7 Reasons Why Traveling Alone Is Good for You
I saw a meme once that stuck with me. It was one of those anonymous quotes that sound very deep but are usually simple. The quote itself simply said, “Travel is Food for the Soul.” A few years ago I would have dismissed it out of hand. But since I started traveling every year, I have found it to be one of the truest things I have ever read. All the online destination research on Spectrum packages, the planning, the saving, and the travel add up into one beautiful experience. Traveling alone is one of the most fulfilling experiences you can give to yourself. This blog is my effort to impart some of the wisdom I have gathered while traveling the world alone.
Why is Traveling Alone Good for You?
When you travel alone for the first time, there are equal parts exhilaration and panic. If you can clamp down on the panic part, you will find travel changes you in many ways. Here are 7 reasons why solo traveling can be good for you:
- Step out of your comfort zone
- Get better at planning
- Get better at managing budgets
- Gain more confidence in your decisions
- Learn to develop creative solutions
- Meet exciting new people
- Overcome your fears
Let’s dive right into them.
Step out of Your Comfort Zone
When traveling solo, you are far away from familiar places and faces. When you are on your own, you are the only one in charge of your actions. When alone, you move out of your dependence on friends and family. Instead, you learn to rely on and trust yourself. This helps you gain more confidence in yourself and explore the boundaries of who you are. You gain a unique perspective into yourself, and how far your abilities can reach.
Get better at Planning
Since you are traveling alone, you need to make your travel plans on your own too. Travel planning is a big job. You need to have everything planned well in advance. This includes flights, accommodation, transport, must-visit places, saving and much more. When traveling solo, you have to learn how to plan effectively. This improves your planning skills in a real-world situation. Your enhanced planning ability doesn’t just come in handy while traveling. You can apply it to other areas of your life as well, such as your personal or professional life. Success is never random, you have to plan your way to it.
Get Better at Managing Budgets
Destination aside, most solo travelers have a limited travel budget. This teaches them how to stretch a dollar, and make the best use of this budget. There are many popular apps that can help you manage your budget and spending. Keep an eye on these apps to see how much you’re spending and keep adjusting. Solo travel is usually much cheaper than other forms. On your own, there is a lesser temptation to book resorts, hotels, expensive dinners, and wine tastings. Instead, you use your budget to get the best experience out of your travel. This budgeting skill can also transfer over to your business life as well as managing your monthly expenses.
Gain Confidence in Your Decisions
When you’re solo, you’re the only one making all the decisions. And you make them all the time. From what to eat to where to go, solo travel throws a lot of decisions at you. As you make them, you start improving your decision-making ability. You also gain more confidence in your ability to make the correct choices. As you get confident, you start handling tough decisions even better.
Learn to Develop Creative Solutions
You never appreciate how many different languages there are in the world until you travel. There are far fewer people in the world than you think who can speak English. This language barrier can be an important learning experience. Since you’re on your own with no one to help you, you have to communicate yourself. This will make you exercise your imagination and come up with creative ways to get your point across. Whether gestures, drawings or basic language, you will come up with many different ways to solve this problem.
Meet Exciting New People
This is my favorite thing about solo traveling. Humans are social animals by nature. Human contact is something we always crave and need. You will find yourself socially communicating with locals and other travelers. This is a great way to find new people and make contacts in different parts of the world. From a business perspective, any potential contact can be a lead. On a personal level, it is always great to make new friends from different cultures and backgrounds.
Overcome Your Fears
Everyone has fears of one kind or another. When you’re traveling solo, you usually don’t even have a Spectrum phone service nearby to call 911 in an emergency. In most cases, you wouldn’t even know what authorities to call even if you did have a phone. Solo travel makes you face your fears in the perfect environment. Only on your own can you truly know and face your fears. This makes you a better, stronger person than you were before you were traveling.