How travel changes the way of seeing the world
There is no doubt about it – the more you travel, the more you change as a person. Experiencing new cultures, meeting new people and being away from home influences you in a very real way, and most likely in a very positive one. Of course, the reason behind your travel will most definitely have an impact on how and how much you change. People who do volunteer work in developing countries will come away with a completely different set of skills and experiences than say, someone who goes adventure travelling all around the globe. This doesn’t mean that both people won’t come away with valuable and important impressions, but they won’t be the same.
Leave the comfort zone
The main thing is just getting out of your own comfort zone and start doing things that you might not instantly feel comfortable with. This teaches you to accept conditions that you might not feel are optimal, and it makes it that much easier to be spontaneous and adventurous.
One of the first things you will learn is to accept people as they are, even when they are being seriously annoying. When travelling you will meet all sorts of people; some you will love on sight, and others might just haunt your nightmares. But the experiences you have on the road will help you become that much more tolerant of people and their quirks, and you’ll learn that not only can you not always get what you want, sometimes you have to accept that someone else is getting what you want.
The best time is now!
Another thing you will most definitely take of travelling is the ability to live in the moment and be spontaneous. When you get stuck in a small town in India with no busses leaving for the next few days, you learn to go with the flow and sort it out. Maybe getting stuck isn’t really so bad, perhaps it’s giving you a chance to do something you didn’t think you had time to do. Maybe those days you were stuck ended up being the best days of your whole trip. Or maybe you manage to sort the situation out in some other way, and got unstuck faster than you though you could have.
Travel teaches you so much, and most of all you’ll get to know and understand yourself much better than you ever thought possible.