Travel is one of the most rewarding human pastimes. Most people jump at the chance to travel when it’s presented to them. But when no opportunity presents itself, it’s easy to get lost in your daily life and forget to make time for traveling. Here’s 8 really good reasons why you should make travel a priority:
1. Traveling builds self-confidence
Travel can be wonderful and relaxing, but when things go wrong, it can be a major source of anxiety—especially when you’re in unfamiliar surroundings. Visiting new places pushes you outside of your comfort zone and makes you think on your feet. As you learn to go with the flow, you’ll find most of the issues that arise can be handled pretty easily. And, by conquering these tasks, you will begin to really trust your instincts. The self-confidence you build while traveling will spill over into your daily life, making you stronger and more confident in everything you do.
2. Traveling strengthens your relationship
Studies show that couples who travel together have stronger and more intimate relationships as they learn to work as a team. You rely on your travel partner to have your back, and as you do, you build trust in each other. Effective communication leads to greater understanding of your partner’s wants and needs, both at home and on your journeys. You end up achieving shared goals and dreams, not to mention building lasting memories together. All of these things lead to a stronger, healthier, and more romantic relationship!
3. Traveling expands your worldview
As Mark Twain famously stated, “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” It’s virtually impossible to travel to distant lands and not learn about other cultures and ways of life. By learning about how others live, you will change how you view the world. You’ll become more empathetic to the thoughts and feelings of others and more likely to challenge your own paradigms. You will grow to learn that even if you don’t agree with another’s point of view, you understand that their positions come from their unique experiences. So do a semester abroad or immerse yourself in a new foreign culture. By doing so, you will grow to understand and respect your fellow human beings in ways you never thought possible.
4. Traveling teaches you to be patient
Virtually every aspect of traveling teaches you patience. Whether you’re waiting in line at the airport or waiting to start the trip of a lifetime, you just have to be patient. And when you’re in a foreign land and don’t speak the language, you will grow to truly appreciate the patience others show you. By taking a breath and realizing that some things just take time, you will learn to enjoy not just traveling, but virtually all aspects of your life a little bit more. No matter how you slice it, traveling will make you a more patient person!
5. Traveling makes wonderful memories
Personal travel is an intentional act of making long-lasting memories. You’ll associate songs you hear on the radio with places you visit and adventures you take. You’ll catch an aroma and think back to a bakery you visited in rural Italy, or hear a whistle and think of the train ride you took across Bangladesh. Even the difficulties you encounter while traveling will turn into memories of your triumphs. You can choose to memorialize your memories in a scrapbook, a journal, or a personalized travel map. However you keep them, the memories you make traveling will be ones you cherish forever.
6. Traveling improves your communication skills
You can’t travel without communicating with others. The communications can be as simple as buying fresh fruit at a local floating market in Thailand, or as complex as navigating London’s public transit. As you travel the world, you’ll end up in destinations where you don’t speak the native tongue, and your communications become more challenging. You will have to learn to communicate and interact with strangers in both your native tongue, or some other manner. Even something as simple as ordering dinner can be challenging, but you will learn to do it, and in making these simple everyday connections with others, you’ll build confidence in your ability to communicate, no matter what the obstacle.
7. Traveling helps you make new and lasting friends
Depending on how you travel, you will meet and get to know some amazing people. You may be camping next to someone at a bluegrass festival and end up making plans for an annual trip with them going forward. Or you may sit down to a community dinner with a group of people you’ve never met and end up chatting until the wee hours of the morning with your new soulmate. If you choose to couchsurf, you will definitely get to know locals in virtually every place you visit, and those locals will frequently become lasting friends who visit you in years to come. When you travel, you pull yourself out of the comfortable (and frequently virtual) world that you live most of your life in, and you put yourself into the real world to interact with others. And real interactions with strangers is the best way to make lasting friends!
8. Traveling teaches you to live in the moment
There is something truly joyful about waking up in a new place with none of the typical stressors of everyday life weighing you down. When traveling, you don’t need to worry about what happened in the past, and you don’t need to spend time thinking about what will happen in the distant future. You are truly free to live your life in the moment. You will learn to settle into and enjoy whatever activity you choose to participate in, whether that’s reading a book on a tropical beach, or taking a helicopter tour of Everest. It may take you some time to disconnect from your normal anxieties, but when you do, you will find an inner peace that comes with living in the moment unlike anything you’ve ever experienced.