Throwback V: What 5 years of travel brought me to where I am now

China might have been my last time going abroad for the next couple of years. Though, it is not the first time I’d have to say goodbye to a lot of people and a culture that started to grow on me, it’s a bit different now. Normally, I’d already know to which country I’d be going next to for a longer time period. This time, the only thing I know is that I’ll be in belgium for the next 3 years. So what did all that travelling teach me over the course of the past 5 years? Have a look at the 8 character traits I developed through travelling:

1. Leaving my comfort zone

Australia was the first country I travelled solo. And, oh boy, if I am completely honest, I had no idea what I started. I had a year’s time to travel the entire country, thinking that I would settle somewhere and just fly out from my safe home base. Nothing was further from the truth. Leaving my comfort zone all the time and ending up in the most stunning or challenging places became more like an addiction.

It is a place where you challenge yourself like no one, no books or any home-like situation could ever teach you. Bear in mind that you are far away from home and that it isn’t as simple as just calling your insurance or family if anything happens. Same goes for emotional ranting, you kinda learn to just keep it together.

2. Perspective

Perspectives are an important part of one’s life. Nevertheless, we might all agree on it, but what does it actually mean? I learned it by looking through different people’s eyes. Whilst travelling, you do not only meet the culture of the country but also a very diverse set of cultures from all the other backpackers you’re meeting. Meaning, a second perspective isn’t enough. There are maybe 10 different cultural perspectives while there are 25 different personal perspectives in one conversation with travellers. Only travelling and meeting new people on a daily basis could teach me this.

3. Resilience

This is probably one of my favourites. Before my travels, I had the tendency of being a bit flaky and very lazy. So if anything happened, well, let’s just say that I didn’t like coping with it nor even facing it. Different from being in your comfort zone, one does not have time for that whilst travelling. I can tell you this from my travels. The pictures we show, the amazing stories we tell and the mental strength we gain isn’t all that easy as it seems to get to.

Let’s take SE Asia and its beautiful landscape, one might have had to take a 10 hours bumpy bus ride whilst being eaten alive by mosquitos whilst being starved since there are no food places around to see a waterfall. Same goes for doing business in Switzerland, acing a project might look amazing but to live up to their standards, one could work till 5am during the weekend to meet his deadlines.

4. Communication skills

This concerns more than just language skills. To be honest, my English improved bigtime over the years due to speaking or texting it on a daily basis. Nevertheless, what I mean with communication skills is the layers around the language. Through meeting different cultures, I learned to communicate with locals through body language and tone of voice without actually having to speak their language. The easiest difference there’s to make is the one in between a high- and low context culture. All these small aspects certainly raise you to a higher level when conversing in different situations.

5. Patience & adaptability

Patience is key during travels. Yes I missed busses, trains, boats and other types of transport throughout the years. It doesn’t really matter to be fair. I mean, don’t miss your flight back home.. But be adaptable. I have been stranded in the most remote places and the only thing I could think about was, I am free. I can literally do whatever I want. Doesn’t matter if I go to the left or to the right. Correspondingly, always be patient, I learned to just accept certain situations on how they are. And I can not change that, so I can only wait and have an alternative close to hand.

6. To be curious

Curiosity has always been one of my driving forces of travel. Though, I had to learn to have a healthy amount of it and not just wanting to discover new places all the time. Reason why, I tended to take the environment, I was already in, for granted. And I kept doing that without taking a rest.

After a while it just becomes a lot to take in and I simply had to be grateful of where I was in that moment. Which was probably a jungle, a snowy mountain ridge, a reef or whatever. To be curious in the moment is what I learned here, and not thinking about the day after while missing out on what’s actually happening in front of your eyes.

7. Stress management

I think it kinda includes a fair bit of what I mentioned before. But yeah, stress-management books are not even close to what you have to cope with during travels. This can go from having to manage a lot of things at the same moment to financial stress to even being afraid of forgetting your favourite towel in the hostel, if you know what I mean. Travelling brings a lot of responsibility with and there’s nothing to do about it. Managing everything is a skill which I inevitably had to learn. And I suddenly learned to let go of the small things like the towel in the hostel.

8. To just do it

Take a leap, as long as I do not ruin the cornerstones I’ve built throughout the years, I don’t really have anything to lose. Especially not if it’s a considerate leap. And it has been working out so far, though, with a good amount of reflection. Travelling pushes you into a corner sometimes where you just have to do it, this goes literal as figurative (as for most of the things written above).

Bringing all these aspects back home with you is one thing, adapting them with the culture that lives there is the other. What I mean with this is that “home” never really changes bigtime. And this to great frustration of most of the backpackers I know. So by the time you come back, people do not like recognising / do not understand the changes a traveller went through. This because it is just too much to take from a third party perspective. Which is also why we backpackers do not always bother explaining how it was abroad. And that is totally comprehensible from my point of view.

But then there’s the real challenge, adapt back to the culture whilst sticking to the persona you built throughout the time you lived abroad. And to be fairly honest, I think it might even be easier to use these strengths in a professional culture than in an emotional culture. But only time will tell.