Backpacking. the Travel Lessons to be learned

The fun thing about traveling the world is seeing amazing sights, meeting new people and having great experiences. However, a lot of backpackers see their journeys as a form of personal development, and for good reason. These are the things you can learn from going on a journey abroad. (1) Learning about yourself rnWhen backpacking you learn a lot about yourself. You will often be completely on your own and this can be very confronting. Most of us are so used to always having some routine and having friends around and now this is gone. Being on the road and outside of your familiar life will really have you thinking about it is you are missing (or maybe you are not missing anything at all). There is no hiding on the road. Everything you experience is a reflection of your personality. Will you meet amazing people and have great experiences or will you hide away in a corner of the hostel? You start to notice that you gravitate to a certain type of people, which can teach you also an awful lot about yourself. (2) New insights and valuesrnOne of the most important aspects of a long journey is that you get the possibility to look at your everyday live from a distance. One of the functions of the brain is recording daily patterns. Because of this, it becomes easier for us to practice our daily routine and a large part of the day it seems almost as like we are on autopilot. But when you go traveling for a longer period of time you will break with this rhythm. Your brain will be “reset”, and you will get a lot of clear and creative thoughts back. When venturing into different cultures, you will start picking the elements that suite you most and merge them with your personality. You will see that there are a lot of shared values in different countries around the world. This will make you realize what is important in life. You will become an independent and confident human being, less focused on materialistic desires, indifferent from society based opinions and freed from limitations like fashion and trends. (3) Practical skill development / people managing rnTraveling is almost like being an entrepreneur or a project manager. You are constantly dealing with people, plans, budgets and obstacles. It is up to you to create the right skills to make the most of every situation and you will become independent and confident in doing so in no-time at all. When traveling you are constantly people managing. Whether it is brushing off annoying hustlers, making deals with tour operators and hotel owners, persuading fellow backpackers into joining you with something that you would really like to do, dealing with authority figures or dealing with language barriers. Another thing you will learn is how to quickly scan a person on integrity and incentive and act accordingly. In short: you learn to deal with the widest variety of people from the widest variety of cultures. (4) Flexibility rnAs stated before, traveling is like project management. You can make plans, but the circumstances change and your plan becomes worthless in an instant. Things are never how they seem and you are at the mercy of what you cannot control, like public strikes, bad weather or meeting someone (good or bad). Live by assumptions and know that the road there is uncertain and full of opportunities and challenges. You know where you are going, but how you will get there depends on the circumstances. You will become really flexible and after some time on the road you will not easily be frustrated anymore by temporary setbacks like delayed buses, bad weather or someone being dishonest to you. (5) Learning skills, languages rnBesides the real personal development you will also pick up other skills. You will probably learn to express yourself in different languages and become more comfortable in doing so. But you could also think about learning how to dance salsa in Cuba, doing a cooking course in Indonesia or learn how to lasso cattle in the Australian outback. The possibilities are endless and perhaps you find a new passion and meet interesting teachers. Another great aspect is that you interact in a nice way with the local community! ConclusionrnYou can see that these travel lessons will teach you a set of skills that will be beneficiary to you for the rest of your life. It is highly recommended for everybody to make a long, far journey at least ones in his / her life in the process of becoming a free and independent personality!