The incredible benefits of travelling alone

I never considered travelling alone, and never imagine such immediate benefits.

I am lucky enough to have lived in different countries, not too dissimilar but still quite different; as a result of that, I’ve got used to travel quite a bit. You travel distances become shorter: once a 2 hours car trip would be crazy, now 5 hours flight is “short”.

For different reason I decided to took a small trip to Lisbon and Andalucia, but not only the places — my emotions and thoughts were the biggest surprises of all!

Know thyself

Travelling alone offer a pretty rare opportunity: reducing almost to zero the “would/should/need”. There is nobody to talk/fight/decide on what is next, where to eat, what to do; there is nobody who is tired/stresses/wants to do something different (apart from you).

It is an incredible occasion to start listening to yourself. “What do I want to do now”? It is a powerful question. Whenever there are other people that travels/live with you, you find a middle point. Our ego, that strives for attention, can either try to make everyone happy or just their own thing and pay the consequences. It is a game of roles, and the more you know other persons the more the roles are powerful (but this is another story).

Being alone let you drop your role. You are not anymore the boss/waiter/coder/musician/lover/mom, you are just yourself. If you can be conscious about that, it lets you reflect a lot about how much we based our relationship on roles!

Consciousness about roles is powerful in every field, and can be brought back to everyday’s life.

Mindful travel

If you travel alone and you choose not to close yourself with music or constant facebook/whatsapp checking, you can have a totally mindful experience.

There is an incredible advantage in a lonely adventure: there is silence.

By mindfully wandering, you can just walk around in silence and feel yourself. Feel your body. Feel your emotions. Be in awe for a beautiful view, some music made by street artists, some animal sounds.

If you can be in silence and just listen to yourself, you can discover a lot! You cannot hide in a strong partner that decide for you, or a weak one that does follow you. You cannot hide from yourself! It is you and yourself: what you want to do now? What you want to eat? When ? What activity you want to do ?

Drop all judgements towards yourself. Drop all “should/would/must”. Just spend the time as you wish!

Going with the flow

Accident. This is the word to describe almost everything that we classify when is not as we planned. Probably a better word would be “unexpected”. Is it good or bad? Who knows? The instant reaction for many is to be worried when something not planned happens. It is absolutely normal! If you try to change the perspective to “adventure” than everything can change. Can you feel like Indiana Jones? How many unplanned things happened to him that became adventures? For sure if your life is in danger then there is the survival mode. Otherwise beware of the invisible tiger in the room!

To non surviving things, try to switch to an Indiana Jones mindset. Being alone make it a lot easier: there is nobody else that panics, needs help, or that you feel to have to provide to.

Many emotions rises and dies during the day. Be curious about those. I know it sounds hard to do, but try just to witness it without judgement.

There will be many different situations that will not go as you want. What happens when those arises? What is you emotion? What is your feeling?

There is an incredible potential to just observe what happens inside yourself.

Remember: emotions are a compass. Neither wrong or right, but just pointers to what you love or hate.

Use this compass to flow with the events! Something wrong happens…what is my worst fear? And more important…will it really happen?

Flowing with the events is an incredible gift. I lost trains and changed my plans for places to sleep (using Airbnb) for that, skipped some places I initially wanted to visit, improvised a little. There was a mix of feelings at the beginning, like “I should visit that/do that while I am here”, more for the guilt of not doing it than the pleasure. I judged myself many times when I did something wrong or stupid (talking really bad to myself that if I was talking to someone else like that I would feel really bad for them). I noticed my anxieties when going to stations and airports. When running around. The cage of thoughts about what I should do was pretty tight. Then you stop. Sometimes you lost the train on purpose. You turn the wrong road not by accident.

You start to see that nothing wrong happens. You become more curious: where does this road ends?

You see that the rules are in your mind. Some are useful, many are useless.

Presents from the trip

One of the most important thing is to bring some internal gifts from a trip.

Writing a journal about your feelings and thoughts and how you faced them is paramount.

You will gain a lot of confidence by going around.

Humbleness will be a new partner.

Curiosity and will to explore too will arrive in your life.

Be in awe will become easier than before.

You can go back to your normal life and different eyes now!

Conclusions

I definitely recommend travelling alone at least once in a lifetime, but even more often if possible. It is an enriching experience to get in touch with yourself — if you don’t hide from the feeling of being alone, you can discover many new things about yourself.

• Travel without music and without constantly checking your phone.
• Be open to everything that comes out from within.
• Ask yourself “what do I want to do now?” And try to give an honest answer. Nobody will ever now what you really did, just what you tell them!
• See what you like and dislike about the place, music, food, culture and people you are interacting.
• Most importantly…why do you like/dislike it?
• Write a little bit everyday about your feelings — they can serve you when you go back to your “normal” life.
• When back to your everyday life, try to remember the free spirit you had during the holiday.
• Remove at least the limits in your brain, and see the real limits from the outside world!

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