Followers

Translate

NYC Psychotherapist Blog

power by WikipediaMindmap

Monday, July 7, 2014

Expanding Your Horizons While Traveling

In a prior article, Learning About Yourself While Traveling, I wrote that traveling can reveal how you react to new people, situations, and foreign customs when you travel.   It can also reveal how you deal with travel-related stressors.  I talked about my own experiences while traveling in Costa Rica.  In this article about expanding your horizons while traveling, I'll discuss some of the other advantages of traveling, especially traveling abroad.

Expanding Your Horizons While Traveling

Getting Out of a Rut
The day-to-day routine can make life seem boring and uninspiring.

Traveling to another country gets you out of your daily routine and can put you into new and potentially exciting places.  When you get out of a rut, you're more likely to come up with new ways of looking at your life as well as life around you.  It can make you more creative.

Breaking Out of Your Comfort Zone
Staying in your comfort zone can make you feel safe, but it can also keep you stagnant (see my article: Moving Out of Your Comfort Zone).  When you travel, it's an opportunity to break out of your comfort zone and expose yourself to new and exciting ideas.

Expanding Your Horizons While Traveling:  Breaking Out of Your Comfort Zone

Building Confidence and Enhancing Your Ability to Deal With Challenges
Travel often comes with its challenges, including making travel arrangements for unfamiliar places, navigating new territories, communicating in foreign languages, coping with delays, and so on.  When you're able to  successfully overcome these challenges, it helps to build confidence in other areas of your life.

Finding Inspiration
When you immerse yourself in another culture, you can observe how other people live and interact with each other, which is often different from your usual environment back home.

Expanding Your Horizons While Traveling: Finding Inspiration

When you have new experiences, it can inspire your imagination so you look at things in new ways.

Enhancing Your Social Skills
Even if you tend to be shy, when you travel you're placed in situations where you often must communicate with others.

Expanding Your Horizons While Traveling:  Enhancing Your Social Skills

If you usually feel awkward when you communicate in social situations, you might be surprised at how much confidence you develop after a while.

Having Fun While Traveling
When you open yourself up to new experiences while you're away, you also open yourself up to having fun (see my article: Being Open to New Experiences).

Having fun can help to improve your mood and reduce stress.

So, have fun and happy travels!


About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.