Traveling tends to be one of those bucket-list items, rather than being a routine part of people’s lives. Hardly seen as a necessity, most treat traveling as a dream that they can indulge in every now and then when they have the extra cash.
The truth, though, is that traveling is more than a welcome break from your daily routine. Whether you decide to spend the weekend thirty minutes away from your comfort zone, or plan a major trip where the journey is as much a part of the trip as the destination, you’ll discover something amazing:
You feel better.
Emotionally, physically, and all round better.
And there are some simple reasons why this is the case.
EXPLORING SOMEWHERE NEW REDUCES STRESS
When you’re too busy feeling excited and stimulated by new experiences, you forget to feel stressed. You are also taken out of the everyday settings that contain your usual stress triggers, thus giving you an instant reprieve.
As much as you might think what you need to relax is to just sit on your couch, binge watching your favourite series, the truth is that there’s nothing more distracting and completely attention-grabbing as an entirely new situation that only asks for you to enjoy it. And admit it, how many times do you end up checking your phone while you think you’re complete absorbed in that show?
TRAVEL TEACHES YOU PATIENCE
We live in a world of instant gratification, and as such, without even being conscious of it, you expect your life to run exactly how you think it should. Every day, all the time. Conversely, we don’t expect to be able to control unfamiliar experiences as inherently as our day-to-day lives.
When traveling, it almost becomes part of your survival instinct to go with the flow and give up the power to however the trip goes. Each place has its own way of working, that you need to first learn before you can take any sort of control, and such patience can be taken back into your everyday life –serving you and your stress levels well.
SOCIAL ANXIETY WILL BE REPLACED WITH CONFIDENCE
If the idea of having a conversation with strangers sends you into a quick sweat, then traveling is the perfect crash course way to improve your confidence. You’ll have to interact with different people daily out of necessity, and after the first few times, you’ll suddenly discover that you don’t mind so much.
You could even start to enjoy chatting to different people, with life experiences differing from yours and opinions you never would have heard otherwise. Once you start to enjoy and seek out these conversations more and more, you’ll slowly start to notice that you are much more confident and relaxed, and can take this back home to your usual social interactions.
A LEARNING BRAIN IS AN ACTIVE AND HEALTHY BRAIN
They say that there’s no better teacher than experience, and in a new situation, your brain is constantly engaged, trying to take in all the new information and put it together to make sense. New sensory experiences, such as different tasting food and new sights and smells, force your brain to fire those neurons to interpret it all.
No lazy brain cells here!
Above all else, traveling allows you to feel like you are living life to the fullest, experiencing all you can, rather than just sticking to your comfort zone. This can be incredibly powerful to your overall emotional well-being – from the exciting anticipation while planning the trip, to the trip itself and even afterwards when you can look back on amazing memories.
So where will you go next?