Can travelling help us to change our habits and personality?

I met in I’m my hostel in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica.

He is traveling for a few years already. Is just in its early twenties, but has an open minded ideology regarding finding hisself.

In Germany he had a lot of problems with the school system, teachers and his family.

The German perfectionism and outer pressure on “having something” instead of “being something” made him weird and enoying.

For any reason he felt like a fool, not to stay at the same level of the typical education system as there friends or people from his environment.

He had the feeling he is not exepted as a simple human being with his own ideologies and wills. You have to wear the same costume to be part of the party.

But that’s weird. Why can’t we live and be what we want? Especially today, where is a worldwide network with tones of different opportunities.

On the one hand, that depends on in which environment and society you are born and how you grown up.

On the other hand, it depends on you. You can always change it.

Lucas, the guy felt so weird and empty, because he lived a life, what was not his own life. So he started to take drugs and went out for partying, just to neutralise and calm down his inner desires.

After school he decided then to travel and travelled in the end 1,5 years before he came back home for the first time again.

This time period of traveling opend his eyes. He found out, that in other countries are other rules, habits, values and lifestyles. There is no right or wrong, it is always the perspective from where you look at your life and values.

Lucas learned that he was now able to to what he wants and nobody cared about it, he could be experimental in habits, ways of life and find out what his values and motivations in life are about. He captured all contacts to his family and friends during this time, just to make a complete reset of his current position.

It was a beginning of a journey – a journey to find hisself.

But when he came back home for the first time, where he stayed at his parents house, met the same friends from before, he suddenly fall back into the same habits.

Felt weird, as a stranger, took drugs and made party.

So after half a year he decided to travel again. He was not ready at this time to come back, he didn’t find hisself and could feel that he was not at the end of the path.

So for over one year now, he is traveling again. He saved some money before in Germany and worked a while in Canada.

Mostly he is staying 2-3 month at one place and is trying to keep his expanses as low as he can by working as a volunteer at a hostel or hotel. They offer you normally free accommodation and sometimes food for a little bit of work (mostly between 10-25 hours per week).

Lucas said, he will travel so long until he will find that way of life and motivation that makes him happy and peaceful inside.

“I am starting to get there”, he mentioned to me. “Before, I was always destroying things, was angry and very negative in my mind. Today I start to see just the beautiful things inside everything. I even get creative and my mind starts to think about, how he can create something useful out of each simple piece of nature”.

Oh my god, what a big mind shift in just 2-3 years!

Once, when he will come back to Germany, he wants to say to his parents, ” Hi, I am back. And I am what I am. And that is me.” He ment by that, to have the power and strength to stay then as he is, not to fall back into his old habits and also to be accepted as a new person by his family and friends.

And as long as he hasnt the feeling, he is ready for it, he wants to travel. Minimum the next 3-5 years.

For me it just shows me again, how important traveling on our own can be to find ourself. Especially when we have the feeling we are born into a wrong society, when we have the feeling we are strangers, when we have the feeling we are not excepted by our invironment.

If you feel the same, I can just highly recommend to go traveling.

It doesn’t have to be for years, sometimes it’s enough to travel for a few month, just to brake out of your hamster wheel or just to get new insights.

And you doesn’t need to go to many places or all over the world. You can also just stay at one place, that you enjoy – the mountains or the beach side.

And you doesn’t need to be in your early twenties. Event when you are in an older age and have a settled life, it is always possible to leave this place for a while.

Just the first steps to decide to travel and actually move are those actions, where people already stuck. Because you have to come our of your comfort zone.

You have to change something and leave your secure environment.

There is one of my favourite quotes, which I want to share with you guys. It helped me a lot to move my ass and start to change my life: