Travelling is one of the best things one can do to improve your quality of life. It has got tons of benefits you are able to reap, with it being able to boost both your physical and mental health. Who doesn’t want to explore and take risks when it comes to visiting new places and meeting new people? Travelling changes your personality but it does not help you boost your health. Studies have now shown that travelling can help improve your personality for the better, or at least change it to a whole new perspective.

Long-Term Travelling Boosts Personality?

This study was created Dr. Julia Zimmermann and Researcher Franz Neyer. They went out to prove the alternation of personalities in their published paper found in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
These two researchers found their data through studying two groups of German students, with one group travelling abroad for a few semesters, while the other group studied in one area. This was to study how the period of travelling depends on changing your personality, as well as how the new “perspective” or change of social network makes the groups of people change after the trip. The groups start off with a test regarding the five main personality traits: openness to experience, agreeability, outgoingness, emotional stability, and efficiency/organization. The group who came back from their trip will be doing the test again to compare their personality before and after their study abroad.
There were mixed results, but they were expected, as those who went abroad scored higher in social aspects of the test such as outgoing-ness. Those who stayed put scored higher in emotional stability, agreeability, and openness to experiences.

Travelling Changes Your Personality in Six Ways

But how exactly does travelling change your personality? Here are 6 ways how:

1. You get to meet new people and experience new things, thus opening your eyes to a whole new perspective. You start to become more understanding and see things from other points of view rather than sticking to your own opinion. You also get to appreciate the little things in life, such as simply washing your face or taking the bus going to work.

2. You start to become spontaneous, and it’s fine. Many people are scared of spontaneity, often preferring to stay in their usual routine. But once they start travelling, it’s a completely different thing and they start to love the spontaneity or at least be okay with the idea of going somewhere out of their comfort zones, even if it’s something as simple as taking a different route to work.

3. As you travel more, you start to have a zest for life, where you feel like you are out of your comfort zone and free from whatever was restraining you before. For example, visiting Japan where you are a native English speaker. Hearing a foreign language can be a daunting experience, but it sure does help you become more tolerant.

4. Because you are experiencing new things and meeting new people, you feel more open and outgoing, having a better time making new friends and being the one initiating conversations. You’re no longer afraid or feeling the social anxiety many people seem to suffer from. Also, you start to get the difference between real and fake friends, most especially the difference between the friends you have on social media and those who are actually someone you trust and can talk with. Because you will be travelling more, you will begin to feel detached and out of reach from friends, but you see those who are truly there for you when you com e back, something social media can never detect.

5. You start to become creative. After all, new perspectives, new sights, new everything This will inspire you to think better and with more imagination.

6. You start not to sweat about the little things, and you are more creative in finding solutions to the small things that can break you down. Less stress, more positivity equals a better time at work or in any aspect of life.

In onclusion, it’s interesting as to how travelling can change the way you look at life and how you act. It may actually be a lot better for many, as they do not only reap more physical health benefits but more positivity and spice for life as well.