Petra Udomprasert on Life, Lessons & Legacy

We’re looking forward to introducing you to Petra Udomprasert. Check out our conversation below.

Petra, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
Hi! Sure. On an average workday when I’m not on a trip, I’d wake up around 7 in the morning. I’d first get ready for the day, drink a bottle of water, meditate for 15-20 minutes, and then read a book until 9:30 before starting my work day. The book is usually non-fiction and helps me grow my business or gain new perspectives on life in general. If it’s a day on a trip abroad, well then, it’s unpredictable and quite dependent on what I have planned for the day, but it usually starts with breakfast at some super local spot that I want to try out and see if it’s worth recommending to my readers.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Petra. I believe that discrimination has no place in our world. It’s true that we’re not all the same, and we’re not supposed to pretend like we are, but that difference is a beautiful thing. I want a world where we can all appreciate and respect each other’s differences instead of fearing and avoiding them, and I believe traveling can fix that. So, as a cultural travel blogger, I deeply explore the history and culture of every place I visit to get to know it as much as possible. I also leverage my fluency in five different languages to access the local perspectives and write travel guides that highlight a place’s meaning, not just its biggest tourist attractions.

Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What was your earliest memory of feeling powerful?
This may sound strange, but I never felt much power until I was 28 years old. I can’t remember exactly how it all started at school, but I was always the odd one out. Thankfully, I always had one or two friends with me, but I was never popular, and I’d get a lot of verbal abuse, especially in middle school, and involuntarily, I believed those words.

Pretty soon after I turned 28, I was trying to figure out how my self-esteem problem came about, since it very clearly didn’t come from inside the home. And then I realized for the first time how profoundly my time at school had affected me. The best part was how I also realized that the reality my classmates gave me didn’t have to stay my reality forever, and that I could create a new reality for myself, an identity that truly belonged to me. That was the first time I remember feeling powerful.

What fear has held you back the most in your life?
This is the easiest question. I had, and still have, the biggest fear of my work not turning out perfectly. This doesn’t just apply to professional work, but to any activities I’ve done since I was a child. I was very fortunate to get to try everything I wanted, but I ended up quitting most of them because, not shockingly, I couldn’t do them perfectly on the first few tries. Ballet, singing, flute, and a handful of other things.

I still get crippling fear before starting a new project today, but knowing what I know now about growth and improvement, I push myself into it. Perfection just doesn’t exist because we’re always growing. Even if I’ve worked something “to perfection” today, my future self, a year from now, will immediately see how she can make it better. And isn’t that the most intriguing part of improving?

So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. Is the public version of you the real you?
The photos of myself that I put on my blog or on Instagram? Yes and no. They show parts of the real me, but no one will ever have access to all of who I am at once.

I believe in showing up as your authentic self, but it’s impossible for a few photos to capture someone’s entire personality. Even when I’m in public, like maybe walking around in a mall with a friend, strangers who see me won’t get the same version of me that my friend does.

So what’s the definition of the public version? The version of me my friend sees when I’m in public with her, or the version of me strangers see when I walk by them? Do you know what I mean? And that doesn’t just apply to me. All of us are so multifaceted that I don’t think we can know 100% of someone.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: If you laid down your name, role, and possessions—what would remain?
Probably a nameless soul that wants to travel, not for a job, but just for the sake of seeing new countries and experiencing new cultures.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://polyglotpetra.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/polyglotpetra
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/polyglotpetra
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/polyglotpetra

Image Credits
All images belong to Polyglot Petra or Petra Udomprasert