It’s often been said that if you travel long and far enough then you’ll eventually meet yourself. That should go down as a truism, but there are just so many other lessons travel has to teach. We explore some of the most valuable of these lessons travel has to teach, focussing more on those which have some practical applications in all areas of our lives and not just in the lives of travellers.

Focus on what’s important

This was a lesson I learned through observing a long-term traveller who jumps at the chance to defend her constant focus on getting the perfect travel pic shots to complement her ever-rolling action camera. “It’s what pays the bills and keeps me on the road,” she’d say, making reference to the fact that she earns her income by blogging/vlogging and then monetising the content through advertising.

Fun is not a waste of time or money

A typical long-term traveller would likely be a digital nomad – somebody who works and earns money remotely, so often the lines between the fun element of their travels and their work are blurred. What one digital nomad has taught me however is that as long as you gain real entertainment value out of something you invest some of your time and money into, then it can never go down as a waste.

Freedom comes from not caring what people think of you

Letting go of the fear of embarrassment can be one of the most liberating resolutions to effect, something which I was lucky enough to very quickly learn when I was staying in a hostel on one of my most recent backpacking trips. Living in a backpackers’ for a while teaches you that you simply have to do what you need to do and not care who is watching or why they’re watching, or what they think! If you need to use a bar of body soap to quickly wash your underwear to be hung off your bunk bed, then so be it! Perhaps the onlooker might not even be looking at what you’re doing in judgement, but with the view of possibly offering a better solution to whatever it is you have to do.

Knowledge is the ultimate power

In this day and age, information comes with the power to achieve a lot of things which constitute success, such as how the right information could help you make a lot of money for example, or how you can structure your travels all around the world in such a way that you pay next to nothing. Information alone doesn’t contain the ultimate power though – the ultimate power resides in the knowledge of what to do with that information.

Now this lesson was taught to me by travel in that I know now that I can probably find the best injury attorney in Fox Valley if I ever needed one, some information I would otherwise have not come into had I not been to that part of the world for some business-related travel.