Vol 3: Here’s why you should travel…

So, I've been travelling and doing photography for over 7 months now and I absolutely love it. So I know I might sound biassed when I say this but I honestly think everybody should experience travelling at some point in their life…

And I don’t just mean short vacations or boozy holidays with the lads. I mena, take a month or so to be immersed in a new culture, in a completely new place and surround yourself with new people. It sounds scary to some and to others, they'll think, “how am I going to find the time or money for that”?!

I understand those apprehensions completely, however, I’m just going to share here, why I think it is so important and how it can enrich your life and personality greatly…

New perspectives

When you take some time out to travel, to be away and in a completely new environment, you will gain a lot of perspective on your current life. You have the time to reflect on what you are doing career wise, the people you spend time with and how it is impacting your life.

You’ll also have the amazing opportunity to meet interesting people from all around the world from all different walks in life. The conversations you will have with such people will open your mind up to so many new possibilities and ways of thinking, that you may have never heard before in your inner circle back home.

Most people I meet travelling, tend to realize the worthlessness of the high paying, high stress jobs they were peursur=ing and realise that happiness is in spending more time with the people you love and pursuing things that matter to you. Just an observation, but maybe you’ll gain interesting insights for yourself…

Get Ideas…

If you're currently working on something important, or perhaps that important thing is simply wondering what to do with the rest of your life, I think you should travel for a little while. There’s two reasons for this…

Firstly, you’re going to meet so many new and interesting people and you're going to be able to share and hear stories from all different areas. Things that you wouldn't necessarily talk about with your friends back home but one day you might connect with some random Norwegian person (hypothetically) on a hike and share ideas on things that you’d never had the opportunity to talk about before. Inspiration and ideas come out of the most random of places and you’ll understand what I mean when you travel.

Secondly, especially if you travel solo, you will have lots of time to yourself. You arrive at a new place and haven't connected with any new friends yet, so you set out to explore a new place alone. On these adventures, you have so much space and time to reflect on everything you are thinking about, without the pressure of being there. A great and safe place to develop the thoughts and philosophies you have in your head.

Confidence

This one is probably my favourite. Personally I have dealt with social anxiety since the age of 12 and it is something I have been working on and improving ever since. However, since travelling, I have been thrown into so many situations, where you have to make new friends all the time, interact with locals, in languages you barely know and interact with businesses and authorities to help you travel from A to B. There is no time to think in these times and you are put out of your comfort zone but you just do it. As a result, 7 months later, I am the most confident socially I have ever been!!

Not only this. I think your personal confidence will grow tremendously also. You are put in many situations that you have to figure out, for example, how to get from here to there, where to stay, what you will need, how to get by in each new country, and how to solve problems when you don’t even speak the language of the locals… All of these situations are solvable and once you get through each of these tasks you grow to become so much more confident in your abilities as a person.

If you can achieve these goals when you have no initial clear path on how to solve them, you learn that you are capable of working through any encounter.

So as you can see, travelling not only gives us experiences of a lifetime. It really is an essential experience to help us grow as people. To find a direction in life and to have the confidence that we can take it on. 

These lessons are so unique and invaluable and this is why I think everybody can benefit from doing some travelling in a completely foreign environment. You won’t regret it.

Travel Hack:

Learn a bit of the language. The locals will appreciate it and respect you a lot more.

The 5 basics I think you should at least learn are ‘Hello’, ‘thank you’, ‘sorry’, ‘how much’ and ‘goodbye’. Also learn ‘no thank you’. For example, in a country like Vietnam, sometimes locals can be a little pushy to get you to buy a service from them. One time, this guy walked up to me to sell a day tour by tuk tuk. I say no thanks 2 or 3 times and he does not listen. Thankfully, I remembered what my Vietnamese friend taught me. I say “kong gammon” and immediately he listens and respects that I spoke his language and walks away leading to a much more pleasant interaction…

Content that inspires me…

So this has been a long post already, So I’m going to make this piece short. Here’s a list of come accounts and books that have helped push me on into my travelling journey. Maybe you will find their content useful too…

@jordhammond An amazing travel photographer based from the UK but has traveled extensively and his photos are incredible. It is a style that has inspired me tremendously both with the incredible places he’s visited (particularly in south east Asia) as well as his awe inspiring style of work around the world.

@watchluke Pretty much the same reasons as Jord Hammond but he also has a unique way of sharing his travels with a brilliant eye for color and more recently, his incredible storytelling through video too.

Vagabonding A book by Rolf Potts, packed full with travel hacks and how to get by and make the most of your adventures in unknown places safely and affordably. I found it very inspirational and a good confidence builder to travel.

www.lonelyplanet.com For the same reasons as the last book, but this company is both a website and series of books on how to get by in any location you might like to travel to. These are super inspiring and confidence building, that you can travel in any place you have in mind.

4-hour work week- written by Tim Feris. By no means a travel book but more so a manual for how to free up more time in your life, so that you can build a life to have the freedom to work and travel as you please. I found this super inspirational hour to build the life you dream of.

I hope you found the information in this volume blog post to be useful. That you now have more ideas and inspiration to consider making a trip out to a completely new place and throw yourself in a new environment. I truly believe your life will be better for it.

Best wishes,