Traveling alone should be on everyone's bucket list. Yes, sure, it's intimidating thinking about taking your alone time from your bed and Netflix to a new destination but it's well worth it. It seems that as young people, we all get easily freaked out at this idea because of the unknown aspect, but that shouldn't be the case! Throughout my travels alone, people tend to be amazed and praise for me “being brave enough” when the reality is I’m just another person wanting to seek thrill and adventure but wanting to do it at my own pace rather than adopt the group mentality. While it may be intimidating there are several perks to living on the edge alone!
1. You Make Your Own Schedule
This for me is the biggest perk. Whenever you travel to a new place, immediately an itinerary forms in your head of all the places you want to see and go to eat. Unfortunately, what ends up happening in groups is you have to compromise. So if you really want the most out of your time, go by yourself!
2. You Learn A Lot About Yourself
When you spend time with only yourself you start to realize your strengths and weaknesses as they become more apparent in your travels. In fact you tend to push yourself harder out of your comfort zone when there’s no one around to judge.
3. You Become Better at Staying Present
I hate to be the person that digitally shames our generation, but we have a huge problem now with being able to stay in the moment without documenting it. Going alone you’re focused more on taking it all in for yourself and honestly you don’t care who sees how much fun you had because you truly lived it in the moment!
4. Free Therapy
Alongside learning about yourself it is good to have that one on one time with you and your mind. Often times there’s the tendency to push sensitive topics to the back of your conscience but now without distractions you can begin a healing process that might be long overdue!
5. You’re More Approachable
It’s great being in a group and we all know you love your friends but the reality is, having your whole group around makes others more nervous to approach or strike up a random conversation. Now is your chance to get to know other people, even if it's just for just a second.
6. Newfound Independence
Roaming the streets of wherever gives you such a rush and pride to know that first, you’re okay, and second, if you can do this now who knows what the future holds. It’s sad to think about graduating but once that happens you’ll need to feel comfort in venturing on your own!
I'm not saying you have to go book a flight to the other side of the world or go crazy off the grid for a month, although I wouldn't put that off the list either, but start small like a simple road trip to the next state over and if you like it then great, if not, at least you can say you did it!
