When you travel, you’ll change. This is true whether you take a two-week beach vacation or you spend months traveling from place to place. You’ll change physically and mentally, and perhaps you’ll even change in terms of how you see your life and what you want to do in the future. This is a positive thing. The more you can change and reassess, the more you can achieve in life and the more successful you can be, whether that’s in work and careers, at home, or just in your own self.
The reason for this change a lot of the time is the things you will learn when traveling. There are many different lessons you can take from the places you go and the things you do there, and it’s crucial to learn as much as possible if you want to experience everything deeply. With that in mind, here are some of the hundreds of things you can learn when traveling.
Be More Patient
Everyone is in a rush these days. We’re all trying to get to the next thing and the next, and the next. Often this means we don’t think about the here and now and appreciate what we have. We just rush through and expect the next thing on the list to be better than the last, even though we don’t really pay that much attention to it after all.
When we travel, we can learn to be more patient. We can learn to appreciate the present without constantly trying to get to the next thing, whatever that might be. Slowing down like this is a great way to stay healthy and happy and to feel less stressed – your mental health will definitely benefit from learning to be more patient.
A good example is if you’re traveling in California. For instance, let’s say you’re on a dream trip to San Diego, and you’re discovering all the popular sites and sounds there. You’ve got your San Diego Zoo tickets, and you’re on your way to visit this amazing attraction.
When you get to the zoo, you’ll be excited to see everything it has to show you, and you might rush from animal to animal because of this. All this will do is make your time there short and not give you anything in return. If you take your time with each exhibit and learn what you can about that particular creature before moving onto the next, you’ll feel much more enriched, you’ll have gained a lot, and you won’t have wasted any time.
Enjoy Experiences More Than Possessions
You don’t have to be ashamed to say that you like having ‘things’. You appreciate having a nice car, good furniture, and souvenirs from this trip or that one. You enjoy buying things because it makes you feel good and gives you something to look forward to.
Yet what if you didn’t have these things? Would it make any difference to your life? The answer is probably no. However, learning this lesson and putting it into practice is very difficult; western society actively runs on the idea that people need and want ‘stuff’ to make them happy and feel complete – it’s materialism at its finest.
Enjoying experiences more than having possessions is a great philosophy to have in life, and it’s something you can certainly learn from traveling. When you travel, even if you go to a nice hotel, you won’t have all your home comforts with you, and the truth is, after a very short time, you won’t miss them.
When you get home, take this lesson and apply it to your life. Before you buy anything, ask yourself if it’s worth it or would the money be better used to experience something new or take another trip. It’s these memories that will keep you happy as you get older, not the possessions surrounding you.
It’s Okay To Be Alone
It’s good to have friends, and it’s good to see those friends (virtually or physically) on a regular basis. However, a good life lesson to learn that you can gain through traveling is that it’s also okay to be alone sometimes – being alone has its pros and cons. You can enjoy your own company and experience wonderful things even if you’re by yourself. In fact, many travelers prefer this kind of trip as they have complete control over everything they see and do.
Being lonely is bad for people, but being alone isn’t necessarily the same thing, and it can be good for you to do this on occasion. Learning this and understanding the difference is a great lesson that can come from traveling and certainly benefit you for the rest of your life.
