How Travel Changes Life

Travelling is transformational. When we talk about creating a strong impact or getting influenced, there are not many things that are as impactful as travelling. Often, we travel to get away from home, only to discover a new home at the end of our journey. The feeling of boarding a flight and landing in foreign soil is surreal. The adrenaline rush and the life experiences that come with traveling are unmatched. The lusciousness of the Great Barrier Reef, the grandeur of the Buckingham Palace or the magnificence of the Eiffel Tower is bound to leave you speechless. So here is how travel changes one’s life.

Travel makes you more Social & Confident

Are you branded an introvert or uptight? Well, traveling changes it all. No matter how reserved, once in a foreign land, you are bound to seek directions from a stranger, even in sign-language if required. It’s a matter of sink or swim. You either make friends on the go or end up alone and lost. You get better at ‘small talk’ and get even better at listening intently to stories that have no connection with your usual life. You learn and eventually enjoy meeting new people and making friends, some of whom may end up being more than just travel buddies.

Travelling boosts your confidence in bizarre ways. When you have sailed on the Nile, hiked to reach the base camp of Mt. Everest, met a beautiful Spanish girl on the road, dipped your toes into the beautiful Pangong Tso and had an evening to remember, you generally feel a lot at ease about yourself and around people.

You’ll learn to expect the Unexpected

You finally realize not to sweat the small stuff! Once you get out of your comfort zone and take the road less traveled, you deal with everything right from missing on those connecting flights, spending 15 hours in a slow uncomfortable bus, wrong turns, avoidable delays, food poisoning to even running out of toilet paper. Life gives you stress balls and you hit them out of the field with a home run. Not only do you learn to adapt to your environment, but also become more patient. You don’t fuss over details and going with the flow becomes second nature. The phrase ‘If life gives you lemons, learn to make lemonade’ starts sounding just about right.

You get more Venturesome

The new and confident you is a lot more adventurous. The adrenaline rush is much more likely to make you try on those ‘never imagined in your wildest dreams’ kind of adventure sports. You’ll try it all – bungee jumping, Skydiving, river rafting and even eating bugs at the street cart.

You become less Materialistic

Traveling makes you appreciate experiences over possessions. After a beautiful sunset in Tuscany, or a self-discovering a trek through the Andes, you have a new found definition of ‘value’. Exploring places you once saw only on Instagram, and immersing yourself in new cultures become new items on your bucket list, if not the list itself. So when it’s time to put a deposit on a big house, you stop to consider the cost-benefit of a round-the-world trip.

You become more Employable

If you have done that solo trip, negotiated your way around a bunch of people who didn’t understand your language and survived awkward encounters in foreign lands, you have more wisdom than most of your peers.

A recent survey by Hostelworld found that 64% of adults in the United Kingdom think that travelling makes a person more employable and more importantly, 82 percent of employers also deemed this to be true. Participants cited a number of reasons for this, including a boost in confidence, stronger interpersonal skills, a more global view of the world and an ability to work seamlessly in large multi-cultural teams.

You make new life-long Friends from across the world

When you first landed in Rome, you probably did not know anyone except for your travel guide but a lot changed by the time your trip came to a close. You met interesting people, made friends and picked up a treasure of a thousand stories. And unlike your social media friends, these ones are for real and for life. You will get to host many of your new friends back home and every time you visit their cities again, you return as a local.

Travelling in its true sense is a life-changing experience. The more you travel the more you explore not only the world but also your own self. Traveling is the single most important thing we should be doing as a generation to break the monotony of our corporate lives. Discovering this amazing planet we call home is the best investment you will ever make.