The pandemic has taught us all how important travel is for us. Being stuck in our daily lives with restricted movements has left us feeling mentally and physically exhausted.
But with places opening, it’s time to restart responsibly. It’s no news that travel is good for your physical wellbeing, but a significant amount of scientific research suggests that exploring a new place can do wonders for your mental and emotional health as well.
Here are 7 ways travelling makes your mind happy and healthy:
1. Travel as a stress buster: Do you dread the sound of your wake-up call in the morning and long for your day to end, even though it has just started? Is 24 hours not enough hours in a day for you to get things on your TO DO List done? Finding the eluded Work-Life Balance is almost impossible in today’s workforce so leaving all the stressors behind and boarding a plane to a land far, far, away and warm waves rushing unto the shore to greet you can be so relaxing.
2. Helps you re-discover yourself: While you travel, the need to interact with various kinds of people liberates you from your ego and also throws up interesting challenges on you. In the process, you discover you are capable of doing much more than you believed you could. While you travel, the experiences that you gain help you become more open to life. It has often been observed that people who have travelled a lot in life become more adaptable to changes besides their capability to overcome problems and hardships become more pronounced.
3. Strengthens your relationships: In your routine, you would hardly get time to spend time with your family and enjoy the pleasure of bonding. Travelling with your near and dear ones gives you some dedicated time which will help you revive and enliven your relationship with your family and loved ones.
4. Helps you gain some new friends: While you are travelling, you quite often bump into people who become your good friends and you go on to maintain this relationship.
5. You will be rejuvenated: The relaxation and the fun that you enjoy during your travel rejuvenate you for taking up your challenging routine. Indulging in some leisure and sports activities like whitewater rafting, sightseeing or beach volleyball will instil the youth back in you.
6. It boosts happiness and satisfaction: Apart from the obvious fact that you don’t have to go to work (and can legit eat pizza for breakfast), travelling gives you the opportunity to step away from the daily grind. The new events and experiences help rewire your brain, hence boosting your mood and self-confidence. According to a Cornell University study, the anticipation of a trip can increase your happiness substantially, even more than the anticipation of acquiring something tangible, like a new car.
7. It makes you mentally resilient: Going and living somewhere where you feel excited and intimidated at the same time can help you toughen up mentally and emotionally. Also, facing difficulties in an unfamiliar environment, among new people, forces you to learn and adapt to a life that’s out of your comfort zone.
It is encouraged that people hold on to aspects of a travel experience or vacation that was pleasurable. For example, if you liked the food in Paris, learn how to cook French food in order to re-create some of the feelings you had while you were on vacation. Another behavioural intervention is to remember peaceful moments you had on vacation and try to remember what was different from your present life. Maybe you took the time to eat breakfast, maybe you exercised. Those things are crucial reminders of what we should do every day.
Call/WhatsApp Ms Seema Agarwal: +91 98205 76682