5 Ways Your Mental Health Improves While Traveling
The changes you should be open to face while traveling to live a happier life.
I feel the warming sun rays hugging my skin, the playful salty ocean breeze in my hair, the people I hear laughing and the bird’s songs I enjoy listening to — I am happy but more importantly I’m at peace with my mind and my life. Being fully aware of all your surroundings and experiencing all the smells, colours, sounds, and tastes more intensely, is beautiful.
You are probably wondering how I achieved this state of mindfulness. In this fast-paced world of ours, there is always the next challenge waiting for us when we think we are over the hill, it is not quite easy to find time for ourselves.
Well, I left my home country Austria to travel to the other side of the world, Australia. The names of the countries are similar, but my life changed completely. Here are my top reasons why and how traveling helps you improve your mental wellbeing:
Change of scenery
As with most matters in our lives, sometimes all we need is a different perspective. Believe me, when I tell you that doesn’t just work with smaller problems, no it works perfectly well with your whole life.
To be somewhere where you have never been, automatically makes you more aware of your surroundings. Everything is new and exciting and if you welcome this newfound curiosity for life, it makes creating a state of mindfulness way easier.
Relax, calm down, and enjoy is the way to go. It is called “slow traveling”, and it is the key to mindfulness on your adventures away from home.
It will immediately improve not just your travels, but your life at home as well. Changing your scenery takes you away from what normally reminds you or confronts you with all the challenges and problems you have to face. It is the perfect escape.
Confrontation with new people and cultures
Traveling will without question lead to meeting new people. Even if it is just a short exchange of words with a friendly barista in a coffee shop.
Meeting new people will have similar effects on your mental health as a change in scenery, but it has a special touch of human emotion to it. You are confronted with other people’s lives along with their challenges and problems. Sometimes even challenges and problems you have never thought about. This will make you see your own life in a different light or in other words, through the eyes of someone else.
The aspect of learning about a different culture and living in a different scheduled routine will mix up your life and help you find a different way to handle all those problems that made you get stuck in a circle of unhappiness.
Leaving problems behind
Another important aspect of traveling, as a way to improve mental health, is the chance to leave your problems behind. Whether you try to escape the pressure to find out what to do with your future like me or anything else, you will get a little bit more distance to it.
With the already described changes you face while traveling you can fully focus on yourself.
The challenge of including the often talked about “me-time” in our daily routine, won’t be a problem while traveling. Traveling is all about leaving your life behind and focusing on your own well-being by treating yourself.
But it is not just about leaving problems behind, it is also about growing as a person and gaining strength to face your problems as an improved version of yourself when you return home.
Trying something new
As mentioned before, traveling leads to establishing new habits and routines and it is important to welcome those instead of sticking to your way of life. Adapting to a different way of life helps you improve your mental health in a way that can be described as a life lesson.
Trying a local delicacy or having dance lessons can have a huge impact on the way you look at life. In my case, it is a sunset walk along the Sydney coastline. I gain strength and charge my happiness accus.
It doesn’t have to be huge changes, but being open and brave will improve your state of happiness. Jumping over one’s shadow and trying something new is one of the most impactful steps to improve your life.
Reflection on your old life
In my opinion, the most important change that happens to you while traveling is that you learn what you miss and what you don’t miss about your life back home.
Finding out who of your friends, colleagues, and family members you miss gives you an idea of what impact they have on your life. It is the best way to start reflecting on your relationships and probably find the toxic ones, you don’t want to have.
It will also help you to find out which routines you will miss in your day-to-day life and which you can live without.
The circumstances and relationships we live in make us the people we think we are, but being in a new environment gives you the chance to be truly yourself. It is the best way to find out who you are and adapt your true nature into your life.
That is what will make you feel more yourself and comfortable in your own skin. If you ask me and take my experience on that, it is the biggest step to improve your mental health.
There are many ways to improve your mental well-being while traveling, but these five are the most impactful in my experience. These five points mentioned above will happen while traveling, you just need to let them happen. It doesn’t matter how long your travels are, it is about what you are willing to learn from them to improve your mental health, your happiness, and your whole life.
