57: Ginger Kern on Engaging Your Playfulness, Helping Others and Ourselves, and Travel as a Rite of Passage

Ginger Kern knew she wanted to leave her childhood home in the Midwest even when she was a young. She grew up reading books on adventure and mythology, which fueled her desire to get away.

So, when she had the opportunity to visit her family in Germany, she jumped on it. Even though she didn’t speak German and her family didn’t speak English, she was hooked on travel and living abroad. This was the beginning of her life fueled by travel, adventure, and a desire to help other people do the same.

In this episode, Ginger talks about embracing your playful side, taking rites of passage, and transforming herself and others.

Here are three things you can learn from Ginger:

Once we become adults, most of use lose our sense of playfulness. While this may be good in some situations, it absolutely prevents us from being our most creative selves.

Being playful allows us to experiment without worrying about ridicule. It allows us to be curious as we explore the world. That’s why Ginger likes to put herself in playful environments. “It is a question of how can I surround myself with the external environment that pulls from me to be playful, to be creative, to be in a space of wonderment and curiosity and experimentation. ”

She also believes we need to intentionally set aside time to be playful. “It’s the structure of ‘Okay, I’m going to actually to block out a chunk of time in my week or in my day that is for whatever comes out of my creative forays.’ It could just be two hours and you don’t have a set plan for those hours but you do something.”

When we set aside that time, we can’t judge ourselves so much. we just have to see what comes out. “And just letting it come out and allowing it to just be what it is, and not judging it until maybe later… but during the process, just let it come out.”

This minor shift in playfulness can have a massive impact on our creativity. Creativity requires an open mind, exploration, and curiosity, and play makes those things possible.

Ginger deals a lot with transformation. She has helped people overcome their doubts and has helped push them past their comfort zones. One example she gave was helping a woman who was feeling stuck creatively. Before her call with Ginger, the woman wasn’t drawing at all. But within 48 hours, she was able to reconnect with her creative expression.

But one thing Ginger emphasized was, she wouldn’t be able to be a source of strength for others if she wasn’t a source of strength for herself first. “I can only take my clients as big as I have gone myself… but really being a powerful stand for someone, that is sometimes tricky if you’re not being a stand for yourself… because it’s hypocritical. And so, helping others, if you want to use the word help… my goal is to really be a powerful stand for their power… in order to be able to do that, I have to be able to do that for myself.”

One thing Ginger noticed about her clients is, they are so eager to jump to the next level, but you can’t rush the process. “It’s always a process, right. So, there’s always expansion. There’s always that next level. And I think where some entrepreneurs might get caught up, is trying to force that next level… and what I found at least is that there’s so much to be learned just through the process of that.”

That’s why, before she can help others reach the next level, she has to reach the next level herself, and the only way she could do that was by getting support herself. “In order to effectively help, or effectively support, or effectively coach any of those things, I also have to have people pulling for me and so that does really bring me into that next level.”

One interesting observation Ginger has made about the world is, we no longer go through rites of passage. Before modern civilization took it’s hold on the world, previous generations had traditions that were passed down the line. People had to go through symbolic journeys, or rites of passage, in order to transition from one part of life to the next.

The concepts behind these stories and journeys all come up in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The archetypes found in the book spanned across all cultures and helped convey different messages and morals.

Ginger is now using travel as a rite of passage to help people deal with their own versions of these journeys from isolation to discomfort. “The rite of passage is a real tool and the way that I see it being a really effective tool… is going into a slightly scary situation of travel, where everything is unknown. You have to figure stuff out on the go. You have to deal with feelings of isolation, aloneness, uncomfortableness, discomfort… It’s such incredible work to see how someone can transform so thoroughly through travel.”

And when people come back from their trips, their hero’s journey, many come away completely transformed. “It’s beautiful, and inevitably, they come out on the other side and they’re so thrilled. They’re psyched about life because they see that they can handle it and they can take on a new challenge. They might even start seeking out new challenges and being more epic in their everyday life. That mentality, once you have it, it doesn’t leave you. It doesn’t just disappear.”

More shownotes for episode 57 with Ginger Kern