“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It
Scientific research has shown that people who travel a lot benefit from their travels in more than one way. In a nutshell, it has been proven that travelling adventures can change your personality. People who travel show an increased openness to new experiences, they become more outgoing, agreeable, as well as extrovert, they are emotionally more stable and aware, and finally, they are more conscious of global issues.
Booking your next holiday
Therefore, the rationale set out above should be enough reason for you to go online and book your holiday as soon as possible. Before you sign up for a tour package, why don’t you consider the option of designing your own custom tour. In other words, you decide where you would like to go, see and do. To be honest, I cannot think of anything better than planning my own holiday, and then allowing a travel expert to help me put my plan into action.
Why does travel change your personality?
While you are planning your next adventure, I believe that it is important to take cognisance of the many reasons why travel can change your personality for the better. Here are the few reasons to whet your appetite:
Look at life from another position
Simply stated, spending time in other cultures as well as experiencing the way other people live forces you to consider life from another perspective. For example, if you live in a first-world country such as Britain, Canada, or Germany, etc. and you travel to a third-world country where poverty, the lack of adequate housing, running water, electricity, and food is rife, you will soon realise that you are privileged and possibly spoilt.
Consequently, you will more than likely appreciate what you have, and even possibly join an organisation to help improve the lives of the underprivileged in the world.
Improved social skills
An important life skill to learn is how to interact with other people. Let’s face it! We are social beings; however, we still need to get to interact with different groups of individuals from all different cultures without being prejudiced or judgemental.
If you travel a lot and experience many different cultures, you will learn to be tolerant and enjoy the company of people who are not the same as you are. Tolerance of other cultures is a pertinent topic at the moment, especially as there seems to be a global rise in Nationalism as well as an intolerance of people who are of a different race, religion, and culture.
For example, both the proponents of Brexit and Donald Trump’s election as the 45th president of the USA raised the issue of allowing immigrants from war-torn countries into both Britain and the USA respectively. Furthermore, Donald Trump’s statement that he is going to “Make America great“, speaks of the reducing the number of immigrants allowed into the USA, the re-establishment of the American manufacturing sector, and the employment of the American people as a priority.
Travel improves problem solving skills and creativity
It has been proven that travelling and learning to adapt to different cultures improves your brain’s ability to solve challenges and problems that you possibly would not have been able to solve if you had not been part of another culture for a short period. For example, how to you live amongst a group of people where there is no running water? How do you collect and purify water?
The challenge of providing purified water for yourself may seem a daunting task to someone who is used to opening a tap to get drinking water. However, millions of people live under these conditions. Ergo, once you have been in this kind of situation, you will have learnt how to solve one of humankind’s basic needs. Just think how much easier it will be to address challenges at work.
Develop patience and an understanding of what’s important
One of the benefits of travelling around the world is that you no longer worry about the little insignificant details. People no longer irritate you as much as they did before, and you forgive of other people’s mistakes. Take the issue of road rage, for example. It’s easy to get upset when other drivers’ cut in front of you for whatever reason. However, once your outlook has been broadened, and you learn how to determine what is important and what is insignificant, you will no longer be bothered by other people’s silly mistakes.
Final words
There is much more that can be said about the benefits of travelling; however, if you are not well-travelled, I trust that this content whets your appetite and encourages you to book your first adventure!