It’s a common belief that the one purchase that makes you richer is travel. However, why is travel so necessary, and what is it about travel that justifies the high cost so well? Put simply, you invest more in the world and in yourself when you travel. But practically speaking, what does that mean? We appreciate you asking.
Here are seventeen unquestionable reasons why traveling is crucial and why you should start planning your next holiday as soon as possible, in case the advantages of travel aren’t immediately apparent.
1. Traveling Pushes You Out of Your Comfort Zone
We’re all guilty of routine. It’s a natural part of life. But with routine comes complacency and a tad bit of laziness. That’s not necessarily bad, but you’re often unmotivated to break free when you become stuck in a routine.
Travel challenges your everyday comfort and encourages personal growth.
It’s a universal truth that if you’re not undertaking new experiences or encountering new stimuli, you’re not growing. Let’s face it. No one ever got anywhere by standing still—unless you happen to be a teleporting superhuman.
Travel plays an integral role in forcing you outside of your comfort zone, encouraging you to become a stronger, better version of yourself. It’s only through the experience of new cultures, new situations, and even new problems that people can grow as, well, people.
2. Traveling Is Educational
Learning about today’s world in books or even in TV shows—we’re not judging, we do it too—doesn’t hold a candle to experiencing it all firsthand. It’s the difference between practicing a foreign language in the classroom and speaking it on the street. Or hearing the rush of a waterfall in a video and feeling its spray against your skin. The only way to truly experience life is to get out and live it.
All of the best textbooks and media can’t drive home information as effectively as practical knowledge. Studies show that whether you study at home or abroad, what always bears the most impact is real-world experience.
Traveling is important because it throws you headfirst into applying what you know and forces you to confront new places, new ideas, and new people. The best way to learn about economics, languages, cultures, and customs worldwide is to live it. No class will ever give the same kind of profound, hands-on experience.
We love all our educators, but we must admit there’s no better teacher than travel.
3. Traveling Helps You Relax and Unwind
For most people who travel, the goal is to relax. Of course, some people’s idea of relaxing is sitting by the pool sipping cocktails, while for others, it’s climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. But, hey, whatever makes you happy, right?
One of the reasons travel makes for such a good time to unwind is because it gets you out of your comfort zone. That also means it gets you away from all the everyday stresses that come with daily life.
Now, you may think it’s stressful, and in some cases, you’re right. Travel can be stressful, so making plans well before traveling is essential to avoid raising your stress levels even higher.
However, freedom from your daily routine and responsibilities motivates you to focus on yourself and what you enjoy doing. Think of it as recharging your batteries. Vacations give you a break from your life and time to focus on the things that make you happy.
Additionally, travel teaches more laidback forms of living. Experience a Spanish siesta or Italian passeggiata, and you may start looking at your own daily routine a little differently.
4. Traveling Allows You to Make New Friends
Ask someone about their travels, and they’ll gush about the breathtaking views, delicious foods, and unforgettable experiences. Oh, and you can’t forget the people. Travel, especially solo travel, can be a solitary adventure that separates you from the friends and family you leave back home. But, while travel may separate people for a short time, it can connect others for a lifetime.
As you travel, you’ll find yourself bumping into locals, die-hard travelers, and some people just taking a much-needed holiday. But, no matter how brief, these interactions can have a lasting impact, enriching your life with new knowledge, new ideas, and lifelong friendships.
Traveling allows you to establish connections and build a community around the world. In addition, it helps you form friendships with people of different cultures who you may have gone your entire life without knowing had you decided not to travel.
5. Traveling Can Do Wonders for Your Mental and Physical Health
If you’ve been asking yourself whether you should go on vacation, the long and short of it is yes, absolutely! Travel gets a lot of hype for the benefits it can have on your mental and physical health for a good reason—several reasons, in fact.
On top of alleviating stress, travel reduces burnout, a form of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion. Heap on other benefits to your mental health like improved brain function and higher happiness levels, and traveling becomes a no-brainer.
But that’s not even all travel does for you. Studies have found it also increases your creativity when you travel to a foreign country and immerse yourself in the local culture.
If all that wasn’t enough, travel has some awesome physical benefits too. For example, it can reduce your risk for coronary heart disease and improve your sleep functions.
So, that’s the long answer to why traveling is important for your mental and physical health. If you didn’t catch all that, the TLDR version is this: go on vacation! You likely didn’t need a brain boost to see that one coming.
6. Traveling Creates Amazing Memories
Having unforgettable memories you can look back on in the future means making those memories in your present! The only way that happens is by getting out and exploring the world.
There’s no limit to the exciting stories that traveling can inspire. You’ll come home with new tales every time you travel. Look forward to telling your friends about hiking to the top of a giant waterfall and floating in the Dead Sea.
Most everyone dreams of getting old and reminiscing fondly of past exploits. If that’s the case for you, it’s time to start building up your memory bank and ticking off adventures on your bucket list.
7. Traveling Broadens Your Vocabulary
Traveling exposes you to all kinds of new languages, and you may be surprised by the words you recognize around the world. After all, English has a bit of a reputation as being a language pickpocket. Countless words exist in English that find their origin hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Some words, like tatau, have their own English spelling: tattoo. While others, like carte blanche, remain unchanged but effortlessly woven into everyday language.
Traveling to a foreign country, you’ll likely pick up words and phrases from the local language. You may find yourself muttering British swear words under your breath or finding Japanese words that perfectly describe a moment or feeling. You’ll expand your vocab and maybe even get a head start on learning a new language! Or perhaps you can brush up on those Spanish skills you haven’t used since high school.
Your travels are bound to gift you with some new words that’ll leave you nothing short of chuffed. (That’s British slang for very pleased, by the way.)
8. Traveling Takes You on an Adventure
Traveling is an adventure. You don’t have to be Jasmine riding on a magic carpet to discover a whole new world lying beyond your doorstep. In fact, you can just as easily experience an adventure with a short car ride from home.
But, whether it’s domestic or world travel, you’ll be encouraged to explore and have fun. Hike a canyon trail, swim at the base of a waterfall, and pick up skills you never thought you’d learn in a million years, like riding a camel or surfing the Californian coast.
Travel reminds you that life is precious, fleeting, and best spent living it.
9. Traveling Gives You the Pleasure of Planning
Pleasure and planning, you read that right.
We’ll admit that planning isn’t exactly the part most people think of when picturing their fun future travels. But that innocuous planning stage can significantly impact your mood.
Anticipating your upcoming travel plays an important role in your happiness. Studies found that anticipating experiential purchases, like travel, has a deeper impact on a person’s happiness than anticipating material goods.
Think about it. You’re deep in the trenches of planning, getting your work squared away, finalizing plans, and looking up gorgeous photos of everything you plan to do and see. It’s a little hard not to get excited. So, don’t hold back in the planning. Chat with your friends and family about your upcoming trip and let your mind wander to it as you please. It’s seriously making you happier!
Can’t plan a trip in the foreseeable future? No worries. If you can’t take a trip anytime soon, you can make a list of travel benefits—like this one, you’re welcome—and find other things you can do to satisfy these desires in the interim. For example, plan to go unplugged for a day or try a new restaurant you’ve wanted to check out. Just don’t plan to put off traveling for too long!
10. Traveling Allows You to Try New Foods
Travel is often referred to as food for the soul. While that’s a heartwarming sentiment we can get behind, there’s another hungrier beast that travel satiates: your appetite.
Trying new foods might be one of the best reasons to highlight why travel is so important. Of course, eating new cuisine is already an experience in your own town. But, there are few better ways to dive headfirst into another culture’s customs and traditions than experiencing it through a foreign setting, ambiance, and explosion of flavors on your taste buds.
Traveling allows you to learn about the subtle, regional changes in products that inspire differences on a global and national scale. Each bite of local food offers a new lesson about how food is prepared, which ingredients are highlighted, and how food brings life to a halt as families and friends gather to share a meal.
