Travelling is one of life’s greatest treasures

Travel is fun and lots of people travel with the sole purpose of enjoyment. Most people associate travel with the idea of being on vacation, and most of all, with breaking routine and escaping from mundane daily life and living. For some, travel’s a dream that only comes true once a year for the annual vacation. For many, it is an appealing form of escape.

For me, the reason to travel is that I discover a lot about myself and discover new and different possibilities. To see different possibilities, the most effective way is to seek new experiences and blitz our brain with things it has never encountered before. Whenever I’m traveling I feel recharged and full of ideas and energy.

Travelling can provide us with a whole new perspective, a sense of adventure that allows us to grow our creative power and to think outside the box. All the unknown landscapes, objects, and people give us new inputs and stimulates our creativity. ..... Now I'm not talking about taking a vacation and sightseeing, or backpacking across continents, or sitting on the beach, or doing touristy activities. When I speak of travelling, I talk about having an opportunity for total immersion in a different culture, seeking out new experiences and breaking out of the familiar routines. New experiences release our perceptual activity from the boundaries of past experiences and stimulate the brain to see new possibilities and expand our awareness.

Travelling to foreign environments provides an opportunity for us to expand our awareness and help us unleash our creative process. It reinvigorates our brain because we are being undistracted by the petty drama of normal life. Epiphanies seldom occur in familiar environments. The more diverse our experience the more limber and nimble our perspective becomes and the more possibilities we can perceive. If our perspective is not so solid and fixed, we can find inspiration everywhere, even while we are waiting for our next fight at a very busy airport. Unfamiliarity forces the brain to discard its usual or conventional perception and create new ones. Fresh input triggers new awareness which leads to new ideas.

When we travel, we step out of our comfort zone, physically and mentally. When we are faced with alternative cultures that have a different way of doing, thinking and believing, we are breaking out of our familiar zone and we widen our perspective. It challenges our assumptions and makes us shift our way of looking at things. Sometimes a simple change of environment is enough to get us out of our comfort zone and enough to nudge the perceptual system out of familiar space. The natural shift in focus can often come on unexpectedly.

Visiting a foreign country opens our eyes to how the rest of the world lives. From my own experience, when I am on an overseas travel, my awareness opens up to different possibilities. Some of my most creative insights are the direct result of visiting unusual places beyond my usual boundaries and normality. I often return home with new ideas for my business while gaining a broader worldview in the process.

By Chutisa Bowman

www.generativewoman.com