Travelling is more than just fun and thrilling; it also brings health advantages. According to one recent study, women who take at least two vacations annually are less likely to develop heart complications.
People’s Commerce Editor Casey Clark collaborated with industry professionals to compile this list of travel accessories that can enhance your trip!
1. Travelling Boosts Your Health
Travelling isn’t only enjoyable and exciting; studies and experts agree it can also benefit your health by strengthening your immune system, improving mental wellbeing and increasing happiness levels.
On vacation, your body may encounter new bacteria and germs it has never encountered before, helping your immune system produce stronger antibodies to defend itself against disease and infection.
Stress relief is one of the primary advantages of travelling around the world. Even planning a trip can reduce your stress levels and boost your mood – with lasting effects even after returning from your journey. According to one recent study, those who take more trips report being happier and healthier overall than their counterparts who don’t; plus they are less likely to develop metabolic syndrome – leading to heart disease, diabetes, and stroke as a result.
2. Travelling Develops Your Creativity
Travelling allows your brain to take in new information and form new neural pathways associated with creativity.
Creative problem-solving skills also allow you to be flexible. For instance, when faced with unfamiliar cultural and linguistic environments such as traveling abroad without knowing the local language or customs, using your creativity to find solutions could prove invaluable.
Columbia Business School research found that traveling boosts cognitive flexibility, an essential aspect of creativity. Travel can also increase depth and integrativeness of thought which also promotes creativity. Traveling also allows you to try different foods and experience local music – great ways to explore a city or country and build memories for life! You might also take up photography or painting as new artistic outlets!
3. Travel Boosts Your Confidence
Travelling is a fantastic way to see new places and natural wonders around the globe, including ancient ruins, bustling cities and majestic mountains. Traveling can also introduce you to new foods and cultures around the globe.
Travelling is also an invaluable opportunity to increase confidence. Travel forces you out of your comfort zone and forces you to adapt quickly when faced with unexpected changes – for instance overcoming language barriers or adapting quickly when plans change unexpectedly.
As with anything, fear can be overcome through experience and all these experiences can help make us stronger in both life and work situations. They may even provide unique skills which could advance careers.
4. Travel Develops Your Communication Skills
Travelling forces you to interact with people from various religions, social classes, cultures, and ethnicities – teaching you how to interact with those of varying beliefs and lifestyles which is crucial when working in multidisciplinary teams.
It also teaches you how to break down communication barriers and read body language more effectively – helping you be an even more effective communicator in daily life.
Travelling can teach you to manage stressful situations and overcome homesickness more effectively, and help develop self-awareness – both key skills in working in teams or running your own business. Travel will transform you for the better! So if you want to become an effective communicator, travelling will undoubtedly transform you for good!
5. Travel Develops Your Social Skills
Travelling exposes you to people from various cultures and backgrounds, providing a great opportunity to better understand them while developing communication skills that will prove invaluable both professionally and personally.
Travelling is also an invaluable opportunity to gain real-life education. By exploring different cultures, histories and languages of countries you visit, travel can provide a great learning experience while honing problem-solving and improvising abilities.
Travel requires you to make decisions independently, which helps build determination and self-assurance while teaching you to take risks and overcome challenges. Furthermore, travel broadens your horizons as it shows you other cultures have distinct customs and traditions that may differ from yours, yet remain equally valued and significant.
6. Travelling Develops Your Creativity
Travelling is an invaluable way to foster creativity. Travelling forces you out of your comfort zone and requires creative solutions for challenges that you encounter – which will only serve to make you a more imaginative individual in the future!
Research has demonstrated that travelling can increase cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought – both important components of creativity. You’re exposed to new cultures, languages and experiences while travelling which helps develop your imagination and foster creative thought processes.
Many well-known artists and writers have used their travelling experiences to inform their works. Ernest Hemingway wrote his best works while in Cuba while Mark Twain wrote Innocents Abroad while on board ship. Additionally, musicians often practice their craft while on tour to improve their musical talents while traveling abroad has proven beneficial to physics researchers’ creativity.
7. Travel Develops Your Communication Skills
Travel forces you to interact with people from diverse backgrounds. Whether it’s the native tongue of the country you visit or English as a global language, traveling forces you to communicate with individuals from across the globe and strengthens interpersonal communication skills that are so crucial for personal development.
Travelling can help you become more accepting of other cultures. Witnessing how other people live can put your problems into perspective and remind you that struggles such as those you face may seem trivial when compared to poverty elsewhere in the world. Traveling can increase tolerance of differences and help make our planet a little more peaceful.
8. Travel Develops Your Confidence
Travelling is one of the best ways to increase your self-confidence. Being exposed to new situations and challenges that you would never experience at home allows you to learn how to deal with every situation more effectively and build your sense of confidence, improving decision-making abilities.
Travel can also help you become more independent, which can boost your self-confidence and enable you to develop problem solving abilities as well as have the courage to make difficult choices that can seem intimidating at first.
Also, you will meet people with different beliefs and lifestyles than yourself; this will allow you to appreciate diversity while opening yourself up to other cultures with an open mind.
9. Travel Develops Your Creativity
Travel broadens your horizons and heightens creativity by opening you up to new cultures and ideas, forcing you to think creatively when facing challenges, helping you solve problems more efficiently while developing innovative solutions.
Professor Adam Galinsky from Columbia Business School says travel increases cognitive flexibility and “depth and integrativeness of thought,” thus sparking creativity. However, traveling can only increase creativity when immersing oneself in local cultures.
What are you waiting for? Start planning your trip now, and reap its benefits – happiness, health, and creativity among them! Life’s too short to waste not exploring our world! Only your imagination holds back, who knows? Maybe even discover an entirely new hobby or passion along the way!
10. Develops Your Social Skills
Travel can help you build strong relationships by exposing you to people from various cultures and backgrounds. Furthermore, it helps develop your social skills as you learn how to work with other people in new situations while cooperating with each other more easily and adapting more quickly; something which could come in handy both at college classes as well as future employment situations.
Travel can also hone your social skills by teaching you to overcome challenges and overcome obstacles. From long lines at airports to language barriers or poor hotel accommodations, travelling teaches us how to handle these difficulties and keep pushing ahead. These lessons can translate well to daily life when dealing with different people at work and social gatherings – you’ll gain experience at dealing with locals as well as fellow travelers – plus maybe learn new languages on the go!
