You’ve been thinking about taking a trip for a while now. After much pushing from your friends and family, you decide to buy a ticket for somewhere new. Upon landing, you’re surprised at how different it is from your home town.
It’s kind of scary but don’t let that stop you from exploring the area outside your hotel room. By doing so it’s possible that you may become a better person. Traveling teaches you many lessons that you could never have learned at home.
Don’t believe us? Check out these seven ways that travel can make you a better person than you were before.
1. You’ll Learn to Make Friends
When you stay in one country for your entire life, you get used to the tightknit friend circle that you’ve always had. While these friends are amazing, there comes a time when you need to come out of your shell and expand that circle.
While being in another country there will come a time when you need to ask someone for directions or have them translate something for you. To this degree, traveling also teaches you that it’s fine to ask for help. Even when you’re thousands of miles away from home you can still find a helping hand when you’re phone dies or your travel apps aren’t cutting it.
2. Learning Geography
If your extent of geography is “take a left at that McDonalds” then you may benefit from traveling. Going to a new country is sort of like throwing you into a pool with no floaties.
You’ll be a little scared and confused at first because the words North, South, East, and West mean nothing to you but you’ll figure it out. After all, it’s either find your way or not make it back to your hotel.
3. It Teaches Patience
During your daily life, you get stuck in a routine. For most people, if something disrupts this routine they become grumpy or frustrated. When it comes to travel there is no routine.
Well, you may try to force a routine in there out of habit but it never goes the way you want. Things go wrong. By waiting in lines or taking the time to ask someone to translate something you’ll be forced to slow down and take things as they come.
4. You’ll Learn how to Budget
Between going out with friends, paying bills, and other expenses, you burn through your money pretty fast when you’re at home. Traveling forces you to be a little bit more frugal.
You’ll actually want to budget because the faster you go through your money, the faster that the fun ends. You also won’t be able to purchase any more meals which can become a problem after a day or so.
You also never want to run out of money when you’re thousands of miles away from home. Sure you can call your parents and ask them to get you a ticket back home but if what if they can’t?
5. You’ll be More Accepting
Before you get out to experience other cultures your belief system probably matches up to what your parents believe and what the news tells you. This is a dangerous mindset because you start forming stereotypes in your brain. Travel can stop you from doing this.
When you venture off you’ll get a chance to put yourself there. Taste other foods you wouldn’t have normally tried, get a first-hand look at different traditions, and shake hands with people that you never would have before.
The things you’ll experience and learn are most likely going to be different than your own culture but this is fine. You don’t have to throw away everything that you know and believe.
Just accept that their traditions are different than yours. Nobody has to be right or wrong. Life isn’t that black and white.
6. It Broadens Your Horizons
Travel will make you a whizz at trivia night because you’ll learn interesting tidbits of information for any area that you visit. You’ll learn more being there that you ever could from social media pages anyway. After all, what’s better, reading second-hand biased sources or actually being there?
Again, you’ll also meet a bunch of interesting locals who can also give you facts about the area. Feel free to ask them questions and bounce ideas off of them. You’ll learn even more this way.
7. You’ll Appreciate Home
You can follow this itinerary, go to any place in the world, but at the end of the day, there is one constant. You have family and friends at home that are waiting for you to come back. When you come back you’ll have more of an appreciation for all the little things you left behind.
You’ll realize just how much you love the people from home and it may stop you from taking them for granted. They do say distance makes the heart grow fonder.
The Many Ways Travel Can Make You a Better Person
Rather you know it or not, getting out and broadening your horizons through travel can and will make you a better person. You’ll learn to become kinder, more patient, and you’ll learn a little geography along the way.
So, go out and experience the world and all it has to offer. You won’t be truly living until you do.
Traveling isn’t the only way you can learn about yourself and grow as a person. Check out our blog for more ways to turn your life around.
