Expand Your Horizons: How Can Travelling Help You To Gain Confidence?

Year after year, millions and millions of people from across the world embark on holidays, business trips, backpacking adventures and more. The allure of heading miles away from home to experience new things and get that break we've been craving is often enough to have us booking the next trip in a heartbeat, but did you know that it can improve your confidence too? Whether you've already booked your next trip, or you're in the process of getting an EHIC renewal online, we're taking a close look into how travel can help you to gain confidence.

You'll Embrace Your Strengths

It can be hard to acknowledge and embrace the strengths that we have when we're at home. Most of us seem to be programmed to focus on our flaws, but travelling will give you the chance to not only realise, but embrace the strengths that you have. By taking you away from the familiarity of your everyday life, you could discover that you have strengths in areas you may not have thought about previously. These new strengths can lead you to feeling far more confident in yourself and your abilities.

... And Acknowledge And Work On Your Weaknesses

With strengths come weaknesses, but travelling can actually help you tackle these weaknesses head on. Whether it's a sense of social anxiety, fear of doing things wrong or even just a fear of travelling alone, acknowledging weaknesses and confronting them in a more productive way can help you to overcome the challenges you may not think you could take on. If you have anxiety, meeting new people could help reduce this considerably, while a fear of something unfamiliar can be tackled simply by stepping outside of your boundaries. While this should be done within reason, of course, travelling can help build up your self confidence and overcome weaknesses you may discover.

You'll Meet New People

When travelling, you're put right in front of hundreds of people that you may never have had the chance to meet otherwise. By pushing outside of our comfort zones and speaking to fellow travellers and locals, you can find out more about different cultures, enhance your communication skills and can even improve feelings of positivity and happiness. The chance to be introduced to new activities, allowing you to try out new activities with new people and make lifelong friends while you're at it!

You'll Learn To Be More Assertive

While there is a fine line between confidence and cockiness, a bit of confidence can actually help you become more assertive as you travel. Now, we're not necessarily talking about pushing those around us into doing as we want, or refusing to listen to advice - instead, we mean assertiveness with ourselves. Travelling, particularly in unfamiliar territory, forces us to be quicker in our decisions and stronger in the choices and movements that we make. With a bit of assertiveness, you can not only open yourself up to more opportunities, but help secure a stronger sense of self confidence too.

Be Positive

When you're travelling, particularly if you're going it alone, you'll be faced with countless challenges, and this is where one of the most valuable takeaways will come - positivity. You'll learn a valuable life lesson, encouraging yourself to be more open and positive about life as a whole and embracing experience that may be different from the norm. While it can be difficult to change how you think initially, being open minded and more positive about the experience as a whole can help you to not only cultivate a new mindset for the long-term, but help you remember and appreciate the experience and be more willing to do it all again in the future.

Travelling, whether alone or with friends and family, has the opportunity to help us build confidence, tackle our weaknesses and acknowledge our strengths. Regardless of where you're going on your next trip, hopefully your next trip will help you build up your self confidence for the long term.