10 Scientifically Proven Ideas & 1 Test for Better Travel
Examined and articulated or otherwise, most of us would intuit that there is something uniquely good for us, going on within the oh-so-human, age-old pursuit of travel. Unpacking the commonly accepted aphorism that travel is good for mind, body and soul, one can reach scientifically verifiable certitudes regarding its myriad benefits for everything from creativity, to mental health and long-term fulfilment.
Travel is good for you — that much is irrefutable. Distilling cutting-edge, contemporary academic research and experience of creating countless life-changing journeys has allowed me to hone a science-based travel ideation and planning process that guarantees outcomes. It converts blue sky thinking into reality with huge benefits.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that the traditional luxury travel industry doesn’t encourage. Most travel professionals are doers focused on what, where and when. Their goal is to sell you tickets, rooms, car rentals, guides etc. rather than helping you stop to think why you’re travelling in the first place, how you could travel better and get more memorable outcomes.
I wager that no travel professional you’ve ever worked with has ever suggested the ideas you’ll discover here. It’s just not in their interest. However, considering these ideas it most definitely is in yours. So review these ten points whenever you next think about travelling.
Thinking beyond the where and applying a scientifically ratified approach, along with some all-important artistic flair, to the how and why of your journeying, will catapult your experiences to new heights and maximise their transformative potential. Here are ten pragmatic ideas, tools and tips to kickstart elevated and creative travel thinking.
1. Know Yourself AND your capacity for change
Acquainting yourself with the weather patterns of your chosen destination should come second to a deeper ‘know before you go’ examination of your own motivations. For starters, do you prize novelty, adventure and active curiosity or preference relaxation, familiarity and structure?
How you respond to external stimulus and value solitude will dictate the most advantageous settings in which to stage your sagas. This corresponds to a spectrum of Allocentric to Psychocentric, which is a popular psychological measure for gauging ‘travel personalities’. Take our test to find out where you sit on this spectrum, and more.
Self-knowledge is a powerful starting point for transformation. After all, our personalities are what make us distinct, but that doesn’t make them fixed. Travel — with its cocktail of new perspectives and increased self-awareness — can be a ready catalyst for change.
2. Travel Starts and Ends at Home
Research supports the notion that it pays to put as much energy into planning what happens before and after you travel, as into your itinerary whilst away. Eschew run of the mill checklists, sights and must-sees. Instead, think like a futurist or trend researcher and do your research. Dig into the geopolitical, cultural, economic, and social issues that move and shape the locale in question. Not only will this challenge you to discover more on your journey, it also builds anticipation in a profound way (… more on the perks of this later.)
Build what I like to call a ‘buffer zone’ for your return. A few days of empty diaries, a fully stocked fridge and peaceful environment affords space for reflection. Capitalise on the first few days of disorientating novelty and two to four weeks of ‘post-vacational bliss’, exploring with a fresh lens on the familiar, relishing small pleasures and daily routines and cementing the curiosity ignited on your travels. This time, if played right, can be a springboard for growth, positive change and increased self-awareness.
3. Narrative Play Wins the Day
Evidence-based positive, social and personality psychology points towards the sense in conceptualising individual journeys as part of a continuous narrative arc, overlapping, elaborating and informing both everyday life and each new foray to a new place. My research indicates that the average family has no more than sixteen opportunities to generate enduring travel memories. To ensure you make the most of them, take a piece of paper and write the numbers one to sixteen down one side. Note the significant trips you’ve already taken together, then fill in the remaining gaps with the kinds of memories you wish to create.
Whilst away, imagine yourself as an architect, sculptor and storyteller, applying design principles and mapping your journey by pondering and visualising each forward step. For all your careful planning, leave space and scope to employ frequent routine-breaking changes. This has the effect of making time slow down. Chronoception (perception of time) is malleable and if you want to stretch it out, think focused, think challenging, think scary and, most importantly think NEW…
4. Step out of your Comfort Zone
…Know our comfort zones are funny things — too comfortable and we become bored and complacent, but tilting too far into uncomfortable territory can leave us terrified. The trick is to strike a balance, so as to feel challenged. Begin thinking about how you can expand your comfort zone by taking measured risks — an arena in which travel provides endless scope for growth.
5. Cultivate Anticipation & Surprise
Savour the dopamine-releasing delight of delayed gratification by actively cultivating anticipation. As early as the fifties, experiments with lab-dwelling-rodents showed that more dopamine is generated during waiting, than by the reward itself. We also know that experiential purchases reap more happiness than their material counterparts and that this applies before consumption, making travel — and its anticipation — the ultimate investment in your long-term satisfaction.
Science suggests the element of surprise is also critical when it comes to travel. Research conducted by Tripadvisor showed that, when guests experienced a “delightful surprise” orchestrated by their hotel, an incredible 94% of them declared an unconditional willingness to recommend it.
6. … as well as Gratitude & Awe
When on the trot, beware the perils of the hedonic treadmill. This hypothesis explains how we revert to a default level of happiness, largely unaltered by positive events or change. You can counter this totally normal, yet somewhat frustrating human trait, by remembering that novelty is the antidote to adaptation. Regularly mix things up and welcome multiplicity.
Practice selective deprivation to avoid pleasure losing its impact. If you chance upon the patisserie of your dreams, resist the temptation of grabbing coffee and a croissant every time you leave your hotel and instead visit before your homeward flight to select delicacies that will lighten the last-day-of-the-holiday blues.
You also want to be reaching towards anything that produces the sensation of awe. Awe does all sorts of excellent things for our psyches: forming a source of resilience, forcing external focus and self-awareness. Couple this with the cultivation of gratitude and your chances of beating that darn treadmill grow exponentially.
7. Neuroplasticity, all the Way
Have you noticed a theme developing? All this talk of unfamiliarity is grounded in more than a whimsical attraction to novelty! Neuroscientists have found that putting yourself in the path of newness and change has the power to spark your synapses and revitalise the mind, building what is known as neuroplasticity. This in turn enhances core cognitive competencies for navigating contemporary life, such as resilience, confidence and creativity.
The leading head on how international travel plays into all this is Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky, who says “foreign experiences increase both cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought, [cultivating] the ability to make deep connections between disparate forms”. To get the juices flowing, his extensive research has shown that how you travel is important. An all-inclusive beach holiday won’t necessarily cut it “the key, critical process is multicultural engagement, immersion, and adaptation ”.
Just as yoga stretches the body, the unfamiliar environment, new people and inevitable obstacles entailed in travel stretch your mind, creating new neural pathways. This helps you to think outside the box and shift from a fixed to a growth mindset, which challenges static thinking patterns and says YES, you CAN do this!
8. Excel at ‘Ordinary’ Pleasures
Whilst I would always encourage pursuing the extraordinary (hence recommending deep research and leaning towards awe) it is also worth noting that many of the quotidian activities we gravitate towards whilst travelling have psychological perks too. Understanding these can only enhance the gains.
Take something as simple as the act of eating. Multisensory and social in nature, breaking bread in a new place has direct links to happiness. It is a low risk and high reward activity, with recipes and culinary etiquette forming rich depositories of history, value systems and cultural preferences on every plate. Avoid international eateries, delve deep into local cuisines and plan meals with care and imagination.
Factoring nature into your journey is a no brainer. Spending time outdoors makes for a heady tonic of cognitive repercussions — it’s good for banishing anxiety, increases problem-solving, creativity, and mental and physical energy — with even the most avowedly urban of us reporting positive feelings from immersion in green spaces and wild places.
Let’s also give praise for what many of us would unashamedly name a primary motivator for going away: sacred and hard-earned relaxation. This needn’t mean booking into a lux spa (though it can’t do any harm!) It is the act of upping sticks that allows the mind to let go of everyday pressures and anxieties, bringing a sublime sense of calm, even if your chosen getaway revolves around adrenaline-pumped action or intense problem-solving activities. The stress relief afforded by travel comes in the form of both short and long-term benefits, from resetting your sleeping pattern, to offering a period of reflection in which to reevaluate what you want from life, thus avoiding burnout.
9. Interpersonal Connection and Global Perspectives
Anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests good company enhances experience. Reciprocally, the company you keep is improved by travel. It can aid communication, reduce the possibility of divorce, strengthen lifelong family bonds, and increase a sense of well-being in adults and children.
We are, after all, pack animals and the need for interpersonal relationships and social connection is vital to travel (as it is to life). The science tells us that even so-called ‘weak ties’ reap high returns. In other words, you do not need to form lifelong friendships to feel the buzz of bonding — striking up a conversation with a stranger can be as psychologically edifying.
Travel fosters empathy, but it is important not to be glib about this. An awareness of the legacies of colonialism, slavery, genocide, and displacement, as well as a criticality towards how tourism operates within an unequal world, is as important to pack as the passport which you are lucky to hold. With sensitivity and a willingness to learn (and unlearn), immersion in other cultures trains you to become a better communicator reveals how it feels to be a minority and imparts the important lesson that we have more in common than that which divides us. Let travel lead you to a humble understanding of your place in the world, open your eyes to new ways of thinking and foster informed empathy.
10. Making Memories
A crucial component of maximising travel’s benefits is the richness and longevity of your memories. Though memory-making is a natural process, by applying intention you can curate and optimise your recollections. Thankfully science provides manifold practical means to go about this.
Keep in mind the tendency to play architect of your future memories: a trait that has been vastly exacerbated by the advent of social media. Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman conceptualises a significant gulf between our experiencing and remembering selves. Whilst on the hoof you want to give your experiencing-self room to breathe and enjoy the present.
Pause before snapping the 256th photo of the day. Instead aim to sparingly capture candid moments and unusual experiences which will act as memory aids. To ignite your emotive memory around positive experiences, play with anchoring techniques. When overcome with, say, a sense of great calm, focus on the sensory environment. How does the sand feel against your bare feet? What distinct aromas can you decipher amid the hubbub of the souk? Next, simply make a small and deliberate physical anchor — tap your knee three times or re-plait your hair. Once back in the humdrum of the office try repeating this action to see whether the sensory stimuli and emotive content of the memory come rushing back.
Finally, staying connected to the place you visited — keeping in touch with people you met, following the news or attempting to cook your favourite dish at home for friends — is always a fail-safe method of keeping memories alive.