A change of climate, a change of culture, a change in time zone. All of these and more are concrete changes we encounter when we choose to travel far from our home and daily life. Granted a time zone change may not be part of each occasion, but still, when the sun rises and sets most likely will be.

Change is what we witness when we choose to travel. And by choosing to embark on an adventure, an exploration that involves changes, knowing our daily routine will temporarily be different and knowing the environment we step into will be different, we are exercising a powerful muscle that is part of living a life of contentment — accepting and seeing the gift of change.

In today’s episode, I will be sharing many of the gifts that travel gives us, moreso from the well-being and life enriching perspective, rather than speaking to any particular destination. It can be easy to forget these gifts when we settle back into our daily rhythm. And the courage and choice to invest in travel can sometimes wane the further removed we are from the first-person experience of travel.

Let’s take a look at the wonderful gifts that travel gives us and how when we pack the consciousness along with all of the other gifts that living a life of contentment gives us, we deepen the experience all the more.

1. The transition from one time zone to another becomes easier to weather

One of the fundamental skills of contentment is knowing our mind, and when we know our mind, we take notice with clarity when it is ill-rested or unsettled. When we hop even a few time zones, but certainly many, the first few days of our travel can be disorienting and less than enjoyable. And to someone who doesn’t know their mind, ignorance can lead to projecting our discomfort onto the culture into which we’ve recently arrived.

In many ways, these temporary feelings of exhaustion and being unsettled serve as a reminder that any change will momentarily cause us to feel unbalanced. However, if we have planned our trip with careful forethought, and give ourselves time and breathing room to adjust (a couple of days or so), then we will be able to see and enjoy all that is waiting for us to discover.

Having felt that uneasy, discombolulated feeling in my early days of travel, while I still don’t entirely feel my best self on the first few days of arrival, it bothers me less and I am more gentle with myself. I carry this knowledge with me into my everyday life upon returning home whenever I choose to make a change, or do something different or new. Each time I remember to tell myself there will be a temporary transition period that involves a bit more exhaustion, stress or unsettledness, I rest more easy and engage with more loving kindness both toward myself and those around me.

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2. The discovery of life being lived well and happily even if quite different from our own culture

The community of TSLL readers is well versed in this knowledge. As lovers of travel, and many who love the culture of Britain and/or France, it is in visiting a new place with a different way of living life, whether significantly so or in small, yet meaningful ways, that we draw inspiration of what we may want to welcome into our own life to make it sing more in alignment with what brings us to life.

I have shared many times before in my books and here on the blog that my first visit to France helped me to realize there were different ways of living well, and in pinpointing what didn’t fit me back in the States, I was able to explore what I so delighted in about the French approach to daily life.

It becomes easier to make such adjustments to our life when we return home as we feel validated in our choice even if those around us who remain with the status quo (which may work perfectly well for them, just not for us) don’t understand. It is as if we have a cheering section from afar supporting our choice of change. Once we do implement the changes and experience how our life is elevated, it is less likely we will ever want to return back to old, unfulfilling ways.

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3. Conscious awareness is strengthened

Because the environment is new, because we need to pay close attention to details, we also realize that we need energy to do this. And in paying attention to our energy when it is depleted, we need to know how to replenish ourselves. Self-knowledge comes into play, as we choose when to rest, what to eat and when. Even if we don’t know ourselves well, our travel experiences give us the opportunity to become intimately in tune with our needs. We just need to pay attention.

For me, while traveling, it has been visiting gardens that replenish me when I feel weary or exhausted. Cooking a meal at my vacation rental after heading to the local farmers’ market – to me this isn’t stressful, it is energy giving as I feel comfortable around fresh produce and the farmers, asking them questions, and I also know my way around the kitchen, so I take comfort that I can feed myself what I need to be nourished and energized.

Such moments of depletion also stretch us a bit as we may be forced to try something new that we haven’t done, and this can be enlightening as well. We may realize we can do something we didn’t think we could, or take even better care of ourselves than we used to with the resources newly available to us in this culture.

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4. Finding ease with uncertainty

Travel is one of the most enjoyable ways of learning how to accept that uncertainty will always be a part of life whether we’re traveling or not. It is chosen change as was mentioned above, so we are choosing to put ourselves in new and different situations. Instead of unwanted and jarring situations occurring in our life that change how we live, we are causing the change to happen and so there is a slight embedment of control within the uncontrollable. A lovely paradox.

When we choose to do this, we begin to realize that uncertainty opens our world up to unimaginable possibilities and outcomes that if we held too tight a rein on our life, we wouldn’t have experienced. We take this knowledge home with us, remembering that uncertainty is part of every day of our life. Our job is to learn how to dance well with it instead of refusing to attend the soirée of life.

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5. Our confidence in our capabilities is strengthened

This point ties in with both #4 and #1, but I wanted to dive deeper into it. If we fear traveling because of all the unknowns, we avoid the opportunity to realize all that we can do. This is true in life. If we don’t strike out into new relationships, career paths, hobbies, ways of life, etc., we limit our ability to see all that life can be when we engage fully with it.

For seasoned travelers, you know as well as I, that there will be hiccups during our trips. Some larger than others, but still, they will happen. However, we cannot live in fear of them, and in fact, this is a great exercise for how we live a life of contentment, we appreciate all of the little things that go well that we may overlook or assume or take for granted. Instead, we are grateful when we see our luggage. We are grateful when our flight arrives on time or even ahead of schedule. We are grateful when we can easily navigate to our accommodations. We are grateful that we and those we are traveling with remained healthy throughout the trip. All of these things and so many more become reasons to celebrate. So when the hiccup happens – you lose your reservation, you have no clothes to wear because your luggage never left the terminal from home, etc., you see it as an opportunity to improvise.

Dancing with the hiccups while traveling teaches us we can dance well, without stressing ourselves out unnecessarily over the hiccups in daily life. It helps both put things in perspective but also remind us that we are far more capable than we realize.

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6. We discover that our dreams our possible and they become more clarified

Whether a particularly specific dream or a general dream that we have been pondering, our first-person experience of travel, both gives us a sense of urgency as well as determination to make it happen.

Because so much of our daily life and support system is left behind when we hop on the plane or train, we are far more vulnerable when we travel. Clarity arises because those distractions are stripped away and we see our life, others and the world with eyes less rose-colored. This is not to say that the experience has to be either a great one or a horrible one. It is simply because it is a first-hand experience and we are more hands on with every part of our day than we may be back at home where routines and patterns and habits have been established, greasing the wheel for just going along. We then take note more acutely of how we feel going about our day in the place we are traveling, and take note of the rhythm, our peace (or lack there of), and what caused it.

This clarity reminds us to live more fully when we return home. Make choices that nourish us rather than go along, and to be brave in the choice making because we have but one life to live.

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7. Labels lose their influence

Living a life of contentment is letting go of attachment to labels that we may have either accepted, were placed upon us or we sought out back in our daily life at home. If we are not at peace with ourself and not grounded in self-knowledge, we can become quite attached to these labels – our job position, our relationship status, our sartorial expression, etc. – whatever brings applause and acceptance at home. When we travel, especially when we travel alone, but also with others, nobody but our travel companions will likely know us. Aside from how we spend our money and the language we speak, nobody knows much if anything about us. This is liberating or disconcerting depending on the strength of contentment in our life.

If it is a disconcerting feeling, it then becomes an exercise of putting the ego in its place. We then must ask ourselves are we going to let our lack of influence or affluence known about us by others stand in the way of enjoying our experience fully? How will we treat others when we are uneasy in this new environment? Will we hold ourselves open to see what we can learn and discover about others, about ourself?

If is it a liberating feeling, we may further gain clarity about our life back at home and whether it is honoring our peace or if we are living our life to please others. We also, and most enjoyably so, discover with certainy our own passions, desires and why heeding our curiosity is a gift we give ourselves. By stepping out of our everyday life and away from the roles and responsibilities we may have, we become more in tune with ourselves.

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8. The courage to make lasting change

A bit of repetition here, but it’s worth highlighting: Travel wakes us up. If we hold ourselves open to the full experience travel can offer, we receive the gift of trusting ourselves more fully. Trusting that we know ourselves – our needs, our strengths, our passions – in a way nobody else can. Travel reminds us that possibility entertained is to invite opportunity into our life. BUT we must choose to seize the opportunity. We must be brave enough to do it.

Whatever change we may have been pondering before our trip, when we return home, it is as though a shot of i-can-do-this has been given to us. Because you can. You may still be on a slightly endorphin high from the lack of oxygen in the plane and lack of sleep due to adjusting back to your daily life’s time zone, but these ideas are not to be dismissed. Trust that at the core of them, there is a truth about what you yearn for and that you can realize it.

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Whenever I return from France or Britain, arriving home is bittersweet, and this becomes stronger with each return. However instead of seeing this as something unwanted, I see it as a gift that I have strengthened into being because it reflects the truth of having dove fully into my travel experience, embraced it without hesitation and paid attention to what it offered to teach me or help me realize. The gifts have been many and my life has been forever changed in many amazing and priceless ways because of the travel I have been fortunate to experience. May this be the same for you as well. To our next trip to wherever our curiosity is pulling us to explore.

Petit Plaisir

Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent), the original French comedy series and forth coming film

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