December 19, 2024, 6:14 pm | Read time: 12 minutes

Traveling can help with numerous small and large issues in everyday life. Our author Anna Wengel (now Chiodo), who also works as a travel and singles coach and has traveled a lot herself, explains why this is the case.

Before I dive deeper into the topic, I would like to add a little word explanation: When I write “traveling”, I don’t mean a two-week vacation on Mallorca like every year. I probably don’t mean what many people understand as “going on vacation”. Certainly not a package tour, but an individual trip. I tend to mean a longer trip, being on the road in one or more countries, as well as solo travel. I’m talking about traveling outside the comfort zone, adventure travel, for example.

Now, on with the text. Back to the many reasons why traveling can help you cope better with everyday problems. Because there are many of them. Including the following.

Adventure and Solo Travel Can Boost Self-Confidence

Adventure doesn’t have to mean climbing the highest mountains, swimming with sharks, or doing something similarly adrenaline-filled. It can mean traveling alone to a country that you are not familiar with and where a language is spoken that you do not speak. It can mean driving out of Germany if you’ve never done that before. Everyone defines their own adventure.

However, the effect of an adventure trip is very likely to be the same for many people: increased self-confidence on their return. Because if you overcome your own fear and do something that feels anything but pleasant or easy, it is usually good for your self-confidence. Just like maneuvering yourself out of tricky situations. Confidence in yourself grows when you know how to help yourself. This point is especially true for solo travelers. Because if you are traveling alone, you have to do everything on your own and with yourself. You are regularly confronted with new and sometimes difficult situations and have to maneuver out of them alone.

So how does this form of travel help with everyday problems? Many of our daily conflicts are somehow related to self-confidence. I may not tell my girlfriend that I feel hurt by her behavior, not ask my boss for more money, not stand up for myself at any point or in front of others—all these issues have something to do with self-confidence. Many of them also have to do with self-esteem, which we’ll come to now.

Also interesting: Why Everyone Should Travel Alone, at Least Once

The Self-Esteem Is Being Strengthened

If you are in a situation at home where you feel small, insignificant, or somehow not good enough, a trip can sometimes help you to take a clearer view of yourself. Above all, the aforementioned increased self-confidence helps to boost self-esteem. If you trust yourself and are aware of yourself, you may be able to appreciate your own value more. But simply being somewhere else can help you to breathe more freely. And this can also create the space to see yourself more clearly and, therefore, your own value.

Self-worth can also be perceived anew through external influences. For example, when you meet friendly, open, and interested other people who see all the lovable aspects of you—and show you that they do. In this case, they serve as a reminder and a mirror for all the beautiful and good things in you. And perhaps even as support in learning to reinterpret and accept the sides that you perceive as “weaknesses” or “flaws”. Back home, the strengthened self-esteem can then help you to reassess your own situation and change it, if necessary.

Traveling Can Open Up a New Perspective on Everyday Problems

Sometimes, in the midst of our ever-same daily routine, we only see our lives through blinders. One problem can then swallow up everything else. Everything seems somehow hopeless and gray. Traveling can almost seem like a liberation, an escape from the same old same old. Because if you leave your everyday life behind and go traveling, you can sometimes realize that things don’t always have to be the same as usual. That your own perspective is smaller than the world and its possibilities. That there are always other solutions and ways than the usual or immediately visible ones. Out of everyday life, the view suddenly becomes wide again. The problems stay at home and may no longer seem so big, so life-threatening. The perspective changes. Perhaps you even manage to step out of the focus of the problem and look at it from above, so to speak. This sometimes opens up solutions and new perspectives that you couldn’t see before. In short, traveling creates distance from everyday problems and, thus, also the chance to find solutions to them.

Fulfilling Travel Dreams Might Prevent Everyday Problems

The dream: Seeing the world (or a certain part of it). The perceived reality: I can’t do that, or, at least, not alone. Do you recognize yourself here? Unlived dreams don’t just go away. Neither do fears that might prevent you from fulfilling your dreams. Instead, the non-fulfillment of a dream can lead to dissatisfaction, which can become ever greater. Dissatisfaction with yourself for not doing what you long to do, but also with life in general, and everyone in it, can be the result.

Fears can also grow if you give in to them without checking them. Instead of traveling, you may not even dare to take the bus at some point. This is an example and is not intended to scare you. My point is simply to illustrate how important it is to live your dreams. Those who live their travel dreams will most likely feel a sense of fulfillment. Especially if it has taken some effort, if there was a moment when you did something “anyway”.

Having said that, I would like to add that you can approach a travel dream slowly. I once stumbled very naively into a travel dream—Afghanistan—and had to realize on the spot that I wasn’t ready for it yet. I don’t regret it, and despite everything that happened there, I’m very glad on various levels that I went. However, if someone asked me for advice on a similar travel dream, I would probably suggest moving a little slower. Like first fulfilling an easier dream that points in the same direction. For example, I traveled to Nepal first and then India, which was definitely good preparation, because it was similar but not half as intense.

You Get To Know New Things

Travel educates and broadens your horizon. You encounter cultures that are different from what you are used to at home. Maybe you learn new skills, find new interests, etc. You bring all of this back home with you, where you can integrate it into your everyday life and make your own life more colorful. Learning new skills can also open up new horizons, for example, for new career paths or other life decisions. In this way, the trip can sometimes address deeper everyday problems that you are not necessarily aware of. For example, how entrenched a professional or private situation actually feels. Or how a lack of creativity manifests itself as boredom in everyday life.

Learning To Be Open

When traveling, you often meet people who have grown up in other cultures and have correspondingly different perceptions of life. When traveling, you sometimes come into contact with people who completely challenge your own bubble, your own self-image, or even your moral code. And you still have to deal with them somehow. If you do this and, in the best-case scenario, learn to be open to differences and other people’s ways of thinking, as well as want to understand instead of immediately judging them, this in turn helps in dealing with others in everyday life—and perhaps directly solves one or two everyday problems.

Find Out What You Actually Want

While you are brooding over everyday problems, the question “What do I want?” may be neglected. It is essential when traveling, otherwise, there is hardly any progress. No matter what you do on a trip, you are constantly making decisions about what you want or not want to do. This means that you ask yourself (consciously or unconsciously) more about it—and thus come into contact with your own desires. And that’s probably not all.

If you start to ask yourself about your desires in the little things, you may eventually arrive at the bigger decisions in life. What do I want for my life? Am I happy with it, or are there things I want differently? Where am I heading? This applies to all areas. Traveling helps you to critically question your own life, rethink decisions, look at everyday problems differently, and sometimes find ways to correct them or change direction completely.

Time for Topics and Underlying Feelings

When traveling, issues and feelings that were pushed away in everyday life often come up, whether due to fear, lack of time, both, or other reasons. When traveling, these issues can become stronger and less distractible. Especially if you set yourself this goal and drop distractions such as social media, TV-show binges, and the like, and consciously engage with nature, meditation, or something similar. But not only then. Because triggers for unresolved issues and unwanted feelings are everywhere. When traveling, however, it is sometimes easier to face them. Be it because you are alone with yourself or because the normal environment is far enough away, and you feel a freer framework for the difficult issues.

If you finally deal with them and give yourself the space to do so, at some point clarity sets in, and with it relaxation and calm. The issue no longer lies in the dark and scares you; it lies open, perhaps loses its terror, and you can look ahead. Dealing with issues in themselves helps us to cope better in everyday life, but unprocessed issues often hinder us unconsciously. Traveling is simply a means of getting to the issues and giving them space. But, of course, you don’t need to travel to do this.

Mindfulness and Intuition

In addition to creating space for deeper issues, traveling can also create space for a more conscious life. After all, if you take a relaxed approach to your travels, don’t plan them through, and let yourself drift a little, you might feel yourself more on the road. Learn to listen to that little voice and the feeling deep in your gut again, and follow your own needs. What is sometimes difficult in everyday life, when everything is too loud or too hectic, is perhaps easier on the road, because you don’t have to rush anywhere and can take time to listen and watch.

Some travelers also specifically seek out relevant teachings and travel to learn meditation and mindfulness practices, for example. Whether on their own or with guidance, once they have internalized these new teachings and insights, they take them home with them and perhaps integrate them into their everyday lives.

Serenity

The aforementioned mindfulness alone already helps you to become more relaxed and calm. Another is stepping out of your comfort zone. If you stretch it often enough and don’t resist it, but instead learn to deal with unpleasant feelings mindfully, this will ultimately help you to become more relaxed and calm. Is it really still annoying to be cut off or honked at in traffic after waiting for hours for a bus in Nepal, where you not only had to deal with loud music, but also flying chickens and human excrement? Certainly less so.

More on the topic

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Preventing Burnout and the Like

And last but not least, if everyday life consists mainly of stress, appointments, and to-do lists, traveling can simply help you to finally relax properly. Not just a little break, but a real break. To relax to the deepest depths for weeks on end. Perhaps traveling also helps to reduce stress in everyday life and everyday problems in general. Perhaps it helps to prevent burnout at the moment.

There are many reasons why traveling can help you cope with or prevent everyday problems. And this list is certainly not exhaustive. In the end, it also depends on what changes you want to make. It also depends on the issues you want to confront or resolve for yourself.

A note on this: I am referring here to everyday problems that are not subject to any psychotherapeutic indication. For serious psychological issues, problems, and disorders, a psychologist or psychotherapist should always be consulted.