If you’ve experienced wanderlust, you know the effect travel can have on your mood, personality, and soul. Whether you’re taking a scenic drive to explore the Amish countryside in Pennsylvania or exploring the ruins in Mexico, every place you visit changes you.
Travel is more than taking a vacation or spending a few nights in a hotel. It can be challenging, gritty, and ultimately life-changing. Here are just a few reasons why travel makes you an awesome person.
Increases Self-Awareness
Traveling gives you a better idea of who you are as a person and the things you require to be happy. To travel well, you need to sit down and think about how you can have the best experience possible. What do you need to be happy? What must you bring with you to guarantee your comfort? What can you do without? As you travel to more places, you’ll have experience to reflect upon and determine your path forward. Things you may have forgotten to pack last time will be at the top of your list next time. Places you never thought you’d want to visit become a fixture in your plans.
As you travel, you will become more aware of how you feel at any given moment. Are you content? Are you comfortable? Are you uncomfortable but happy, because you’re experiencing something amazing? Travel allows you to get to know yourself better than ever before.
Builds Empathy and Appreciation
There’s nothing like traveling to a part of the world where people do without many of the things we take for granted. Travel can open your eyes to how people in other parts of the world live. Sometimes, the experience will make you envious. Other times, it will make you appreciative.
This experience can open your eyes to the world around you, including your hometown. Are there people in your area living without many of the things you have? Are there aspects of your area that you see every day that other people dream of experiencing? Travel can change your worldview, whether you’re abroad or in your neighborhood.
Value of Experience Over Things
When you travel, you learn to live with a little less. You have to work with what you can carry during your trip, rather than having the comforts of home. Unless you have an unlimited budget, you also have to prioritize where you spend your money. Purchasing a high-end vehicle might mean that you won’t be able to head overseas anytime soon. Weekly retail therapy shopping trips might mean that Croatia remains a bucket list item.
Avid travelers soon learn that the experience of visiting somewhere new and exciting is more important to them than material belongings. This encourages them to buy less frivolous trinkets and spend more money doing things. This minimalist approach carries over in all aspects of their life and promises a future of happy memories rather than annual garage sales.
Stories and Encouragement
Traveling gives you an awesome bank of stories to tell to your friends, family, and coworkers. For your peers, sometimes your story is the key that unlocks their prison and encourages them to chase their dreams. After all, if someone they know could do it, why can’t they. Your travels become a fantastic conversation point and icebreaker, which boosts your social interactions and helps to foster a human connection.
Most of all, traveling helps you avoid a life of regret. In the future, when you look back at all the things you’ve done, you’ll know that you’ve lived life to the fullest. That, my friend, makes you awesome.
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