Wazzup Pilipinas!?
Traveling is exciting, inspiring and fun. We are lucky to live in a world where travel is easier and cheaper than ever, and more people are traveling all the time: an estimated 1.18 billion people spend time abroad each year.
While a beach vacation may be just what the doctor got us, studies show that the right trip—immersive, somewhat challenging, and long-stay—can reshape our brains and alter the way we see the world. And it can make us better people.
Here's why.
1. Encourage empathy
Human beings are empathic by nature; the ability to feel the suffering of other people is deeply ingrained in our brains and is the foundation of all healthy relationships. But, like many things in life, it requires constant practice.
Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, has argued that the expansion of mass media (including journalism and affordable fiction) over the past two centuries has widened the "circle of empathy" because it has made lives distant ones more accessible—and emotionally close—in a whole new way.
Yet while we now have almost instant access to the world through our smartphones, information overload threatens to overwhelm us and make us too distracted to care.
Travel forces us to "escape the isolation of our comfort zone," as Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times put it, and to meet people and experience new situations in the real world, thereby strengthening our ability to empathize with a wider variety of people and in a much more meaningful way.
And empathy is related to travel and discovery in another way: learning a new language and becoming bilingual, particularly at a young age, has been shown to habituate our brains to switching between perspectives and thus , increases our ability to feel empathy.
2. Deepen your understanding of the world
When traveling, the unfamiliar becomes familiar and we rethink the things we assume to be true and the stereotypes that often color our world view.
For me, living in Tanzania and working with street children helped me understand both the Tanzanian work culture (for example, why consensus is essential for decision-making), and the resilience of children who face rejection and violence on a daily basis.
That immersive and sometimes uncomfortable experience deepened my understanding of a culture and a reality that I had only known from a distance and in passing; in some article I idly read on my way to work or some travel story I heard from a friend. Tanzania and African cultures are much closer to me now.
By getting to know and understand other people, whether or not we accept everything they do, we end up interacting with the world in a kinder and less judgmental way.
3. Increase self-knowledge
Being more open with others also helps us to be more open with ourselves. A recent study showed that living abroad—and reflecting on our own values as we encounter different people and situations—makes us more self-aware. Although people living abroad were studied in that research, a long-term trip that is culturally immersive could have the same effects.
A related concept, tied to increased self-awareness and increased exposure to different perspectives, is what psychologists call "cognitive flexibility," or the ability to jump from one idea to another. Travel keeps our minds "flexible" by making us rethink the way we do and see things, and in the process develop the most valuable skill of all: creativity.
4. Increase creativity
In an age of automation and a world of work that will transform beyond recognition in the coming decades, creativity will be the hallmark of those who continue to evolve. It will also be essential for solving complex global problems and for constant innovation in business and science.
Several studies carried out by Adam Galinsky, a professor at Columbia University, have shown that executives who have lived in several foreign countries and, therefore, have been exposed to other cultures and other languages, are more creative and adventurous when tackling your work.
Other studies carried out in the Netherlands and in Singapore have shown that people who travel have an easier time solving problems in unconventional ways. What's more, a 2012 study conducted in Israel showed that people who are more closed-minded towards other cultures performed worse on creativity tests than those who were more open-minded and tolerant.
5. Increase confidence
While it seems that today's age is defined by conflicting views and a lack of tolerance, it is also defined by a certain lack of trust. While the Nordic countries, including Finland, continue to have high levels of trust in political institutions and in other people, including immigrants, in many other parts of the world, such as the United States, trust in others has been declining over the years. Given that confidence is closely related to happiness — Finland ranked first in the 2018 World Happiness Index, while the United States ranked 18th — it's clear that investing in trust is worth it.
Because travel forces us to deal with difficult and uncomfortable situations at all times—situations in which we have to actively engage with and trust strangers, some from very different cultures—it causes us to develop our trust, or what Galinsky has called a " general faith in humanity. All studies, conducted in both the United States and China, have shown this to be the case.
6. They make us more stable
There is one more reason to appreciate travel.
Travel is full of moments that make us more mentally and emotionally stable. Arriving at a new airport and being unable to understand the signs, as well as struggling to get by can be nerve-wracking, just like trying to make yourself understood with a (still basic) language skills with a Parisian taxi driver who doesn't understand you when you you say "Champs-Elysées". But that itself forces us to accept that restlessness and overcome it.
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
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