Top 10 benefits of traveling: how traveling to other cities and countries makes us healthier and happier and why you should pack your bags now
Why do we need to travel? The answer is simple: it makes us happy. New places, unforgettable experiences, vivid memories, intense walks, and amazing discoveries make our heart beat faster and make us feel euphoric.
This effect is not surprising, because traveling combines many healthy habits and methods to restore physical and emotional balance. Scientists have proven that traveling has a beneficial effect not only on the body but also on the mind.
They help in a variety of ways, from relieving stress and anxiety to reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease. They also help us to develop creatively and infuse us with pleasant emotions and feelings of happiness. If you haven't felt the need to pack your suitcases yet, you can just learn more about the top benefits of traveling.
1. Peace of mind
Many of us live in cities or regularly visit major metropolitan areas. Dense schedules, traffic flow, and crowds of people are becoming a regular and everyday part of our lives. All of this contributes to the accumulation of stress. Even not the biggest problems seem serious and insurmountable, work makes you feel constantly tired, threatening burnout, and time for adventure and relaxation is becoming less and less. A wonderful cure for all the hardships in this case is traveling.
It helps to break the circle of habitual routine and distract from the usual hustle and bustle. Even a small trip for the weekend or at least for one day helps to reset the mind and restore emotional harmony. Experiencing new places and people and even the challenges of traveling helps you to appreciate what you have already been able to achieve, what you have left behind, and what you want in the future. It also gives you a chance to think about the people who are important to you, evaluate your life, and remember all the good things in it.
2. Developing your creativity
Traveling, especially to places previously unknown to you, naturally takes you out of your comfort zone. Everything is new, seems unfamiliar, or even incomprehensible. But this is also one of the benefits of traveling.
Your senses are under attack by new stimuli: unfamiliar landscapes and speech on the streets, bright colors, new music, aromas, tastes, smells... All these small difficulties will be necessary for you to open yourself to something unknown and unfamiliar, to push the limits of your perception of life and environment. How to bargain at the market? How to get around all the desired attractions? Where to go first and which dish is definitely worth trying? This newness forces your brain to work in a new direction and improve your ability to learn and adapt. You need to find ways to solve all these small problems.
Later on, this experience will be one of the major pluses gained after traveling and will help you use creativity to solve already familiar problems and work issues. So maybe by wandering around unfamiliar streets while traveling, you'll generate brilliant ideas at your job upon your return.
3. Improve your communication skills
If you're a fan of international travel, and even more so if you love discovering exotic places and countries, you've probably been in situations where you can't hear a single understandable word around you. In such a case, if you have no one to talk to in your native or understandable language, you have to show all your ingenuity to explain yourself to the locals. Every attempt to find your way around, find a place, buy something and negotiate something helps to improve your communication skills.
And it may well not be limited to haggling in the market or asking for the right route to some landmark. You can also make new acquaintances, make friends and expand your social network, learn new things about the culture of other countries and peoples, about their lifestyle and mentality. This is especially true for fans of coaching.
You'll understand why travel is good for people when you discover that you are a very interesting person to someone in another city or country, even if you don't think there's anything special going on in your life. And when you return home, you'll find plenty of new topics to talk about with friends and acquaintances: about your adventures, acquaintances, new words you've learned, and experiences.
4. Broaden your horizons
How do we learn about the world? The Internet, television news, documentaries, and books are all sources from which we can draw information about places unknown to us, distant countries, people, their culture, and their way of life. However, in all these cases we are consuming someone else's point of view, looking at it all through someone else's eyes, and drawing conclusions based on the facts and beliefs collected by the other person. All of this can narrow your horizons, forcing you to rely on someone else's opinion rather than building your own perspective.
To know and understand the world, we need to make up impressions and live out emotions on our own. When you visit a city and see it with your own eyes, talk to the locals, and get to know their culture and traditions, you may find that your own opinion differs greatly from what you knew about it all before from outside sources. This is why traveling is so important: new acquaintances and discoveries will help you look at your own problems differently.
5. Self-confidence
When we overcome difficulties, we gain new experiences that make us more confident: we realize that we were able to overcome the obstacle and came out victorious. You can hear a lot of stories from travelers when some events on a trip scared them, although not always they were actually scary. But when you find yourself alone in an unfamiliar place, without the ability to get immediate help from relatives or rely on loved ones, even an ordinary misunderstanding can seem threatening. All the more dangerous situations are indeed plentiful.
That's why traveling is good for your self-esteem: it helps you cope with obstacles, show resourcefulness, and overcome challenges. After a scary story will seem to you an interesting adventure, which you will remember for a long time, and gladly tell your friends that you were able to cope with it.
6. Real learning
Textbooks and other books expose us to many new things. We look at illustrations and pictures, absorb a lot of interesting information, travel to faraway places, and get to know interesting ideas and characters. But the facts on paper cannot be tasted or smelled, felt on the ground, or heard. Traveling, on the other hand, forces us to strain all our sensory senses: to taste new foods, listen to new music, talk to strangers and hear unfamiliar speech, touch famous monuments, and gaze at incredible landscapes. That's one of the great things about traveling.
You will discover a lot of culture: musical genres, traditions, spices, dishes, etc. You can enjoy a part of your exotic adventures when you return home: cook a new dish to meet your friends based on a recipe from the country you visited, light incense that reminds you of your trip, and look at the photos and videos you took while traveling.
7. Vivid Memories
Real travel sensations and experiences are remembered better because they are personal, with emotion behind them. Memories are part of what makes up our personality. Pleasant memories that evoke positive emotions make us want to return more often. That's why people like to travel and then look through old photos or videos, trying to relive again what brought vivid and pleasant feelings.
Travel experiences are also part of your own happiness, energizing you when you remember again, for example, seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time, taking a dip in the turquoise waters of a tropical resort, seeing a great musical in the West End, buying souvenirs, and so on.
8. Self-reflection
Among all the things that travel gives us is the opportunity to better understand ourselves.
You often hear that flexibility is the key to success. And in many ways this is true. Change is an everyday part of our lives that encourages us to adapt to different situations. Many difficulties and adversities in our lives become a consequence of our inability to cope with change. Well, while traveling, such changes will be quite a lot in your path, more than in your daily life. Dealing with them will make you realize how strong you really are.
But in addition to your ability to adapt and quickly find solutions to a problem, you may discover not only your strengths but also your weaknesses. You might get on the wrong bus, but eventually, you'll have to find the right route. And next time you'll find that you've learned to quickly navigate the maze of the subway as well as a local, but you didn't do it before because you thought your calling was to follow others.
Another thing that traveling can help with is determining your likes. Perhaps you thought you didn't like winter, but once you've been to a ski resort or a Christmas fair in a European capital, you'll realize that making snowmen is actually a lot of fun, and the trees twinkling with thousands of lights is one of the most exciting things you've ever seen. Or, for example, having been to a tropical resort, you will realize that you can bear the heat more easily than you thought before. And if you've always preferred active hiking, try spending your next vacation enjoying carefree days at the seashore. Perhaps a quiet contemplation of the water will be just what you need right now.
9. Fun
Scientists have made an interesting observation: the feeling of happiness arises in us even before we go on a trip. The reason is anticipation because the top pluses of traveling are definitely the opportunity to relax and have a good time. Naturally, because you will be able to sleep late, enjoy breakfast, which will be carefully prepared for you, try new dishes, and make gastronomic discoveries: for example, to realize that real sushi is very different from what is sold in the store near your home. Or maybe even try something exotic like deep-fried insects?
Salsa on street corners will prove to be more lively and fun than in your dance class, and street performers are much more impressive than TV talent shows.
Positive feelings help fight stress, so if you're facing burnout, constantly feeling tired or anxious, add positive emotions to your routine. And if you have the opportunity to snap up a trip, don't pass it up.
10. Improved health
Traveling takes us back to healthy habits. First, sleep. Think about whether the sound of your alarm clock triggers feelings akin to hatred. Do you set the timer to repeat several times before you get up? Do you feel guilty about not being able to get up on time again? Getting a full night's sleep is important for our physical and psychological health. That's why we love weekends so much: they don't start with the dreaded sound of the alarm clock. And when traveling, you can afford to get a great night's sleep and even take a nap during the day.
Secondly, another undeniable benefit of traveling is movement. Many of us have to spend long hours at our desks every day. Therefore, it is worth allocating part of your vacation to walks, sports, swimming, hiking, and similar activities to your heart's content. Physical activity helps to strengthen your heart, muscles, and bones and fill yourself with energy.
The next thing that traveling is good for concerns nutrition. Fast food breakfasts, lunches, and dinners consisting of fast food and frozen food cannot be called good nutrition, but our life with the constant need to hurry somewhere does not always allow you to eat good quality food. When traveling, you can not only fix this but also replenish your preferences with new flavors.
Another one of the main benefits of traveling is communing with nature. Sun and fresh air improve your health, and beautiful landscapes around you lift your mood.
And finally, laughter: something that makes us feel happy and create positive memories. A good laugh heals many wounds, so don't give up such a natural remedy.
So choose where you want to visit, book your tickets, pack your bags, and set off on your adventure.