Traveling With Lola

“If there’s one thing you won’t waste your money on, it’s travel.”

Trevor Noah

Recently, I’ve spent lots of time analyzing the purpose of travel. All my life, I’ve thought of travel as being the end game, or the ultimate thing to work towards. I’ve always thought that I needed a job that would allow me to travel or have a job that helped fund my travels. It’s only recently that I realized my career can be travel. What a dream come true! Along with this idea, I thought that everyone must think of travel as the endgame as well. I foolishly assumed that like me, everyone enjoys a vacation and everyone must love to travel. Thanks to back-to-back boyfriends who were anti-travel, I sadly learned this wasn’t true. I bet you can imagine how those relationships played out, LOL!) 

Despite my poor luck with travel-forward partners, I learned a valuable lesson: Some people don’t see the full value and benefits of travel. And that’s ok! Besides being a welcome relief from the monotony of everyday life, travel is a beneficial practice with an impact well beyond relaxation. Here are some unexpected benefits of travel you may not have considered:

1. Travel makes you kinder

Travel exposes you to new experiences, cultures, and perspectives, which can help you see the world in a different way and broaden your horizons. Travel makes you more empathetic to places and people unfamiliar to you. My theory is that if the world did more traveling, then there would be less hate and more community globally. 

2. Travel builds your confidence

In most cases, travel gets you out of your comfort zone. Navigating environments beyond your own is challenging, especially when you add factors like language barriers, cultural differences, infrastructure challenges, etc. A study by the Institute for Field Research Expeditions found that travelers reported feeling more open-minded, adventurous, and confident after returning from a trip.

3. Travel makes you more creative

I certainly feel a sense of wonder and exploration while traveling. Even seemingly normal activities like walking the street or getting coffee can feel extra inspiring. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people who had lived abroad and had exposure to other cultures were more creative and scored higher on tests of complex thinking.

4. Travel makes you healthier, mentally and physically

Maybe it’s my mania, but I can’t help but feel this overwhelming sense of excitement and joy inside my stomach every time I reach a new place. In my experience, there is an undeniable correlation of my mental health and the period up to and during my travels. Coming home is the sad part, that’s why I immediately am thinking about my next trip during my travels. Who is with me? 

*You call it travel, I call it therapy* 😌

Maybe travel as therapy isn’t crazy after all: Research conducted by the American Psychological Association found that travel can reduce stress, improve mood, and enhance cognitive flexibility, which can lead to improved problem-solving abilities. 

Additionally, a study by the Global Commission on Aging and Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies found that travel can have a positive impact on physical health, cognitive health, and social connections, all of which contribute to overall well-being. Ok so hear me out… traveling everyday keeps the doctor away? Probably not technically, but at least there’s the chance you’ll travel through a country with free, universal healthcare. I mean, c’mon America 😦 

5. Travel Increases your income

Ok got you. There isn’t a direct association between travel and increasing your income. But what is income good for anyway if not to fund travel, an activity that brings joy, relaxation, knowledge, and experiences, in addition to literally everything listed above. What is money for, if not to fund experiences you will cherish? To quote Henry David Thoreau, it seems tragic “spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.”

Overall, these and other studies provide evidence that travel can have a wide range of positive effects on mental and physical health, personal growth, and overall well-being. So all this to say, if you’re not convinced of the power of travel and not prioritizing this activity into your schedule, you may want to reconsider.