How Travel Can Benefit Your Mental Health
Discovering a new destination offers a coherent escape from that lacklustre longing of a mundane work day. Let’s look at 6 Ways Travel Can Benefit Your Mental Health.
Embarking on an escapade, whether in the lush tropics off-the-beaten-track or through the medieval maze-like streets of an ancient city, can boost your well-being. Exploring uncharted territory and its culture and traditions can be mentally, emotionally, and physically stimulating in many ways.
Here’s what we cover in this guide:
Creativity
Regular Resets
De-Stress
Mental Power
Physical Exercise
Connecting With Others
Tips and Tricks
Boosting Your Creativity
Diving into the spirit of exploration can play a part in boosting your creativity. Uncovering foreign cultural and historical values exposes you to various new ideas, beliefs, values, and ways of life.
Things such as tasting different foods and drinks, listening to traditional music, talking in distinct languages and conversing with other travellers help you perceive the world in a completely new way, opening up your mind. Not only will you be able to come up with new ideas, but you’ll improve both your communication and problem-solving skills.
Divulging your comfort zone can also stimulate feelings of empathy and appreciation for your home. These new opportunities can help to reduce previously conceived biases and stereotypes.
If you’re planning an international trip, try dedicating some time beforehand to learning the language. You don’t have to be a worldly word wizard; just try to nail a few phrases and terminology before setting off abroad.
Travel has been scientifically proven to benefit your mental health, and increased creativity is just one of the many positive effects of planning a getaway.
Allowing for Regular Resets
Setting aside a regular travel schedule can significantly impact your well-being and, better yet, for the long run. Making a tradition out of travelling opens you up to long-lasting effects.
By regularly travelling to different locations, you can boost the positive effects you feel from holiday mode and prolong that ‘post-vacation’ feeling. Generally speaking, people feel more productive, clearheaded, and prepared to take the bull by its horns when they return from a trip.
The mere fact that we know our trips are temporary places our minds in a state of anticipating the experience and savouring it before it even begins. This mechanism is the ultimate mood booster in daily life, both before and after travelling.
Furthermore, travel planning can produce an all-encompassing, wholesome sense of happiness as we imagine a version of the forthcoming events in our minds.
Our brains become perplexed with thoughts of indulging in gelato in Rome, getting lost in Dubrovnik, or skydiving from a plane in New Zealand… Predicting the plethora of positive experiences yet to come in your future travels can benefit your mental health.
Helping You to De-Stress
Taking a break from your demanding to-do’s and tight work schedule can help alleviate stress, allowing more time to reconnect with yourself. If you’ve typically got a chaotic calendar packed with responsibilities and demanding deadlines, then travel can be one of the best remedies.
A vacation allows you to practice self-care, elevating pleasant emotions and boosting your self-esteem and confidence.
By practising self-care, you’re reinvigorating your energy to act, think, and feel like the best version of yourself.
By letting go and releasing that unwanted tension, your work life becomes less of a priority as the time gets poured into focusing on the mind and body.
Experiencing new things in a new destination can boost your mental health, improve brain function, alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression, and kick stress right up the ass.
Improving Your Mental Power
Planning a trip can aid in productivity and general focus, alleviating stress in your day-to-day life.
Travelling shakes up the status quo, revealing a world of possibilities beyond your comfort zone. Stepping outside your usual routine can help break negative cycles and kick the rut we sometimes find ourselves in...
A trip provides your brain with something to look forward to, but getting away from work stimulates excitement, allowing your brain and body time to reset and replenish.
From a biological standpoint, that extra boost of eagerness to escape and vacation excitement can even decrease your cortisol levels. And when you come back, you’ll feel on top of your game, with laser focus and goal-setting abilities.
Getting Involved in Good, Old-Fashioned Physical Activity
A trip abroad can improve not only your mental health but your physical health too. Physical exercise is well known to improve your mental state, but travel can further amplify those effects. With ample opportunities to get involved in yoga, pilates, hiking and swimming, getting active abroad can contribute to a stronger mindset and approach to everyday problems.
There’s something special about soaking up the scenery as you scale that panoramic mountain, swimming above coral reefs, or even practising mindfulness as you do a yoga class on a tropical island...
Sometimes, you might even pick up new skills to integrate into your regular wellness routine. Embracing the outdoors by immersing yourself in an environment can boost energy levels, reduce stress, and improve mood. Check out my foolproof compilation of ways to explore a new destination & burn a few extra calories while you’re at it!
Travel undoubtedly plays an integral part in improving your mental and physical health. Not only does it boost motivation, but it can inspire you to implement changes in your daily habits back home.
Improving Your Connection With Others
Travelling with friends and loved ones can also help your mental health. Sharing your adventures with those closest to you can enhance your connection and sense of belonging.
Taking a trip with others intensifies feelings of fulfilment and love, thus playing a significant psychological role in positively affecting your mental health. Plus, experiences are better when shared!
Hiking an active volcano in Bali with your boyfriend, road-tripping the Great Ocean Road in Australia with your mates, or sharing tapas in Spain with your best friend are memories that will last a lifetime.
Travelling improves your connection with others, in turn benefiting your mental health.
Tips and Tricks
Because we all need to get started somewhere…
Inspire yourself.
Think pictures, videos, podcasts, Youtube, Insta; you name it.
Get down and dirty with the trip-planning details.
Think about budgeting, locations and time schedules. How long do you plan on going for? What season of the year is best suited?
Ask for help.
Don’t be afraid to contact friends and family who’ve travelled to your destination. Travel agents aren’t off-bounds, either!
Gather up some good old maps.
Get specific! Nail down a city, continent or country to kick it off.
When you’re overwhelmed with life’s demands and stressed out at work, discovering a new destination can proffer a coherent alternative. There’s a magnitude of ways that travelling can improve your mental health. And the best part is that your travel plans don’t have to be overly extravagant for you to reap those benefits. The benefits of travel go way beyond meeting new people and making memories. Getting out of your comfort zone can significantly impact your emotional, mental and physical well-being.
So now that you’ve read about how travel can benefit your mental health, I think it might be time to pack your bags… Where are you going to travel next?
Check out my Insta, let’s connect! @j_bergi
When travel comes into play, our fitness routines tend to get chucked out the window. And who could you blame when the labyrinth-like alleyways, soaring mountain tops, and that cocktail on the beach feel like they’re quite literally calling out your name… But alas, staying in shape while travelling can be reframed from energy-draining, to effortless with these simple exercises. Fellow female travellers, behold: the 5 Best Workouts for Girls on the Go.