How travel can change your perspective about life
How travel can change your perspective about life
In this post I will discuss how travel can change your perspective about life. It can include various aspects such as home ownership, delayed gratification, mortality, minimalism, and finding contentment.
I am a big advocate of traveling as much as you can while you’re still young. Usually, younger people have fewer responsibilities and obligations in life. Younger people are also more malleable. This gives you the opportunity to be open to exploring, learning, and growing. Traveling and experiencing the world really can shape and mold you as a person.
Traveling can also help you find your purpose in life. Everyone has different gifts. Sometimes being confined to the same location all of our lives does not help us to grow as individuals. Traveling can help you to see firsthand how other people live and exist in their world. Your world perspective cannot be just one location your entire life. Just like a fish that lives in an aquarium, it will never experience what more exists in life if it stays in the same environment forever.
Travel
One of my best words of advice is not to be afraid to travel alone. I believe this is a big factor to why some people do not travel. But there are solutions to every problem. If you do not know anyone, meet people. I promise you, they will not bite. If you are worried about the safety of a destination, do your research and change your destination if necessary. There is a book called “The Gift of Fear” and it emphasizes not creating a fear with no basis. A true fear is something that can hurt or kill you. Most of our fears are illogical fears. I understand it may not be for everyone, but don’t knock it until you try it. Living your life waiting for other people to join you is not a life on your terms.
You will undoubtably meet people on your trip. Wherever you go, people are. And many people all over the world are curious and receptive to getting to know you and inviting you into their world.
Home Ownership
As we age, our responsibilities typically increase. These responsibilities can involve marriage, children, health ailments, caring for elderly parents, pets, advancing your career, and you guessed it – home ownership. You will always need a place to live. A home will always be there. Your health, however, will not always allow you to travel since we only get more limited as we age.
Before buying a home and if you are financially able to, I encourage you to travel first. Maybe that will change your mind about where you want to live or where you choose to settle down. Home ownership is a big-ticket item and it is not to be taken lightly. Before making a big life decision that involves home ownership, determine where you would like to live long-term. This will be the place where you make most of your memories and live your life. You will want your environment to be as positively conducive to your health and happiness as possible. Traveling can help shape what you may want in your life including the environment you would like to live in and raise a family.
Delayed Gratification
We live in a society that encourages us to go into debt for everything. Between credit cards and buy now pay later, this is the perfect environment to satisfy your every desire immediately. But before credit cards existed, people saved for what they wanted. If they could not afford it, they couldn’t buy it.
Delayed gratification can show itself in the form of saving up for a large purchase rather than taking out a loan or letting an item remain in your online shopping cart for 24-48 hours before making a decision to purchase it. The concept that you can have everything all at once with immediate access at your fingertips can be very detrimental. Instant gratification can lead to moral issues such as satisfying your immediate impulses without considering the long-term consequences. This can lead to overspending and neglecting other financial priorities.
There is nothing wrong with credit cards when used responsibly. However, delaying gratification can help you determine whether you need it or not. Unnecessary debt should be avoided at all costs.
Mortality
Sometimes we may feel like the world revolves around us, but traveling really does open your eyes to how other people live. We are all just individuals coexisting and figuring out life how we personally know how.
One thing for certain is that as the seasons continue to change, we continue to change. We inevitably get older, but we also grow up. Traveling can broaden your perspective on just how trivial many things are that we worry about in everyday life. It may be difficult to see sometimes but life is more than our own struggles. Everyone was thrown into adulthood with no adulthood for dummies course. We are all just adapting to our own lived experiences and trying to figure it out.
Traveling while you’re young and typically more physically mobile reduces your limitations that inevitably come with age. That new item you bought will one day mean nothing. Nothing lasts forever, including us. But as long as you have your mind, you will never forget your travel experiences. These experiences can lift your mood when you’re feeling down and they can recenter you. Visit your loved ones while you still can and be present in their life. Don’t take life for granted because life is short and fickle.
Minimalism
Anne Frank unfortunately knew all too well what minimalism meant, but these were her circumstances. Even from a very young age, she realized the urgency of her situation and packed accordingly.
It is no secret that traveling light will save you money. This is why minimalism fits into this concept. Minimalism can help you to distinguish what is really necessary and what is unnecessary.
If you have ever been backpacking, you can only take what you need because there is no room for anything else. It is amazing how we as humans adapt to our environment to fit our belongings. If you only have a 40-liter backpack, you only pack the most important things you need that will fit in that backpack. If you only have a 600 square foot apartment, you only have stuff that will fit in your 600 square foot apartment. But what happens if you move somewhere with more space? Do you feel the need to fill all of the empty space with more stuff? All empty space does not need to be filled.
The more you have, the more you have to pay for, the more upkeep you have, and the more things you have to worry about.
Contentment
“We are encouraged to never stop and never be satisfied. It’s beyond our bandwidth and we’re starting to see symptoms. I have enough. I’ve done enough. I am enough.”
Jim Carrey
Feeling content is not easy in today’s society. Around every corner there is an advertisement encouraging us to consume something.
This is why finding contentment is important – with a heavy emphasis on finding. If we let it, society can make us feel inadequate and it can be difficult not to desire more. But at some point, you have to find your own inner source of contentment. True contentment does not come from getting what you want, but from wanting what you already have. It comes down to a simple statement: I have everything I could possibly need in life.
In conclusion, I hope you consider these points and how they can play into your perspective about life. And whatever your life goals may be, I hope you can see the unadulterated beauty of life and I hope you can find what you’re looking for.