Here's what I discovered.

1. I Love Art — And I Had Been Denying It for Years

Growing up, I was equally drawn to art and science. But when I told my parents I wanted to pursue art, they didn't understand it. As first-generation Americans, they saw it as a hobby, not a career. So I listened. I let it go.

In Hawaii, I found myself gravitating toward art museums almost every day. One afternoon, I sat completely still in front of a sculpture for nearly 30 minutes — captivated, emotional, and deeply moved in a way I hadn't felt in years. A security guard eventually asked me to move along, but not before the experience reminded me of something profound:

We are all creative beings.

When we deny ourselves creative expression, we deny ourselves a piece of our humanity.

Creativity doesn't have to mean painting or sculpting.

It can be the way you cook, the way you arrange your home, the way you move your body, or the way you use your voice.

Any place where you're expressing the full essence of who you are — that's creativity. And you need it.

2. I Love Slowing Down — And I Had Been Rushing My Entire Life

For most of my life, I operated at one speed: fast.

I was up at 4 a.m., at the gym by 5, working from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and collapsing into bed just to do it all again. I had a constant low-grade anxiety that I wasn't doing enough, wasn't moving fast enough, wasn't building fast enough.

In Hawaii, I gave myself permission to do nothing.

To lay in the sun.

To listen to the ocean.

To read a book not because it was "productive" but because it felt good.

And I realized: the rush was self-created. 

It was never real.

I had been racing toward a finish line that didn't exist, at the expense of actually experiencing my life.

Slowing down isn't laziness. It's an act of radical self-trust.

3. I Love Hula Hooping — And Movement That Feels Like Play

Every morning in Hawaii, I would grab a musubi from the local ABC store, head down to the beach, put on music, and hula hoop.

I wasn't doing it for fitness.

I wasn't tracking anything.

I was doing it because it made me feel like a kid again.

I felt free, playful, and completely unconcerned with what anyone thought.

What I didn't fully realize at the time was that there was something deeply healing happening.

The spiraling hip movement of hula hooping is actually tied to somatic trauma release.

In my Buti yoga practice, we talk about how spiraling and shaking help restructure the body at a cellular level — releasing stored tension and stuck energy.

People would walk by and smile.

Some would stop and tell me how much joy it gave them just to watch.

That is what it looks like when someone is fully themselves — and it's contagious.

4. I Love Moving at My Own Pace — Without Apology

I grew up being teased for being "slow" — in Arabic, berdi. My family was always rushing, always maximizing, always pushing to get to the next thing.

I internalized that as something being wrong with me.

In Hawaii, I walked everywhere.

I rented a bike.

I hiked at whatever pace felt good.

I ate when I was hungry, rested when I was tired, and stayed as long as I wanted wherever I wanted.

And something surprising happened:

I felt more alive; I was more present in my own reality.

The anxiety of rushing had been robbing me of the actual experience of living. Slowing down wasn't falling behind — it was finally showing up.

5. I Love Being in Nature — Especially Mountains and Water

I didn't go to a gym once during my month in Hawaii.

My movement came from hiking, walking along the coastline, and being fully immersed in the natural world around me. And I felt better physically than I had in years.

There's a concept in human design around the environments where you thrive most. For me, it's mountains. Getting higher, gaining perspective, looking out over something vast and beautiful — it does something for my soul that no gym ever has.

Nature is not just exercise. It's medicine.

If you've been grinding in a spin class but feeling nothing, maybe your body is asking for something different. Movement that connects you to the earth, to your breath, to the present moment — that is the kind of movement that actually heals.

6. I Love My Spirituality — And I Had Been Afraid to Own It

This one was the most tender.

I had always believed in God, but I had questions about religion that I was afraid to explore. Going outside of the faith tradition I was raised in felt scary, almost like a betrayal.

But in Hawaii, surrounded by ancient land, sacred sites, and a culture deeply connected to spirit, I gave myself permission to ask those questions.

I visited the birthing stones — an ancient site where Hawaiian rulers were born, hidden from most tourists and pulsing with history and energy.

I met a spiritual teacher who welcomed me into her home and helped me deepen my connection to my intuition at a time when I was physically unwell and emotionally raw.

And slowly, I began to understand something that has shaped everything I do:

We all have God within us.

Our intuition is our connection to the divine — and when we are too busy, too disconnected, and too depleted, we can't hear it.

Reconnecting to my spirituality in Hawaii wasn't about finding a new religion.

It was about developing a personal, living relationship with something greater than myself — and trusting that relationship as my navigation system.

What This All Comes Back To

Every single one of these discoveries — the art, the stillness, the play, the pace, the nature, the spirituality — had one thing in common.

I could not have found any of them if I was still living for everyone else.

The people pleasing, the emotional codependency, the rush, the performance — all of it was keeping me from myself.

And the only way I found my way back was by getting quiet enough, and far enough from my normal life, to finally hear my own voice.

This is why I created Body and Soul Freedom.

Ready to Do This Inner Work Without the Plane Ticket?

My Body and Soul Freedom program was literally born from these experiences.

The lessons I learned in Hawaii — about reconnecting to the body, releasing stored emotional patterns, rebuilding your identity from the inside out, and finding what actually lights you up — are the foundation of everything inside this program.

It's for the woman who has been doing everything right and still feels like something is missing.

The woman who is high-achieving on the outside but quietly depleted on the inside.

The woman who is ready to stop going through the motions and start actually living.

Inside Body and Soul Freedom, we work together through:

• Somatic practices to release what your body has been holding onto

• Nervous system regulation so you can finally feel safe enough to slow down

• Limiting belief work to dismantle the patterns keeping you stuck

• Spiritual reconnection to your intuition and inner navigation system

• Full life alignment across relationships, identity, purpose, and joy

This is the work that changes everything.

If this post resonated with you, I'd love to connect.

You can send me a DM on Instagram and we can jump on a free consultation call together.

You don't have to travel across the world to find yourself. But you do have to be willing to go inward.

This is Part 1 of a multi-part series on the lessons Shanon learned through solo travel. Listen to the full episode on the Fuel the Fire podcast — available wherever you stream. 🔥