Traveling Makes You More Creative And Better
Traveling is a way to break the habit and enjoy the feeling of well-being that comes from exploration, discovery and surprise. Before, taking a trip far away almost meant changing your life. This could go on for months or even years, as the time spent traveling was enormous. Today things are completely different. In fact, you can travel to any country in the world in less than two days, and with a little luck, in less than a day.
When we travel, we learn, we change our perspective and we renew ourselves. It is an invitation to get out of our routine and it is to give the opportunity to other facets of us to appear. Facets that may have fallen asleep from repetition and habit. De-contextualizing yourself activates your entire subjective world and brings up new challenges that require new skills and approaches that are different from what you typically use.
“Traveling is an exercise with fatal consequences for prejudice, intolerance and narrow-mindedness.”
-Mark Twain-
The travels plunge us into territories that we feel as less predictable, because in these new environments, there are many relationships of contingencies that we do not know. This uncertainty can be the source of a certain nervousness, but also of a lot more emotions and a heightened sense of adventure. Innate travelers need that adrenaline rush. Sporadic travelers know that these emotions are reminiscent of the happiness of being alive.
When you travel, you step out of your comfort zone. You allow yourself to expand the horizons of your world and life. But without realizing it, you introduce a stimulation of your intellectual abilities, you become more creative, and you develop a lot of your social and emotional skills.
Traveling is a source of creativity
They say that you can always enjoy a trip three times: when you organize it, when you make it and when you remember it. The three steps require great creativity from you. You need it when choosing where you are going to travel. You need to be aware of what appeals to you, what you are looking for and what each destination has to offer.
When you travel, your creativity inevitably comes out of its reserve. You arrive in places that you do not know or that are not usual for you. You see yourself in the need to make multiple adaptations: to uses and customs, to food, to people’s daily lives, to the way you get around, etc. Additionally, if the trip is far away, you will also need to get used to other social interactions and a different language.
When you remember your trip, you will choose a way to organize and give meaning to those memories. You will recreate them, you will combine them and you will choose the most important aspects of the experience. You will interpret what you have experienced.
All of these processes, taken as a whole, amount to complex intellectual activities. It’s almost like writing a book. Almost like designing, executing and evaluating a project. Many of your intellectual and creative abilities are put to the test when you travel. So after taking a trip, you will never be the same person again. The experience is much more intense and stimulating; and that is precisely why it can become very pleasant.
Traveling makes you better
Traveling always exposes enriching experiences. A maxim says that “Fascism surpasses itself by reading and intolerance by traveling.” A trip frees you from a lot of prejudices, especially if you visit a place where you have to immerse yourself in a culture that is different from your native culture, or with which there is a great contrast to your usual reality. Understand that the difference should not be seen vertically, but horizontally: no culture is better or worse, they are simply different.
It has also been shown that people who take vacations, at least twice a year, have a lower risk of suffering from depression. In fact, traveling is a great antidote to sadness, because somehow it allows you to think and see everything differently. It’s like a bath of youth, which allows you to refresh your perspective of reality and of yourself.
Traveling also helps to connect with yourself and your most authentic feelings. Freed from your usual surroundings, these ideas and emotions that are often put in the background can more easily emerge, thanks to the particular context. You can see yourself, in a way, freed from all the everyday pretexts and factors that force you to inhibit yourself.
There is a difference between looking at life through the lens of everyday stress and doing it during one of those parentheses that travel allows. This is why we can say that traveling makes you better. Travel rejuvenates, gives more energy and fills life with more color and magic. Never hesitate again: traveling inevitably takes you somewhere.
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