The benefits of travel for your mind

The notion of travel has long been linked to helping with depression. Keeping the mind active with beautiful scenery and new experiences provide a well needed change, usually for the better, and one which the mind needs to thrive. Whether you fancy relaxing with a good book by the pool of a five-star hotel in the Maldives, or exploring the streets of a European city, the change to your everyday surroundings helps with alertness and positivity.

Nick Davies, a leading psychotherapist and hypnotherapist in the UK explains why. “Our mood can be hampered by familiar surroundings as the brain gets used to things it sees regularly and slips into boredom which can turn into low mood,” Nick says. “Travelling creates a sense of adventure as we experience new sights, sounds, smells and tastes which create feelings of positivity and happiness. This is so important for those dreamy, happy thoughts that allow us feelings of bliss.”
 

Statistics released in 2018 revealed that 1.4 million people suffered from work-related ill health during 2017 and 2018, with 15.4 million working days lost to stress. A long weekend away or extended sabbatical leave can help alleviate stress and its contributing factors. The fresh feeling you have once you return from holiday is one that everyone craves, and it has been proven to have a positive effect on productivity.
 
After a trip to Peru, this was exactly the case for travel blogger Tom Bourlet who runs spaghettitraveller.com. “I thought about the life changing experience I was going through and how happy I was for every moment, every new experience and every chance I would have to learn about a different culture,” Tom said. “Travel can help to alleviate stress, it offers the chance to make new friends who will share magic moments and it opens your eyes to how other people live."

In Tom’s view, alongside alleviating stress, travel also creates long lasting memories that you can look back and smile about. “When you talk about the biggest moments in your life, you don’t talk about those days spent at work, evenings watching TV or playing games, the moments you highlight are predominantly holiday or travel based,” Tom said. “I’ve partied in Miami and lived like a cowboy on a Texas ranch. I’ve dressed as a golden snitch in a game of Quidditch and rode quad bikes through a desert. I’ve swam with pink dolphins in an alligator filled lake and fished for piranhas. These are the bizarre and wonderful moments I will look back on, not the excessive amount of time I have spent working with clients.”

Mark Twain famously wrote in his 1869 travelogue The Innocents Abroad that travel is, ‘fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness,’ and this still holds true today. Seeing how different cultures live day-to-day and experiencing how corners of the world operate is what makes travel exciting and eye-opening.
 
In turn, several studies have also shown that travel broadens creativity including one by Adam Galinsky, a professor at Columbia Business School, who found that creativity tends to flow more freely in those that have lived abroad. “Someone who lives abroad and doesn’t engage with the local culture will likely get less of a creative boost than someone who travels and really engages in the local environment,” Adam said.

Cited in Research by Dr. Julia Zimmermann and Dr. Franz Neyer, Tom Champion who was a PhD student from the University of Sheffield at the time, said that he has become more compassionate since studying in Singapore for 18 months. “Seeing the world through a foreigner’s eyes has led me to realise my previously invisible cultural habits and home my sense of empathy and ability to understand others,” he says.
 
Your next trip is closer than you think. Whether you want to see the wonders of Dubai, reach new depths with the diving spots of the Maldives or explore the islands of Thailand, simply enquire here or call one of our personal travel managers on 0203 816 0985.