8 Reasons Why Travel is Important for Personal Development

When you travel, you operate in a different environment other than yours. This environment may be very different in some cases. Thus, you will be led to develop your qualities and, to develop others. Moreover, important thing, you will also put your finger on your weaknesses.

Among all different types of travel, a backpack trip by your own, in my opinion, is the form of travel that is most likely to enrich and develop you.

Moreover, a long-distance and solo journey will accentuate even more what travel can bring in terms of personal development.

Here’s how the trip is beneficial:

1. You improve your confidence in yourself

This is probably the most visible contribution of travel to personal development, especially after a long journey and especially if it is the first time. You will have learned to get away from your landmarks, without your loved ones and in a different environment. This is even truer if you are travelling alone.

2. Set up a project that you run from start to finish

In the context of a long journey that requires a lot of preparation upstream. Organizing a one-year world tour, it is a real project that requires organization, efficiency and motivation in the long term. You must plan and respect a budget. Conducting such projects is always an enriching experience.

3. You become more tolerant and open

The fact of having met and appreciated other people and cultures will make you more open. The others will seem less unknown and therefore more accessible. We are often afraid of things we do not know.

You will go more towards others. After having spoken with so many strangers, after strangers come without reason sometimes, to meet you out of curiosity, well, how to say, it changes his/her approach afterwards, at least for a moment.

4. You will relativize your problems

When you see people who live in difficult situations, and yet they keep a smile, see generosity, you will feel that the small problems around you seem to be so negligible and ridiculous. You complain often? A small travel cure and we talk about it again!

5. You gain in ease of adaptation

Travel improves your ease of adaptation because you are rubbing yourself in a new environment. Now, in our society, the ease of adaptation is a certain quality, and this personality will become more and more important in the future.

6. You improve in language

Frequent travellers are usually multilingual. At least it speaks English well, the language of the journey in the end. Travelling makes it possible to progress, effortlessly and with pleasure, in another language. This is the advantage of immersion in learning a language.

You went the useful and the pleasant, what better in learning a language? If you are perhaps angry with English, Spanish or another language, well, the trip may reconcile you.

7. A time of reflection on your life

Travel is often a privileged moment to make a little assessment of his life and his orientations. This is a moment of reflection. And then, often a journey changes you, can shake your priorities and your conception of life.

Each journey brings something to the one who lives it. We never come back exactly the same. Sometimes it’s not necessarily visible. But basically, change is there.

8. The long-distance solo journey – time to get to know each other better

Not only will you have time to reflect on your life (what few people do, while it’s vital). You will have the opportunity to learn more about yourself.

You will know better your limitations, your weaknesses but also your strengths. You will sometimes find yourself in some situations. Now, getting to know one another is one of the most important things in life. The journey, because of the time it gives you and the fact of evolving in another environment, is an accelerator. Enjoy!

Conclusions

I hope to have convinced you, if you suspect it, or are interested in understanding more on the impacts of travel personal development, you should take actions to travel more, or make a first trip for yourself.