10 Ways Travel Improves Your Life (So What Are You Waiting For?)
As If You Needed More Reasons to Travel
You likely already know that traveling helps you meet new people and explore new cultures and ways of life, but there are several other mental and physical benefits of traveling. Get ready to grab your bags and head out the door!
1. It Broadens Your Horizons
Mark Twain once said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” Although this is quite a general statement, traveling can open your mind to people and things you had never even considered before.
Meeting people from all over your own country or even all over the world will help you see issues and daily life from many different angles. Before you know it, your pre-conceived notions of a certain person or types of people are down the drain.
2. It Strengthens Your Relationships
There is no way to bond with someone quite like going on an adventure with them. Traveling is fantastic for couples, as it can bring them together through their shared experiences.
Likewise, friends and family members can foster closer bonds by spending prolonged periods of time together and all sharing a common experience. The downside of this is that all of that time together can create tension and falling-outs between people, but more often than not, it simply makes tighter bonds.
3. It Helps You Get to Know Yourself
Traveling might sometimes put you in positions you would not ordinary experience in your daily life. These kinds of situations can help you understand yourself and how you react to things and prepare you for future similar situations.
Being exposed to different people and different personalities can also help you understand how you relate to people, which can be a very useful carry over in employment and school. Also, long periods traveling can lend themselves to introspection you may not have the luxury of during the work or school week.
This can help you get to know yourself in a way you wouldn’t have been able to before.
4. It Strengthens Your Problem Solving Skills
When you travel, you are often put in situations you would never face at home. From trying to communicate with people through language barriers to trying to exchange and convert money, you’re always increasing your skill set.
Long lines at tourist attractions and other similar situations can also help you develop patience, which is great for people who are always on the go. Even though it can be boring, it makes you relax and smell the flowers for a bit—and further bond with your travelmates.
5. It Puts Distance Between Yourself and Situations at Home
If you’re struggling with issues at home, from relationships to issues at work or with your boss, traveling can put distance between you and the problem, giving you room to breathe and a fresh perspective on the situation. By the time your vacation or travel is over, you may have developed new insights into some of these issues that allows you to better solve it when you return home.
Hours on the road, on a train or on an airplane can leave you plenty of time to contemplate what’s going on in your life and how to properly approach the situation after extensive introspection.
6. It Gives Your Brain a Vacation
Although your brain never switches off, everyone needs a break from the monotony of daily life once in a while. This gives your brain time to process things that aren’t on the boring ordinary agenda.
Tying in with the first point, your brain being on vacation allows you to be present and mindful on your trip and start to analyze situations and cultural expectations of the new place you’re in. Processing new information is a great way to “switch off.”
7. It Gives You Exercise
It depends on what you do on a vacation, but for most people, touristy trips involve hours and hours of walking. Whether this is exploring a new city on foot or traipsing around an amusement park, your body is getting a ton of exercise and you’ll be having fun doing it (hopefully!).
Exercising can make you feel better mentally as well as endorphins are released upon physical exertion. This can mean a happier holiday in addition to possibly the kick-start of a new fitness regime.
8. It Allows You to Try New Food
Unless when you travel you stick to the same chain restaurants as at home, your adventures will likely involve your taste buds. Even if you are vacationing domestically, different areas within of countries are typically known for certain dishes, drinks and treats.
If you take the time to taste test some of them, you may walk away with some new recipes. It is an added bonus if the flavors you’re tasting are healthy as well, giving you new tantalizing tastes to introduce into your daily diet.
Do you know what foods and drinks to avoid in Paris? Stay away from these dishes so you don't get sick on your vacation!
9. It Relieves Stress
Although vacations themselves can end up being stressful due to issues with travelmates, unplanned wrenches in plans and other mishaps here and there, typically travel allows you to de-stress in a way that would be difficult at home. For example, if you choose to have a spa treatment whilst on vacation, you don’t walk right out into your regular life.
Instead, you are still on vacation mode, which means that your body and mind have a much better chance of reinvigorating. This is fantastic for people who have jobs or family situations with high stress, as you’ll return re-energized and reinvigorated.
And your body will thank you for it!
10. It’s Healthy, Especially for Older People
Think you’re too old to travel? Think again!
The Global Coalition on Aging has proven that travel is good for a body of any age. Women who vacationed less than once every six years were at a much greater risk of having a heart attack or experiencing a coronary death than those who traveled frequently, the coalition’s study showed.
Traveling and sharing new experiences also keeps the mind active, which can help reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by as much as 4%, according to The Global Coalition on Aging. So, it seems age cannot be used as a factor to deter one from traveling — in fact it should be an excuse!
