Millennial Travel: Combining Exploration and Personal Development (Part 3)
This is the third and final blog post covering my 2 and a half week solo trip to the United States in June exploring New York, Atlanta and Boston. It was a truly fantastic experience — I made the conscious effort to focus on listening to and meeting millennials living in the US to hear about their lives and daily experiences. I wanted to find out: Is the US still ‘Land of the Free’? Has the Trump presidency actually affected their daily lives? What does it feel like to study, live or work in the US?
Assuming you have read part 1 and part 2 of this post then here is the third instalment!
In this blog post below, I highlight some of the places I went to combining personal development into my trip. Hopefully, this is an insightful post for fellow solo travellers as well as those planning their first trip.
There is so much more to travelling than taking nice photos! — Tweet this
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Brooklyn Botanic Garden
A beautiful and large botanic garden. I actually stopped to meditate for 30 mins in this park and ended up falling asleep for an hour. LOL. Beautiful setting and incredible views.


Travel tip: Spend as much time as possible outdoors admiring nature’s beauty. I also visited the High Line in NYC too which is equally calming despite being in the middle of busy New York City. Step outside and enjoy the outdoors. Nature is so beautiful. We ought to appreciate it more.
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Co-working spaces
I visited a couple of co-working type spaces whilst in NYC including The Wing a pretty and popular female co-working space in Dumbo, Ace Hotel for a cool photography experience and some events and WeWork Hudson Boulevard for a workshop on ‘Developing emotional intelligence in the workplace’.

Travel tip: Co-working spaces tend to have events and are another great place to meet people!
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Economics Solution Center — Brooklyn NYC
Another event I found on Eventbrite. I visited and toured the Economic Solutions Center in Central Brooklyn which helps individuals and families with their financial support through workshops, financial counselling and other social support services.
I attended an event there led by Shemeka Brathwaite on ‘Finding your distinctive factor’. Shemeka ran through how to define, develop, promote and live through your distinctive factor (what makes you, you!). This event was intimate (about 8 of us) and so incredible. I really learnt a lot from the event and from talking to other attendees which helped me draw comparisons between my experiences in the UK. For instance, research shows it will take 220 years to close the wealth gap between the average African American household and the average white American households. Really interesting stuff!
We also did a great activity where we introduced ourselves to the room as ourselves in 5 years’ time. Tough but fun!
I learnt so much from Shemeka particularly about accountability groups (calls with friends where you challenge each other on personal and career goals) and daily affirmations (positive statements you say to yourself every day). Both of which I have added into my life post my holiday!
‘Every time you speak you are auditioning for leadership’
Shemeka on promoting your distinctive factor, and
‘you need to shine like a diamond so you can break that glass ceiling’.
Travel tip: Put yourself out there and find ways to have conversations with people in different communities.
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Overall my experience in the States was truly amazing. I learnt a lot by doing less talking and listening to the people I met. I made some great friends and I had a great time!

To summarise the travel tips:
- Spend time outdoors and enjoy nature!
- Visit and attend events in co-working spaces
- Put yourself out there and have conversations with those in the local community
I highly recommend combining personal development with your holidays too.
Hope you have enjoyed all three blogs! If you want me to cover anything else about my trip including how I saved and budgeted for it or how I found out about events in more detail, let me know by emailing me at chat.millennialmarya@gmail.com or messaging me on socials.
