The Psychology of Why You Feel Empty Traveling (Part 2: How to Change It)

How Do We Solve the Mid-Trip Crisis?

First off, I am not hating on travel. Traveling, or just taking vacation days is well-documented to be beneficial and pretty necessary to a healthy life.

But here’s the thing. The type of travel I just described above is incredibly lopsided and it is massively weighted towards self-indulgence and consumption. Which is also fine.

So what’s missing?

In this cited study, the people who ended up having the highest quality of life were those who had both self-indulgence and some sort of purpose in their day.

Let’s see what that actually looks like in practice. Below, we have put together a few sample ideas on how you can weave both purpose and belonging into your trip.

Solutions to “the Mid-Trip Crisis”

To solve the issue of the mid-trip crisis and to ensure your travels are infinitely awesome, a few things need to happen.

First, make sure your trip allows for consistent time for building relationships (belonging). Second, make sure you schedule time for one or two activities that feel purposeful and third, have lots of fun.

As long as you deliver on these three things, you will have an unbeatable travel experience every time, whether it is two weeks or six months.

The Solutions:

When traveling in a group, have a defined experience planned:

Traveling in a group helps create a sense of belonging with consistent interaction. However, we lose our sense of freedom. It is shown that a lot of happiness and life satisfaction is based on our expectation of experiences. If you are traveling in a group, book a defined and controlled experience like a safari. This clearly places the expectation for traveling wandering isn’t going to happen.

Do your normal morning routine:

Having our normal morning run, breakfast or reading gives us a sense of normalcy that enables a sense of productivity and purpose for the entire day.

Work remote:

Working remote is a good way to support purpose and maybe belonging. A remote job is going to have limited interaction with coworkers, being in a new country and talking TPS Sheets with Sharon from accounting isn’t going to drive a sense of belonging. However, if you work for a company who lets you work remote for an infinite runway, this can help as you immerse into your travel locations and make friends with locals.

Volunteer:

Volunteering is a special type of travel. It can be done on a long-term basis or short-term basis. Volunteering is going to be done in a group so a sense of belonging will arise. Putting in the elbow-grease towards a cause will also support a sense of purpose. And your volunteering doesn’t have to be something altruistic. Volunteer at a winery, restaurant or bar. Putting in hours on anything will help.

Travel for six months in 2–3 locations:

Conversely to the above solution, by traveling for long periods of time, we are able to fulfill both belonging and purpose. Traveling long-periods of time helps us feel a sense of belonging as we are able to make friends with locals. Delivering on purpose here is very doable as you will have to adopt some sort of a normal life. Having a routine, picking up a side job, volunteering or working remote will help you feel productive, impactful and purposeful.

Source: https://medium.com/thrive-global/the-psychology-of-why-you-feel-empty-traveling-and-how-to-change-it-5e95930d702

Have you ever felt empty while travelling? How did you manage it?

#Traveling #Purpose #Crisis