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.

Moving Out of Your Comfort Zone

Staying within your comfort zone can feel very safe. When you're in your comfort zone, you usually don't have to worry about making mistakes, taking risks or making other people feel uncomfortable. You can go along, as you always have, and continue doing what you've always done and get the same results or you can make changes to move out of your comfort zone.

Moving Out of Your Comfort Zone

Here is a vignette, which is a composite of many cases: 

Donald:
Donald has been working at the same job as marketing rep for five years. He began as an intern and was hired soon after college. Initially, he was excited about his job. However, over time, he's learned the job so well that it's no longer challenging. The company is small and there are few opportunities for advancement. Add to this that Donald lacks confidence to advocate for himself to get a raise or to do more interesting work and you can see why he's in a rut.

His supervisor moved to a larger, more prestigious company a few months ago. Before he left, he told Donald to call him about possible openings at this company. But Donald has been procrastinating, making excuses to himself as to why he doesn't pick up the phone and call his former supervisor.

Then, one day, one of Donald's colleagues, who started at the same time and at the same level as Donald, told him that he had exciting news--he contacted their former supervisor and was hired as a marketing manager for a lot more money and better benefits. Donald congratulated him and wished him well but, inwardly, he berated himself for not calling their former supervisor and getting that job. He knew that he was far more knowledgeable and had better skills than his colleague, but he missed out because he allowed himself to stagnate in his comfort zone. He felt frustrated and stuck, and he didn't know what to do to get out of his rut.

If you would like to branch out, but you feel stuck in your comfort zone, ask yourself these questions to clarify what's holding you back:

• What do you really want in your life that you don't have now?
• What are the self-limiting fears that are keeping you from having what you want?
• What are you afraid will happen if you move out of your comfort zone?
• Are you living up to other people's expectations rather than doing what you really want?

Moving out of your comfort zone doesn't mean doing things that you're really not ready to do. For instance, if you just started taking yoga classes and you admire how some of the more advanced students can do head stands, it doesn't mean that you should try to do this as a beginner before you're ready. First, you need to learn the basics and develop your abilities to the point where you and your yoga teacher both feel that you can begin to do preparatory work for the head stand--otherwise you could injure yourself.

So, moving out of your comfort zone doesn't mean being foolhardy. Moving out of your comfort zone can be as simple as taking the next step--whatever the next step might be. So, if you've been doing yoga for a little while and your teacher encourages you to go a little deeper into a posture because she can see that you can do this safely without injuring yourself, but you decide to stay at your current level rather than work a little harder, then you're keeping yourself stagnant in your comfort zone and you won't progress.

Taking Steps to Making Changes
Small steps can lead to big changes. So, for instance, if you're afraid of public speaking, but you know it would help you to present your ideas to your boss and the senior staff, taking a public speaking class or working with a coach might be the small step you need to take in order to take the next step that could help you advance.

For most people, as they challenge themselves by taking steps outside of their comfort zone, they build confidence, and this can create an upward spiral.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you find yourself stuck in your comfort zone, you could benefit from consulting with a psychotherapist or coach to help you advance to the next step and, ultimately, help you to get what you want in your life.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist. I have helped many clients to move out of their comfort zone to lead more fulfilling lives.

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.