Nothing is going to kill your travel buzz faster than anxiety.
There’s always a lot going on when you’re on the road. Every day brings new challenges, and often you find yourself in really confusing and frustrating situations.
Everything is more difficult when you’re stressed, so here are 7 pieces of friendly, soothing advice, to help you keep your cool, and enjoy yourself while you travel.
Deep breath, in… and out… in… and out…
7. Get your head out of your guidebook sometimes.
Are you the kind of person who sees travel as a bit like a field trip?
You stay up late at night reading about the places you want to go tomorrow, and then prioritise them numerically. You carry your guidebook everywhere, and read about each place, out loud, to your friends as you walk around. If something costs more than it says in the book, you get into a heated argument.
Maybe try improvising more. The problem with guidebooks is they lead you to the same places everyone else is going. And it turns into a feedback loop. The more people go to a certain attraction, the more commercialised it gets, and pretty soon what was once an interesting and picturesque place becomes a strip mall of souvenir stands and greasy food outlets.
If you really do want to check out the hot tourist spots, read up on them before you leave home, and stash your guidebook under your pillow. You will have a much more intimate and inspiring experience if you let your eyes and ears tune into what’s around you, rather than what your guidebook is telling you.
6. Take your time.
Racing and roaming are very different sports.
The planet is a big place, and it seems like there just isn’t enough time to do and see all the things you dream about, right?
Right. Get used to it. The world really is much too big. Even now, in the age of intercontinental flight, and smartphones, there will never be enough days, in one short human lifetime, to see all of it. If you want to be inspired, if you want to really understand the planet you live on, you will learn a lot more by traveling more slowly in fewer places.
The main reason roaming works better than racing is that people are the best part of travel. It takes time to get to know people, and form friendships with them, especially if they are from a different culture to you, and speak a different language. If you are always racing from one destination to the next, those deep friendships will not be able to grow.
Travel slow, get to know people, and you will see a world that most tourists never see.
5. Lighten up.
The amount of stress a person experiences, is directly proportionate to the amount of crap they have to haul through airports, drag onto busses, pack, unpack, fold, cram, wash, dry, and pack again.
You don’t need that much stuff. We all have too much. Even people like me, who have one small bag have more stuff than we really need. We pack to be comfortable. We carry things we ‘might need’, and ‘could come in handy’.
Especially if you are about to set out on your first adventure, be hard on yourself. Drag out all the stuff you crammed into your bag, take a good hard look at it, and then reduce it by 30% at least. You don’t need jeans. You don’t need three different jumpers. You don’t need your favorite brand of coffee and a paperback. You don’t need a fifteen inch notebook computer, a tablet, a Kindle, an SLR, and a telephoto lens. You definitely don’t need a stove and saucepans.
Every few months I go through this process again myself. Things have a way of attaching themselves to us, like flies. It’s a good idea to shake them off once in awhile.
When you have less stuff to lug around, you will enjoy movement more, and travel will be a pleasure not a pain.
4. Learn to earn as you go.
Money is the thing we all worry about, all the time. For a lot of people it’s the thing that forces them to stop traveling, or prevents them from starting their adventure in the first place.
The solution is to learn a skill, or start a business, that allows you to earn money as you go.
If you play music, sing or juggle, you will be able to earn money, tax free, almost anywhere in the world.
A lot of travelers make a living by teaching English. The qualifications are relatively easy and inexpensive to get.
The post-internet world is the perfect environment for long term nomads. Remote freelancing allows people to do a huge range of jobs, and be completely mobile at the same time. If you have access to a computer, you can find clients, or employers who will hire you to do all kinds of things from technical writing to radio voiceovers.
If you want to be your own boss, check out the world of e-commerce. There has never been a better time to be a nomad entrepreneur.
3. Practice poverty.
Having a mobile income is only half of the solution to the money anxiety issue. The other half is learning to spend less.
I have written a lot on this blog about the ways I save money. You may get some good ideas from the pages about Free Transport, Free Accommodation and Free Food, if you haven’t read them already.
Learning to spend less is a good way to reduce your money worries, but it also has another psychologically beneficial feature. We all need to pamper ourselves from time to time. If we feel like we are always budgeting, counting pennies, that can result in stress of another kind. Treat yourself when you need to. It makes us all feel good to enjoy luxuries sometimes. The great thing about practising poverty is that the level of comfort that we call luxury changes over time. Luxury is a relative thing. If you live most of your life in a tent, and eat simple food, then a ten dollar hostel room and a falafel roll will feel like five star living.
The benefits of lifestyle simplification reach far beyond saving money. A less expensive life is usually a greener life.
We all worry about our environment. By reducing your consumption, you are making a direct contribution to ecology, and helping to ease the burden that our species is putting on the planet. That has to be a weight off the mind.
2. Want to stress less? Try new things.
That might sound counter-intuitive to some of us. For a lot of humans, thinking about doing unfamiliar things is a huge source of anxiety. That response is conditioned by a society that rewards predictability over inspiration.
We are all taught that familiarity equals safety. That may be true, in a very basic, day to day sort of way, but there is a flip side. Familiarity also produces boredom, and boredom is the opposite of happiness. Unhappy people are anxious people. When we get too comfortable, when our surroundings become too familiar, we get restless.
We are a nomadic species. For 99.999999 % of our existence, human beings were wanderers. We went from place to place, following the herds, and the seasons. It was a challenging life, and it forced us to become intelligent, perceptive, creatures. That way of life, that facility for migration is hard wired into our genes. To be in one place, to do the same things every day, that is an unnatural state for human beings.
For many of us, the constant challenge of the unknown is the only thing that can banish anxiety.
Thinking about doing new things is scary. Doing new things is exciting.
1. Remember: people are good.
The single most important thing I have ever learned about being a traveler is how kind strangers can be.
The vast majority of humans, everywhere in the world, are good people. They have families, neighbours, doubts, fears and aspirations, just like you do; and like you, they care about other people.
Humans can sometimes be scary, especially when we look at ourselves as a big, faceless mob. We have the capacity to be destructive. We put our faith in corrupt governments, cruel leaders, and silly ideologies. But, humans are basically good. We are flawed, anxious, and foolish, but very few of us are actually evil.
When you feel anxiety about leaving your comfort zone, the place you grew up, and the people you know and trust, it is good to remember what makes humans special. More than any other species, we have the ability to understand each other. We all see our own struggles and fears reflected in others, and we sympathise.
Wherever you go in the world, there will be people who care about you, even though they know nothing more about you than your name.
When we leave our comfort zone and go out into the strange world, things will go wrong from time to time. But there will be people there to help you, if you give them a chance.
Don’t be frightened by the media. Don’t buy into the prejudice and racism that lead so many people to fear each other. Treat people as individuals, and try to remember that we are all family if you go back far enough.
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