We had always wanted to share our travel adventures as our friends and colleagues would always comment what great vacations we went on, but like a lot of people we didn’t have the time and didn’t think people would be interested in our travels – boy were we wrong! Our travel channel was born not just out of a love for travel, but out of the need to help our mental health. While we’ve enjoyed traveling since we first met, and the chance to decompress and experience new cultures, the pandemic and its impacts to our family highlighted why we needed to travel.
After losing several close family members, traveling acted as a respite from the depression that naturally surrounds a close death in the family, let alone 2 in the space of two months. We found traveling was a chance to focus our attentions on something else. That started not just when we left our home, but when we started the planning phase. Every moment not focused on our loss was a true blessing.
Hence Worthy Travels was born. The premise of our channel is to provide travel inspiration and helpful travel tips, because YOU are worthy and you deserve the chance to mentally rest.
So how can travel help your mental health.
- Lowers stress and anxiety. Travel provides a way of detaching from your daily stressors and allows a way to mentally reset. This also helps reduce your anxiety levels.
- Improved relationships through more human interaction. Traveling is a great way to build bonds with the people you are traveling with and with people you meet on your journeys. Forming these bonds allows you to feel more connected and less isolated. Traveling is also a great way of meeting people if you are alone. You’ll be surprised how many people travel alone and how just the nature of traveling makes you feel more confident to speak up and talk to people.
- Personal Development. Experiencing new cultures, trying new food and meeting new people with differing views can help expand your knowledge and maybe your way of thinking. Learning new cultures may allow you to bring something new to your life. Whether that is different recipes to cook, different ways to think about work/life balance, or something else, traveling is really going to expand your horizons.
- Improved physical health. When traveling it is likely you will be spending more time outdoors, which helps both your physical and mental health.
- Reducing SAD – seasonal affective disorder – effects. If you suffer from SAD going somewhere warm and sunny may help alleviate your symptoms.
- Improved Gratitude. When traveling you are more likely to be thankful for the things you have and thereby helping to remove some of the negative thoughts you may be possessing.
- Improved Happiness. The best benefits of travel to me are that the benefits of happiness are felt even before you go on vacation. The excitement of an upcoming trip can certainly help elevate your mood. Alongside the looking forward to the holiday, you have the enjoyment of the holiday and the lasting positive impacts of the holiday. All in all you get 3 times the benefits of going on a vacation and the last one lasts a lifetime. This is in comparison to buying the latest gadget which soon becomes obsolete and doesn’t give you any more happiness.
However, for all the benefits of traveling some people can find it stressful and that in turn can lead to anxiety. In order to overcome that, you can try the following:
- Buy insurance. This takes the pressure off if something happens with your trip or if something untoward happens.
- Speak with your therapist or health care professional so you can get tips on how to deal with travel related stress.
- Eating healthy and exercising will help with travel related mental health issues.
We hope you take the needed time to look after yourself. Travel is just one element of that important mix. And if you do need help there are lots of resource’s regardless of where you are located in the world if you need to speak with someone.
Remember it’s okay to not be okay! If there’s one thing the last few years have taught us is that’s okay to be authentic and share how you are feeling. The old adage that a problem shared is a problem halved has a lot of value in it and you might be surprised by just how much help it can be by sharing what you are going through.
Stay Curious and Explore!