Are you wondering how traveling alone can make you a better person?
Maybe you want to visit the beautiful Italian cities, see the wonderful Greek sea or perhaps get some happiness straight from Spain.
Whatever the case, if you’re a trip lover and are passionate about personal growth, you’ll find out 5 good reasons to go traveling alone in this article.
Many people are against the idea of traveling alone because it makes them feel… alone! However, it’s essential to see the other side of the coin to get a full perspective of how this habit can boost your personal growth.
What if there are indeed many functional aspects of traveling alone? How can that help you become a better person both in your personal and professional life?
Let’s see it together.
Traveling Alone Can Change Your Life
Some of the most famous stories of great entrepreneurs that have been changed by solo traveling are the ones of Steve Jobs, founder of Apple and Phil Knight, founder of Nike.
While the first one ventured into India and the other went to Japan, they had one thing in common. Their trips had a spiritual root that helped them uncover more profound aspects of themselves. That probably contributed to their enormous personal and business success.
I personally traveled alone in many countries. Some of the best understandings I got in my life came from exploring different realities and ways of living while being all by myself.
To make some examples, I learned about my life purpose when I was living alone in Paris and had almost died from a Terrorist attack. Instead, when I moved to Barcelona, I realized why I was unhappy with my dating life and what I needed to do to move to a better place.
Staying alone, and especially traveling alone, is useful if you want to find out who you are and walk your authentic life path. Let’s now explore the 5 reasons why you should be traveling alone, even if the idea scares you.
5 Smart Reasons To Travel Alone
1: It Forces You to Know Yourself
When you stay by yourself, you’re forced to live with your own demons. They will haunt you most of the time until you summon enough courage to face them alone, as nobody will be there for you.
Unless your relationship with yourself is profound, you’ll have a hard time staying strong if you don’t have anybody to lift you up.
That’s why the old adage know thyself is applicable when travelling alone and surely a great accelerator of personal growth.
2: It Forces You to Socialize with Others
Traveling alone is a great way to improve your social skills because, sooner than later, you’ll need to talk to other people to get what you need and want. That could be as simple as asking for directions, going to a social activity, or spending some romantic time with a person of the opposite (or same) sex.
Some of the best experiences and best adventures I had came when I was traveling alone and needed to force myself to socialize with people. That gave me a lot of social confidence and belief in myself.
That also helped me a lot in my dating life as, becoming more confident at talking to women, made me more open to romantic opportunities.
3: It Makes You More Confident
Confidence comes from visiting the unexplored. When you explore new areas of the world and of yourself that you didn’t explore before, your knowledge will be expanded, and you will feel more comfortable with the unknown.
When you travel alone, you will also meet challenges that will push you to grow, no matter what.
For instance, if you don’t have a partner or friend, you’ll need to talk to many people. That will improve your social skills, but by mingling with people from different places and cultures, you will be forced to explore.
That’s a great way to expand your mind and comfort zone. Instead, if you always hang out with the same friends from your city, you’re not going to broaden your horizons very much.
This social and cultural mind expansion is another reason that will make you more confident at relating from as many types of people as possible.
4: Inspires You to Try New Things
Steve Jobs tried psychedelics only when he got to India with his solo trip. If he hadn’t gotten there, probably we wouldn’t know Apple as we know it today. He admitted how big the spiritual impact that the trip to India was on him and, eventually, on his company.
When you try new things, you literally make new and stronger connections in your brain that literally make you smarter. Being smart is related not only to the I.Q. you have but also how many ideas from different domains you can link together.
That’s the creative intelligence you will develop when you expand your horizons and link great ideas from one place to others gotten from another one.
5: Makes You More Responsible
Since you have to take care of yourself when traveling alone, you’ll need to grow up and do things that perhaps other people did for you until then.
I’m talking about managing to survive simple dangers, cooking, finding solutions to everyday problems, and so on. All those activities will need to be carried out by you alone, and you’ll naturally develop a higher responsibility level on you.
That’s going to come handy in the future as you will know that, if you need it, you can take care of yourself without the help of other people. It’s only when you can independently take care of yourself and of your needs that you can take care of others.
That’s something that many “mature” people still didn’t manage to learn. They are totally dependent on their caretakers almost entirely to keep going on.
Conclusion
I believe that apart from giving you all the benefits mentioned above, traveling alone can be really fun and one of the few life experiences that you’ll remember forever.
In the end, the choice is yours. If you feel in your gut that that’s the right thing you need to do to reach a new level of personal growth, then do it!
So, where will you go traveling alone? Comment below.