How Travel Helps You Return Home With a Fresh Perspective
Going on holiday is one of our few opportunities to well and truly explore. We use them as a vehicle to see new sights, find new favourite places, broaden our horizons in the most literal of senses. But holidaymaking is far more than just an opportunity to discovering the new – as you well know already.
A good holiday is something well-earned; a firebreak from the bustle of the ever-busier everyday, and an opportunity to reset energy levels before returning to the same. It’s a journey not just towards something refreshing, but away from a stressful status quo. Familiar routines are a dozen little deaths, robbing us of vitality in ways we don’t understand until we escape them even briefly.
In this way, a holiday is an opportunity to reframe our lives; to get a new perspective, and to come back with a renewed sense of vitality, purpose and direction. But what are the mechanisms by which this new perspective happens?
Stepping Away From Your Daily Routine
First, let’s examine what we mean by ‘familiar routines’. These encompass every aspect of our regular day-to-day lives, from work and commute schedules to weekly food shops, meal plans, exercise and beyond. Many of these obligations are just that – obligations – but the others, designed to keep us fit, healthy and engaged, can be just as draining despite their benefits.
In amongst this milieu, it’s all too easy to lose perspective over what really matters to you. Taking things day by day and week by week means losing something fundamental about who you are as a person, and what your actual goals are in the medium and long term. Getting away from these routines is crucial to rediscovering your true centre, and there’s no better way to do that than putting yourself in an entirely new environment, far away from them – both figuratively and literally.
Experiencing a Different Way of Life
Distance from familiar routines is one thing, but where you’re going is another entirely. The function of the holiday-as-reset requires more than distance; it requires newness, which, to you, means experiencing something less familiar than your day to day. Going to unfamiliar places with unfamiliar cultural traditions is a great way to explore this, being that you can shed any preconceptions of what your day ‘looks like’ in favour of drinking in an entirely new cultural experience.
Building Confidence Through New Experiences
This same approach extends also to activities – activities you may not have the time or indeed climate for at home. A case in point might be skiing; winter sports are seasonal at best in the UK, and otherwise limited to certain dry slopes or expensive indoor parks. Ski holidays abroad are more authentic winter-sporting experiences, with smooth slopes and the vistas to complement them. Not only are you somewhere new, but you’re experiencing a new sport in an entirely new way.
The act of learning to ski abroad is also a great example of how a holiday can be a confidence builder just as much as a firebreak from the status quo. By taking on a new and exhilarating challenge, you’re demonstrating your own capabilities to yourself in a way your day-to-day never could. This is invaluable, and key to reframing your life on your return home.
Amélie is a health and wellness junky. Certified yoga instructor with Yoga Alliance in the Vinyasa and Ashtanga styles, she has a Yoga Instructor Certification – Level I (300 hours) and Yoga Instructor Certification – Level II (200 hours) under her belt. She also has a certified Open Water Diver certification with PADI and SSI Scuba Schools International Freediving Level I certification with SSI Scuba Schools International. She’s been vegan for over 15 years and is obsessed with anything wellness-related.