13 REASONS and psychological BENEFITS of TRAVELING ALONE

Different people have different reasons for doubting whether or not to travel alone. The most common reasons are safety concerns, a preference for companionship, and fears of loneliness. But I can assure you there are many psychological benefits and advantages of solo traveling.

However, there are many good reasons and benefits to go ahead with your plans to travel alone. Below you’ll find a lost of the advantages of solo travelling.

Useful information for traveling alone

Below you will find some helpful resources to assist in planning your solo trip. Be sure to consider accommodation options, costs, health concerns, visa requirements, and other important factors for the countries you are interested in visiting. Use these resources to make an informed and comfortable trip.

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If you’re foreigner planning a trip, in this link you can check the ✅ SANITARY REQUIREMENTS and get a VISA. Also, to help you travel without spending too much, in this link you’ll find ✈️ CHEAP FLIGHTS and a 💥10% DISCOUNT on your TRAVEL INSURANCE.

When browsing the internet during your trip, it is essential to use a 👉 QUALITY VPN to ensure your privacy and security. Additionally, bringing a ⭐ TRAVEL DEBIT CARD will help you avoid issues with carrying cash and reduce the risk of theft.

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Reasons that hold you back when traveling alone

We live in a world where we are constantly surrounded by other people and we assume that we always have to have someone else with us in order to do anything.

Many times, doing things alone is seen as something strange and weird, as if you’re only doing it because you have to and not because you actually want to, like an outcast.

This can often make people feel judged by their surroundings and hold them back from doing something that they really want to do, and living their own adventure. Nobody likes to carry the weight of misunderstanding from their surroundings.

In the world we grew up in, choosing to be alone is a behavior we must learn for ourselves.

At first, it may seem unnatural and may even make us uncomfortable to travel alone. However, it is a basic practice for our personal development and identity. It allows us to get to know ourselves in depth.

There are other reasons that may put you off when traveling alone. For example, you may encounter problems or dangerous situations. You may also fear the feeling of loneliness. Or, you may have to face yourself, your inner self.

All of these reasons shouldn’t worry you too much. You’re going to read why shortly.

Reasons to start traveling alone

Keep in mind that traveling alone is not just a hobby, but also brings you a lot of benefits on a deeper level. 

Let’s go through the list with the advantages or reasons why you should start traveling alone:

Reason 1. What are your insecurities and flaws?

One of the best ways to learn and grow as a person is to travel to new and unfamiliar places. By leaving your comfort zone and venturing into the unknown, you’ll see more clearly what are your weak points and you’ll have to work on them, since in a practical way you will be forced to do so.

For example, if you’re a person who finds it hard to say no, you’re going to have to learn to assert yourself, because otherwise you’re going to get ripped off; or if you have a hard time organizing yourself, you will have to recognize this flaw and find methods to improve it. Traveling can be a great way to learn more about yourself and the world around you.

Benefit 2. Master in problem solving

As you encounter setbacks, you will have to learn to solve them without external help. This is good for two reasons:

    1. You will learn to deal with problems more easily and in a more direct, practical and effective way; and you will also gain confidence in yourself because you will realize that you are much more capable than you thought.

You will be amazed at what you can achieve alone. You will gain confidence in your abilities, break down self-imposed limits, and be more aware that dreams are to be fulfilled.

   2. You’ll find yourself relaizing that the problems, obstacles, or disasters that you are facing (now or in the past) are relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things and can get fixed. Complaining and getting upset will only make you bitter – it’s not going to do any good.

Try to take a step back and look at the situation objectively. You may find that the setback isn’t as big as you initially thought. Or, even if it is a big problem, you may realize that there are more important things in your life that deserve your attention and you’ll star prioritising them.

Advantage 3. Psychological freedom: break down barriers

We live in a paternalistic society: your parents, the school, the state,… if you travel alone, you only depend on yourself to help you and to decide, and this drives you to gain not only geographical independence and temporary, but also psychological.

It helps you break down the mental barriers of asking permission, of “if you can” do something. 

It makes you realize not only rationally, but also emotionally and practically (through the actions you take and choices you make) of your independence as a human being, of your reality as an individual that chooses to be part of a society, but does not have to be defined by it. 

It helps you let go of attachment, the toxic need for approval from others, or the low tolerance for their opinions when they make you feel attacked. You embrace your own differences and use them to define yourself, being at peace with yourself and others.

Reason 4. Your inner self

When you are alone, you also connect with your inner self, with the accumulated experiences, the traumas, your past, and you begin to expel them; but not only that, through the experiences that you are living, the transformation you are undergoing, you look at the events of the past and present from another perspective.

Choose some books on personal growth or psychology and read them from time to time, they will help you make this process faster and more efficient, since you will have the knowledge and experiences of other people.

Benefit 5. Relationships

Traveling alone has nothing to do with being single. There is an obligation to do everything together, but you are not a single human being, but two independent people. 

Traveling alone you can develop your own concept of a couple over and above the imposed Hollywood model.

When you travel you are in contact with people who have ideals, ways of seeing the world or lifestyles similar to yours, so who knows, you may find your new Romeo or Lara Croft or Indiana Jones.

Advantage 6. You will not be alone 100% of the time

Depending on the type of trip you organize or the countries you visit, you will meet more or fewer people. 

It is easier to approach someone or be approached if you speak the language of the country, or in closer/outgoing cultures.

Also, if you stay in a hostel it will be easier to strike up conversations than in a hotel, since they are accommodations that encourage social interaction and tend to host travelers who have a similar lifestyle. . 

Be that as it may, there are always people who will be interested in you, or with whom you can start a conversation and even a friendship. 

One very nice thing that happens when you meet people while traveling, is that you will meet people who have a similar way of thinking to yours and, if you have unusual behavioral/thinking tendencies, it will help you to share experiences and see that there are more people like you, who are in a similar situation and that you are not the odd one on duty or have any problem, but simply have a different way of working.

Reason 7. It’s safer than you think

You learn that, most of the time, the world is not as dangerous as it seems.

It is true that there are many countries with internal conflicts or with a high crime rate, but it is not about having a reckless attitude and going crazy around the world, but rather being aware of the situation and taking precautions.

When you set foot in that new place, and experience it and see it with your own eyes, you will realize that the danger is much less than you thought and that most people just want to live their lives. quietly and peacefully (just like you). Ignorance feeds fear and imagination.

Benefit 8. Constant freedom: FLY LITTLE BIRD

You can do what you want and where you want without having to worry about anything or anyone, it’s a super nice and very relaxing feeling.

Having the freedom to do what you want when you decide not only includes activities related to visiting places, hiking, choosing the itinerary,… but it goes further: you choose when you eat (and if you eat or not) , when you get up, if you don’t feel like doing anything and you’re going to spend the day resting or reading in the hammock.

Absolutely everything, you are owner of yourself every second that passes.

Advantage 9. You will create your own personality

Due to external circumstances during your childhood, adolescence or even in adult life, you may have had difficulties or impediments to fully develop your own personality.

We all have a personality, but it can happen that the way you behave and your thoughts are the result of imposed ideas, or misjudgments about yourself as a consequence of your own ignorance or fears.

Understanding what makes you happy as opposed to what you’ve thought made you happy up until now, or what you’re supposed to want to get closer to happiness; and begin to question the expectations you had of yourself and of life, it will help you to really know yourself, and you will walk towards your most real personality.  

You will achieve this through two facets of travel: loneliness and the introspection that derives from it, and the cultural shock. 

You’re going to learn a lot from what you see and stop basing yourself so much on what you’ve always known: what you’ve been told is right and wrong (or your own conception of these two), good manners, racism,… is a great exercise to soften the ego and try to understand the other and their different realities, improving your empathy.

You will rethink many things, and it may be that, instead of agreeing with a certain current or model of thought, you prefer to take a little from here and there and create your own, without limitations or molds.

Reason 10. Do I really need to be accompanied?

This is something that may seem very basic but that many people have not yet realized: you do not need to be accompanied to have a good time.

There is a kind of need or dependence on a second human being to be able to enjoy a moment or an activity. But there is no better than the other, they are simply different ways and both have their advantages.

In the case of traveling alone, you feel that you are more connected with the place, in a more intimate and personal way, and you do not have to be aware of whether your companion wants to leave. There is something special about observing and living a place alone with yourself.

Benefit 11. CHANGE YOUR PERSPECTIVE

Traveling makes you understand that we are all human beings alike, you stop seeing only the superficial part of appearances and you gain humility. It also hhumanizes concepts that you may only have seen on TV before, such as poverty.

Put faces, voices, names and interact with people who are in a situation that for you is unknown or distant, humanizes them, and you see in a more conscious, more real way, through experience, that they are beings humans like you, and that easily  you could be on their site. This change in perspective makes you less judgmental, and you begin to break the bad habit of prejudging.

You become aware of how lucky you are, because you can choose and, although it seems very basic, choosing is neither easy nor within everyone’s reach. 

Many people find themselves in situations where there is only one path and little else, whether due to economic, psychological, physical or cultural barriers. 

Advantage 12. It will increase your gratitude

You will value more the small details, mainly in natural places. Animals that you find, sunsets, small fish among the of two of your feet (there are many who are bastards and bite). Being alone there will be fewer distractions, it will be you and the place or you and the flock of birds.

When you travel you will have fewer comforts than living in a sedentary way, all your belongings have to fit in a suitcase or backpack, and here you begin to realize the things that you had before and did not give importance to.  

You will also appreciate the facilities when it comes to finding what you need, when you are at home you know where to buy everything, but then you travel to countries where there is less variety of products or you do not know any of the brands they sell and you do not know if you should trust the quality. Or you simply find yourself totally lost without knowing where to go to buy even the simplest things.

Solo traveling: Coming home for Christmas

When traveling alone, you change without realizing it, little by little you are more and more yourself, and when you return home you feel two things:

1) that your house is no longer 100% your house, but now you have many different houses. You have made each country you have visited a little your home.

2) that you have not remained static all this time, but that you have been constantly changing, evolving as a person, growing. If you travel a lot and more if you do it alone, it can happen that when you return to your city (your family, friends) you have the feeling that everything remains the same and that things have hardly changed, but you you feel very different from when you left. It is possible that you look for new friendships or you rethink the old ones.

If you don’t let yourself be carried away or overcome by insecurities, fears or the feeling that you can sometimes have of loneliness; then, you will surely travel alone again, you will want the freedom it brings you. That freedom tastes like drugs, and getting rid of it is almost impossible.