Traveling beyond borders isn’t just an excuse to quit that 9-to-5 job and get a tan while soaking in the sunshine in some other part of the world. In fact, the healing qualities that traveling provides on both your mental and physical state is usually the biggest advantage for most seasoned backpackers.
While different people have different goals in life and diverse means to achieve them, we can’t deny the fact that stagnation and stability aren’t meant for all. Often, in order to grow, we need to step out of a scheduled life and experience what the world has in store for us.
Life indeed became a lot more exciting and meaningful the day I chose not to stick to the routines and stepped out of my comfort zone. The happiness that’s intrinsically attached to exploring the world is difficult to put in words, but booking a flight has never felt easier.
Here are 6 amazing ways in which traveling empowers you.
- You Become More Resilient.
The challenges you face when traveling, no matter how minor it may be, seem more difficult to resolve when you are in some unknown territory. Whether it is about trying to understand the attendant at border control who speaks in broken English or simply attempting to buy some essentials from the local market, language and cultural barriers turn into huge challenges while traveling.
There would be times when things won’t happen the way you planned, and you’d have no other choice but to instantly decide your next move. Once you get home, challenges you may have previously found daunting may not actually seem quite so bad after all. Finding yourself in a new country with completely different languages, cultures and customs will surely make you more creative and adaptive. This strength will stay with you, supporting you in decision-making even after you get home.
- You Become More Open To New Things.
Opening your mind to new tastes, sounds, sensations, and experiences has incredibly empowering effects. According to psychological studies, a person’s ability to interact with people of different cultures and the capacity to deal with social situations that are out of one’s comfort zone is helping create a strong self-foundation in relation to how rich his/her cultural experiences are.
In other words, by satisfying our wanderlust, we open the door to our imaginations and begin to explore our minds while traveling the world. You’ll be more open to saying ‘YES’ to things that you’ve never tried before, with a curiosity of knowing the unknown – leading the way to a new and improved life.
- You Actually Want To Be Where The Obscurity Is!
Trust me when I say this, traveling would make you try all that you’ve never even imagined in your wildest dreams! Whether it’s about swimming with baby sharks in Loh Samah Bay, Thailand, to gorging on crocodile meat in Nairobi, Kenya – I’ve done the weirdest things of all. Taking you away from any familiarity and immersing yourself into fresh new cultures & experiences is what traveling is all about. The obscurity eventually empowers you and keeps inspiring you even when you get back to normality.
Whether it is an inspiration for your home taken from the most interesting accommodation you have visited or quotes you have heard from a tribal leader you want to live by, embrace it and let it lead you.
- You Come Across New Opportunities That Gives A Sense Of Completeness.
One can never deny the fact that traveling teaches us to appreciate the importance of every single moment as we start noticing everything from a different perspective. We are more aware of our choices and try to feel good about every avenue we can take, eliminating close-minded thoughts that we may have had before.
During the days when I was volunteering at a childcare center in Kenya, I realized that we don’t really need bigger things to be happy – sometimes, even hugging someone can make us happy. Traveling isn’t just about traversing across the world, but a journey to get closer to people away from home. It opens you up to appreciating what you have and the things you possess in abundance. It makes you more humble, compassionate & grateful. Our journeys help us to choose things that make us happy and feel wholesome.
- You Will Have a Wide Network All Over The Globe.
I believe that every person we meet on the roads has something to add to our journeys. The tuk-tuk driver I met in Siem Reap, who took me around the ruins of Angkor, has left a huge impact on me and I keep longing to meet him again, at some point in life. I met a bunch of amazing people from different parts of the world, during my month-long journey in Kenya, and we all bonded over the common goals of volunteer work. Every night, during dinner, we used to talk about our own countries, our people, or culture and food – and I realized that there’s so much which I wouldn’t have ever known if I hadn’t met them.
One of the best things about traveling is that you get to meet such diverse people and eventually make friends out of strangers. Being able to converse and open yourself up to a myriad of other cultures gives you a chance to express yourself to other people and take snippets from everyone else.
- Traveling Will Help You To Discover Yourself In Better Lights!
To quote C. JoyBell C, “The most adventurous journey to embark on; is the journey to yourself, the most exciting thing to discover; is who you really are, the most treasured pieces that you can find; are all the pieces of you, the most special portrait you can recognize; is the portrait of your soul.”
Travel always involves plenty of time for reflection, if you allow it, and you definitely should. From delayed flights to 6-hour bus rides through mountain roads, to morning coffee where you just need to collect your thoughts before you head out on an adventure – traveling surely is one of the best ways to learn about yourself. Reap the benefits of personal reflection time abroad to understand the ways in which you have changed or the new things you’ve recently discovered about yourself in your travels.
Not only will your adventures help you to feel complete, but it’ll destroy the times when you felt lost, or confused with yourself. Knowing who you are isn’t innate – and most travelers you will meet will tell you that they’re attempting “to find themselves”. Traveling really is one of the best solutions for doing so.
Embracing every second of your travels is a sure-fire way to become a stronger, more solid human being. Although there is no point chasing that epiphany-type moment, you will generally feel like you have grown and become secure within yourself as an individual.
So there you have it. There’s really no excuse NOT to travel when it eventually empowers you in such amazing ways! Good luck in your journey to becoming your most authentic self and more of who you are.
Get those passports out and start planning your next adventure!
Author Bio: Riyanka Roy is an ordinary girl with some extraordinary dreams. She loves to believe in the miracles of destiny and wants to travel all over the world, spend time with the natives, binge on local food, and absorb their culture. She feels that she’s born with vagabond blood, and stagnation makes her feel claustrophobic. Life, for her, is like a book, and she loves writing about everything interesting she comes across. She believes that her stories make the chapters of her book more colorful. Read more about her adventures on Backpacking Romance and follow her journeys on Instagram.