7 Precious Lessons Learnt From Travelling
To many people, travelling is an escape from their hectic life.
It’s a time for relaxation and entertainment, but travelling is not limited to that, it is a precious opportunity to learn. Even from a short getaway, the things you learnt can stick with you and leave profound impacts on you that can last for a lifetime. Here are some of the most cherished things you can learn from travelling.
- Self-discovery:
When your family and friends are not around you, you get to spend more time with yourself and discover a different side of you. Surrounded by unfamiliar things, you’re encouraged to step out of your comfort zone and try new things. Be bold, challenge yourself and find out all the undiscovered possibilities inside you. When you face different situations on your own, you will realise that you are capable of achieving things you never thought you were able to do. By recognizing your own reactions in certain situations, you will have a better understanding about yourself.
- Different perspective of life:
After living in a place for a long time, you behave in the same way as everyone around you, as your mindset is shaped by the culture. There are certain values that stick with you and affect your actions before you even notice. These behaviors became your custom and you never question why you did these things in the first place. They only seem like the right things to do as they are deemed as social norms. Travelling in a new place allows you to immerse into a new culture. Getting to observe or even experience how local people live, you will discover different customs and lifestyle. What seems so important to you might seem so little to them as they hold different values. You learn to set yourself out of your culture and think from a different standpoint.
- Learn about different cultures:
Exploring the culture is probably the most wonderful thing one can do when travelling. While you might think that you don’t have to live in the culture to learn it, the learning experience is never as authentic as real-life involvement. From the cuisine to clothing, architecture to religion…the list goes on. It’s an eye-opener to discover cultural diversity in a different country. Through interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds, you will learn a lot about the wonders of the world.
- Be curious and try new things:
When travelling in a foreign place, you are often intrigued by a lot of new things. You might find yourself asking a lot of questions. You learn a lot as you try to find out the backstory about all the things that interest you. Keep that curiosity with you even after returning home from the trip so you are self-motivated to gain knowledge.
- Appreciate the little things:
Have you noticed that when you travel, you tend to appreciate more? “Look at that postbox! Isn’t the colour just lovely?”… Then you end up taking 10 pictures of the postbox. Every little thing seems more fascinating when you travel. In fact, you’re surrounded by all these things in the city you’re living in. We neglect everything around us because we’re so used to it that we never bother to observe it. If we live the way we travel, we would be able to discover a lot more beautiful things in life.
- Problem-solving in unexpected situations:
Unexpected events are inevitable even if you’ve planned everything beforehand. When something abrupt happens, instead of panicking, you learn to stay calm and cope with them, especially if you have to deal with these problems on your own.
- Learn the language:
When you’re traveling to a place that doesn’t speak your language, you’d have to learn a few words or phrases to get around. You might think that your travelling journey is only a short trip so you can’t really learn a language in depth. However, it’s a great opportunity for you to discover your interest in the language. Start by recognizing street names and reading restaurant menus. After the trip, you might be fascinated by the culture so much that you want to dive into the culture by learning the language.
If you’ve discovered your passion for the culture, keep that fire burning and embark on your learning journey! There are various ways to learn a language, with taking an online language course being one of the most convenient choices. FluentUp is the only social marketplace where you can find such courses offered by language schools worldwide. Some schools even offer study abroad programmes so you can choose to immerse yourself in the culture completely while learning the language first hand.