Travel is so much more than instagrammable sunsets and meeting new people. There are mixed reasons why people travel and those reasons are always personal. Travel is good for your body (as it gets our blood flowing) and mind, since a significant amount of scientific research suggests that exploring a new place can do wonders for your mental health as well.
Articles may talk about how restless, financially reckless, or untethered this generation is in pursuing their adventures in traveling. For your physical health, think about all that running around, catching your flights, making it to the train stations, or walking around trying to find those tourists spots. For your mental health, here are the benefits to improve your well-being:
1. You get to reinvent yourself.
Traveling can help you rethink your life. The valuable lessons that you learn along the way widen your perspective. Being confronted with differences in cultures helps you to re-evaluate your own principles and values and, sometimes, change them.
Or it could give you a new slate if you're recovering from a major transition in your life. If you are going through something, maybe it could ignite a passion in you.
2. It gives you self-confidence.
You can tell a lot about people's personalities and preferences if you travel enough, since you have the opportunity to communicate with strangers. Going on group tours or staying in a hostel will make it easier for you to make friends.
Your world becomes broadened. It gives us a sense of achievement when we party with people and bond with them during happy times or when they let their guard down and show their true selves to us, all in vulnerability. And you won't be self-conscious when you talk with people who have also traveled.
3. It increases your empathy.
This is sufficed by a study by Momondo, a website that helps you search for hotels and airfare information more quickly and conveniently. It added that traveling gave them "a more positive view on people from the countries they have visited, other cultures in general and on differences and diversity." You will feel more trusting, understanding, and tolerant different cultures and the types of people you see every day at home.
4. It promotes independence.
A few weeks or months away from home will definitely give you a sense of independence. Try living on less than £5 per day for financial security. Thus, habits abroad will transcend to your approach to simple day-to-day situations.
5. The world is your learning ground.
Ask your taxi driver about his local culture; you may be surprised how much you learn about the world through engaging with conversations while in transit. Communicating and engaging with locals with lead to learning about cultures.
6. It enhances your creativity.
Engaging with a place's culture increases your cognitive flexibility, according to Adam Galinsky, a professor at Columbia Business School and author of multiple studies that look into the connection between creativity and international travel.
Ready to travel?
