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This is certainly a scary time for all of us as we can see substantial changes in the world as we know it. The outbreak of Covid-19 is affecting everyone all over the world and will certainly have a huge negative impact on millions of people.
We can see thousands of companies on the verge of bankruptcy, people losing their capacity to make a living, and many industries are slowing to a halt. Tourism is by far one of the most affected sectors worldwide.
Like never before we can see how countries in every corner of the globe have closed their borders and flights have been canceled. This is definitely a new and scary scene we could not have anticipated.
But something is true and that’s a fact: WE LOVE TO TRAVEL. No matter what is going on in the world, our love and passion for travelling, exploring new destinations, learning from new cultures and having adventures hasn’t changed at all.
If anything, it has grown stronger and we are counting the days till the moment we can travel again and explore this world we love so much!
And why is this? Why do we love it so much? Why are we eagerly waiting for the moment borders reopen and flights become operational again? Why is it that travelling brings the best of us and puts a smile on our faces and provides us with amazing memories and experiences?
Scientists have proved that travelling is good both for your body and your mind and can bring happiness and satisfaction like no other activity!
Now we would love to share with you 10 of the most amazing benefits of travelling that can better express and explain why we are anxiously waiting for that moment we can do it again!
Broaden Your Horizons
Travelling means being constantly exposed to something new… new people, new cultures, new locations, new ways of life, new languages, new realities and more. And if one is open to take that in without any judgment or prejudice, it will certainly help you expand your horizons, grow your knowledge and understanding of the world and people.
It will certainly help you grow, be more understanding, take in new abilities and be able to properly understand other realities and ways of life vastly different to yours, neither better nor worse, simply different.
Travelling is the best way to break up prejudice, preconceptions and bring people closer together. Once one can properly see other realities, immerse in them, one can take in amazing new perspectives on life and ideas that can adapt to your own. It brings humility, comprehension, and perspective. It may even help you appreciate your own life better!
Travelling certainly is great for your mind, and humankind in general as well!
Learning about cultures and truly experiencing them for yourself, not just by reading a book or watching a movie is something unique and what every true traveller desperately seeks.
The idea of being challenged or learning something new and diving deep in a new world will make you come out of it as a new and much richer person. As the saying goes, travel is the only thing you can buy that makes you richer!
Improve Your Health
Travelling is healthy. It is healthy for your mind and your body. Travelling can mean being outside one’s comfort zone, exploring new locations, being exposed to unknowns, new feelings, new scents, new people, all of which are great for your soul and mind.
When you travel you can also take in healthier habits! Go to sleep and wake up to the sound of nature once you are done resting and not when the alarm clock goes off and you must jump out of bed to work.
It can mean taking the time to enjoy a proper breakfast without rushing out. Travelling can mean long walks to explore new cities and destinations which is great for your body. Depending on your interests it may even mean hiking, trekking, and adventure sports!
In some other destinations, it may mean just relaxing and chilling by the pool or the ocean on a beautiful beach to achieve some peace of mind and learn to slow down again. Travel is your cure!
And there is something else which is one of the most important ways travelling can help with your health! Think of all your travels and holidays…
What can you remember it when you go back to those feelings? Happiness? Laughter? Hugs? Memories? All of those are amazing things that will help you be healthier without a doubt! “A good laugh heals a lot of hurts.”
Learn About Yourself
Travelling is also an opportunity… an opportunity to learn about yourself and better understand and comprehend your tastes, your likes, your interests, and your feelings.
Travel, by nature, means changing your routine and your normal day to day life for a while. How many times are we so deeply immersed in our life, our job, family, and tasks we need to do each day that we don’t even stop for a second to think and even consider what we are doing.
We just act, we just go…
When you travel you break that routine and get time to slow down, to think, to feel, to not be in a rush to do something just for the sake of doing it, you get to connect more with yourself.
You are more in touch with what happens in your mind and body, and experience a whole new set of sensations that can help you understand yourself better, see how you behave, what makes you tick, what appeals to you and what doesn’t.
Travel can mean not only to explore new exotic destinations but to explore your inner self. Take the opportunities when travelling of spending some alone time to go on an introspective trip as well!
Gain New Skills
As you can gather from everything we have already said, travelling can be a learning opportunity even bigger and more valuable than any course, school or lecture you take! You can learn about cultures, history, economic situations and even about yourself.
It can also be an opportunity to learn and gather new specific skills useful for your day to day life! It can mean learning a new language for instance. Every year more and more tourists travel the world with the main objective of learning a new language.
It can be people who want to perfect it or even some who know nothing about it and venture on a real adventure of picking it up from scratch! English, Spanish, French, Mandarin… whatever you want, there are amazing opportunities to learn these languages while travelling.
It can mean taking up a new hobby or perfecting it? Photography can be a great example. We see lots of visitors eager to take wildlife safaris in Africa with the main objective of expanding their photography knowledge and getting some more practical training!
There are even lots of options for those who want to combine a practical course with a theoretical one at the same time!
Some people may even use their holidays to go on a foodie tour and learn about the gastronomy of different countries in a theoretical and practical way by taking up courses and preparing amazing dishes.
Scuba diving, surfing, meditating, horseback riding… the endless opportunities, and it depends on what you want to learn. So just take that leap and go for it!
Have Fun
This one is easy and pretty straightforward! Travelling is fun! Travelling is exciting, it’s an adventure, it’s new people, it’s new amazing activities, it’s laughing, relaxing, discovering, dancing, exploring, diving in adventures…. all fun stuff that is great for you!
Even when we start planning our next trip, we already feel better by imagining all the amazing things we’ll get up to and begin enjoying it even before hitting the airport!
We encourage you to make the most of your travels and have as much fun as possible. Try the local cuisine, play games, go dancing, relax, embark in new activities, explore, and laugh and laugh some more.
Positive experiences reduce stress. So, if you are feeling too tired take some time off and travel, just go for it! It will do you a world of good!
Boost Your Confidence
Travelling can be an amazing experience, but it can certainly come with its challenges as well. As we said before, travelling, and especially travelling to new and exotic destinations can take you out of your comfort zone.
You can be exposed to daily challenges, new languages, understanding how people in other ends of the world operate, how to get a taxi or take a bus in a place different to your own, how to eat with chopsticks, how to ask for directions and how to identify if you should trust those directions and comments and make sure you are not going to be a victim of a scam for instance.
Travel means being constantly exposed to new scents and stimuli and learning how to manoeuvre, behave and enjoy while being alone or with family and friends in a new unfamiliar environment.
Don’t get us wrong, there’s a lot of excitement in this and in learning about different ways of life, but there are also challenges.
But challenges you can certainly learn to overcome and make the most of the new experiences and adventures.
Overcoming them while travelling will help you boost your confidence and feel better prepared when coming back home and confident about yourself and how to deal with new tough situations in your day to day life.
Create Memories
How long does a trip remain in your mind? Don’t you often find yourself recalling some great experiences of past trips? Do you see yourself just smiling, laughing, and reliving some wonderful situations from past travel experiences?
Do you go back to check pictures or videos from your trips? Maybe even some things you have collected from them or souvenirs you bought?
Those memories you create while travelling has the ability to stay with you forever and make you experience all of those emotions you had over and over again!
What’s even more, those memories you create can shape your personality and who you are. We are a collection of memories and past experiences and travel are one of those places where we tend to collect the most memorable experiences and feelings!
These memories will also make you richer and more interesting! The more memories you gather, the more stories you will have to share and the newer perspectives you’ll have to add on things and conversations.
So, keep collecting, keep creating those memories and keep visiting those happy places again so to enjoy the experience for longer!
Become More Employable
As we said before travelling can be an opportunity to gain new skills to take back home but it can also be a chance to learn or improve some of your qualities that will help you boost your CV and become more employable. Here are just some of those qualities that travel can easily improve and will make you more employable:
Creativity: travel, and especially those that include real connections and immersion with local communities and different cultures can help you create new and fresh ideas and improve your problem-solving techniques.
Once you face all the new challenges a trip takes you through, you certainly become more resourceful, creative, curious and with new original thoughts! Who wouldn’t want to hire a creative employee?
Patience: this is a huge and important quality for every job, no matter the area you are in, and travel can certainly help you with it. There are countless examples of how patience needs to be exercised and improved while travelling.
Lots of different situations and challenges will test you in this area, whether its delays, cancellations, different cultures, language barriers, etc.
Responsibility: this is a big one and major skill to have once you face new jobs. When you travel abroad, you are completely responsible and accountable for whatever happens. Your friends and family may not be there for you and you will need to find a way to solve problems, face challenges and ensure everything you planned to do on the trip is executed. This is an amazing quality to have!
Organizational skills: travelling involves planning. In general, one has a limited amount of time when taking a trip, and a lot you want to accomplish and visit.
It will involve planning, doing research, gathering information, setting up timelines and organizing what activities to do at specific times and how to get from one place to the next, as well as being able to adapt to unknown circumstances that may arise.
All the skills you put in place for this are valuable for any job you may embark on, and travelling will certainly help you improve them. Planning, researching, time management, organizational skills and adaptability are extremely valuable!
On the backside of these qualities that can help you become more employable; it is fair to say that travelling will also provide you with a great sense of freedom!
This sense of independence that travel promotes will also set you up to become your own boss, start your own business or become a freelancer!
Gain Friends All Over The World
As we mentioned before, travelling will expose you to meeting people from all over the world, whether they are fellow travellers or friendly locals. And if you have the right attitude and initiative, you will be able to gain amazing new friends from all over the world.
And now it is easier than ever to communicate with people from every corner of the world and keep those amazing relationships alive and plan reunions on different parts of the world to meet up again and keep enjoying and nurturing those friendships.
On a personal note, I am one of those lucky ones that can say I have friends all over the world and that they are some of my closest ones even if they are thousands of miles away.
I’m originally from Argentina and being able to say that some of my closest friends I share so much with and stay in constant contact with are from the US, UK, Norway, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe or Ghana is absolutely amazing!
The more you travel, the more people you’ll meet, and you’ll get to develop a personal network of like-minded individuals to share ideas, perspectives, stories and plan future experiences with!
Realize How Lucky You Are
We have already touched this subject briefly when we first started analyzing how travelling can broaden your horizons and give you a different perspective, but let’s dive deeper into it.
Corona Virus outbreak aside, it’s never been so easy to travel abroad as it is now… Places are more deeply connected and it’s “easy” to catch a flight and after just some hours aboard a plane be in a separate end of the world experiencing a different and unique culture.
But… that is not the case for everyone… Although the amount of flights and people travelling the world has increased over the years, it is not the case for most of the world.
Most people do not have the money nor the freedom to leave their homes and go on holiday. And even more than that, most of the world suffers from much bigger issues and concerns such as health, hunger, and poverty.
We are the lucky few that can even consider having travel as a “need”, a desire, or a possibility!
When you visit new places you may get to see different challenging situations the locals go through that will bring you a perspective of how lucky you are and help you appreciate everything you have and are. We tend to complain and immerse ourselves in our daily troubles but never really see how different our reality could be and how lucky we are.
Travelling exposes us to that and will help you appreciate your own life much more.
As you can see, the benefits of travelling are infinite and will affect you in every aspect of your life.
Travelling is growing, enjoying, learning, teaching, sharing, smiling and much more! The truth is that travelling can transform you and change your life and personality for the better!
And this is why we’ll keep travelling, we’ll keep discovering, we’ll keep enjoying, we’ll keep exploring our beautiful planet no matter what!
