Travel Gives You Purpose

You learn about yourself when you explore – travel gives you purpose. Travel is good for the body, mind and soul. When you step outside of your comfort zone, it energizes you. Travel gives you purpose in many ways. It teaches you how to discover and appreciate the world outside of your bubble.

Travel Gives you purpose

First, let’s rewire how we think about stuff

With the advent of social media, we are constantly bombarded with what everyone is up to. As a result, we compare ourselves to others – keeping up with the Joneses.

According to a fantastic online Yale University course called “The Science of Well Being,” Professor Laura Santos talks about some of the challenges we experience daily around wants, needs and social comparisons. This course has been taken by over two million people and for good reason. It’s brilliant! Here at Trip Jaunt, we have two weeks left before the course is complete. The big takeaway for us is that ‘experiences’ make you happier than ‘material good.’

Some of the biases that blocks our personal growth are as follows:

MISWANTING = the act of being mistaken about what and how much you will like something in the future

REFERENCE POINT = a salient (but often irrelevant) standard against which subsequent information is compared

SOCIAL COMPARISON = the act of evaluating oneself relative to other people

HEDONIC ADAPTATION = the process of becoming accustomed to a positive or negative stimulus such that the emotional effects of that stimulus are attenuated over time

IMPACT BIAS = the tendency to overestimate the emotional impact of a future event both in terms of intensity and its duration

FOCALISM = the tendency to think just about one event and forget about the other things that happen

IMMUNE NEGLECT = unawareness of our tendency to adapt to and cope with negative events

Who cares about keeping up with the Jones’s

Keeping up with the Jones’s won’t make you happy. You know why? Because you don’t truly know what is going on in their life. You are only seeing the highlights. This scientific paper tells us experiential purchases make you feel more alive and are less susceptible to social comparisons.

Benefits of Travel

  1. People who travel are able to thrive outside of their comfort zone.
  2. People who travel learn to manage their emotions.
  3. People who travel manage their fear and get past it.
  4. People who travel can see opportunities where others don’t.
  5. People who travel can understand the differences between people.

So put aside the social comparison and rewire your habits. Spend your time and money on experiences not material goods and remember, don’t worry, be happy!

Don’t worry, be happy by Bobby McFerrin

Helen Hatzis
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