How Traveling Can Lead to Personal Development in 5 Ways

We all know that traveling is good for your health, giving you an opportunity to relax, experience and take the time to discover new things. But it also can help you grow and therefore lead to personal development. Here are 5 reasons how:

Ask any person who’s traveled before what they got out of their first traveling experience and they’re going to tell you that it changed their life and made them learn a lot of new things. This can be confusing for others, especially towards homebodies who prefer staying at home than battle out a week overseas. After all, why would you leave the comfort and security of your home for a place that you don’t know and for something that will only cost you time and money out of your work?
However, there are some strong benefits to traveling that will make the whole experience worth it. If you’re unsure if you should really try traveling, here are the 5 reasons why you really should:

1. Traveling Pushes You Out of Your Comfort Zone

When you’re in a new place that carries a little semblance of your usual life in terms of culture and experiences, you’re essentially thrown out of your safety net. Being abroad exposes you to a place where your previous experiences may not apply and will need you to adjust for it – like speaking to the locals using their own language, trying out delicacies that may not necessarily be something you’ve tried before, etc.
Take, for example, traveling to Japan or South Korea. While you may find labels and directions in both the native language and in English, you won’t necessarily find the same among the populace. In fact, before you enter the country, you’re more than advised to learn their language, and that in itself is already a shot out of your comfort zone that you’ll be glad you took.

2. Traveling Gives You Confidence

When you’re pushed out of your comfort zone, you are essentially trying to survive in an environment you’re not familiar with. And when you conquer this, there’s a deep sense of confidence that you are capable of doing things that you otherwise wouldn’t have believed that you could do before you went on your trip.
This is also true even if you don’t necessarily conquer a challenge at the moment. Even if you weren’t successful, you still learned something from the experience, and this is an important addition to your journey to being capable of doing more things in the future.

3. Traveling Breaks Pattern and Routine

Our everyday lives are running on autopilot made up of a schedule in our subconscious and the habits we do on a daily basis. Get up, breakfast, go to work, eat lunch, go back to work, log off for the day, get home, eat dinner, relax, sleep – and it goes on and on for the next days, weeks, months, and years. While it gets easier to do things when you’ve integrated yourself into a smooth system, it also ends up being a boring, underwhelming, uninspiring routine.
Traveling breaks you out of this monotonous habit and refreshes your cycle. When you’re traveling, you’re less likely to do things that you’ve done in a specific order for the day, and it gives you new experiences, new lessons, and new adventures that can renew your spark of inspiration. And when you’re dealing with something out of your routine, you get to sharpen your decision-making skills, allowing you to be less frazzled when unexpected things happen during your daily grind.

4. Traveling Allows You to Reflect and Know Yourself Better

Traveling and experiencing exciting things is well and good, but it also allows you to take a backseat from your life and evaluate it from another point of view. When you’re away from your regular life, you can essentially observe it from an audience perspective – which opens you up to things that you may not know about yourself, such as your strengths, weaknesses, morals, values, etc. You are not distracted by all the little details of your life and lets you see the bigger picture of yourself and your life in general, and this can lead to a better version of yourself.

5. Traveling Challenges Your Perspective and Beliefs

We all have our own initial ideas of what a country is like and what their people might be like. This is founded on stereotypes and opinions we hear, which can become integrated into your minds as our own opinions. But when you are outside of your usual surroundings, you see more of the world and your beliefs and perspective is challenged.
Traveling gives you a first-hand experience of forming opinions on the country, culture, and populace that you get to interact with. This can change your beliefs for the better or worse. Being in a new place also changes your perspective on your life compared to others – it often is an eye-opener for many to realize that so many people around the world live far worse than they do.

Ready to start on your first trip? Why not contact Venture with Impact: a social impact workation company that can help you travel and still be able to work! Traveling while you work can be a great experience for many, as it allows for both professional and personal development – truly the best of both worlds!