7 Beautiful Lessons Travel Has Taught Me

By

Travel has taught me 

Whenever you take yourself out of your comfort zone, you are bound to grow. I have always considered travel to be education in a less formal environment. Every new day spent on the road has helped me grow into the person I am today. Traveling will continue to help me grow as my eyes are always being opened by new people, cultures, struggles, celebrations and everything the world is enabling me to experience each day. Sometimes those less formal educational moments dive way beyond surface level without even noticing. Here are a few things travel has taught me:

Travel has taught me freedom

Freedom to be whoever I feel I am on the inside. It provides an open door to shed that layer of who you think you have to be, to who you want to be. At home we have built up reputations; reputations based on things like how you grew up, what kind of job you work, and mistakes or gains you have made in the past. If you’re a tom-boy, wear a dress, if you don’t want to wear make-up, no one knows you ever did, be a ladies man if you want, or a romantic guru. Travel has given me freedom, it has shown me that no one expects anything from you except for what you show them. 

Travel has taught me confidence

When you are somewhere new, where everything is just a little bit different than what you are used to, travel teaches you that it is your confidence to be ok that will get you where you need to be. Travel has shown me not to look lost, but to always be finding your way, not to feel mute because the language is different but to feel like the master of all things sign, if anything it has shown me the confidence to try. Travel has given me the confidence to take a situation as it is, and make it my own.

Travel has taught me resilience

Not everything is going to go your way, in fact it goes no one’s way, ever. Travel teaches problem solving and resilience, it teaches you to take things that are outside your comfort zone and to put them in your comfort zone. It pushes; pushes you to use your found confidence to work it out all out. When something doesn’t go as planned, sometimes you need that resilience to accept the things that have happened, that you cannot change, and use your courage to calmly change the things you can.

Travel has taught me to fall in love

It may be a place, or activity, an old friend, or someone completely new that you just met, travel teaches you to open up and fall in love. Sometimes you can find a place that just makes you happy, a place where you smile the minute you step off the bus, plane or train, and feel absolutely free, and there’s few things cooler than that. Sometimes you try new things that take your breath away, and sometimes you notice a person and your mind shatters into bits of ´wow´. Travel allows for those open heart moments to be prevalent, because what’s stopping you anyways?

Travel has taught me respect

We all grow up in our own hypothetical bubble, we have all learnt from our families and our surrounding environments at least one way to live life. Travel has shown me that the world is so much bigger than I am. It has taught me to respect what I have, what others have, and what we all don’t have. It has shown me ways of life different than my understanding. Travel has allowed me to respect other people’s struggles as well as their celebrations, it has opened my eyes in a way nothing else has. Travel has taught me to respect and appreciate my own family and how I grew up, and to recognize the differences and similarities between others. Travel teaches respect, and respect gives the ability to continue learn and grow.

Oh, and one last thing, travel has also taught me to make goals and to reach them. It proves that if you want something or to be somewhere, you can make it happen, all you need to do is find the means that works best for you and your individual situation. So if travel is something you are interested in doing, you can, you just need to find your way.