15 Powerful Mindsets Travel Unlocks
Did you travel to relax? Did you travel to visit? Did you travel to explore? Did you travel to get away from your current reality and pretend you're someone else on the other side of the world, hoping to fall in love with a stranger?
Well, successful people use travel as fuel. The goal is to return from your travels smarter, healthier, re-energized, and filled with memories. And if that's not the case, you're doing travel wrong. Here are 15 powerful mindsets that travel unlocks.
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Number one: The world is big; you are small, so get bigger. To travel is to confront the sheer enormity of the world. You're reminded of how small you stand in relation to towering mountains, ancient cities, and bustling streets. It quickly makes you realize that you're just a small blip in the vastness of the world. If you went away, none of these people would know. But in the midst of that smallness, you find an opportunity to grow, to learn, to expand yourself until the world no longer feels so vast. If you want to make a real impact on the world, you need to be bigger. At your current scale, you don't have the power to shape the world. So tell yourself, in the face of a boundless world, the wisest response is to not shrink in awe but to grow in wonder. Grow until your wonder makes the world feel small.
Number two: The world keeps spinning. Independent of your problems and struggles, there's a certain comfort in the fact that while your troubles might feel all-encompassing, the world moves on. As you journey from city to city, country to country, you're reminded that time continues, life evolves, and your struggles are but a fleeting moment in the grand narrative. The sun will still rise in the morning; people will still go to work. Life moves on, whether you're in triumph or in despair. And in this truth lies a quiet grace. The big problems you're experiencing feel big because they're happening to you. You have a size and impact bias. What feels urgent and important, in the grand scheme of things, is irrelevant because the world sees so much worse happen a million times a day and doesn't even bat an eye.
Number three: Every experience is a puzzle piece to figure yourself out, and you lack some of those pieces. We are all incomplete, and the act of travel helps us to gather up some missing pieces. Each experience, each conversation, every new place offers a fragment of insight that adds to the mosaic of who you're becoming. It's only through this exploration that we begin to see the fuller picture of ourselves. In every corner of the world lies a piece of ourselves waiting to be discovered; an unfinished puzzle seeking its next piece. This discovery tells you just how many more pieces might be scattered around the world waiting for you to find them.
Number four: International friendships are important; invest in them. Making friends around the world makes you feel like you belong. It adds familiarity to what feels estranged by default. The friendships you forge abroad are not just connections; they are bridges to entire worlds. They connect you with the world through people with the same core values as you. Despite the cultural differences, they provide a window into new perspectives, histories, and customs, allowing you to have beyond a surface level understanding of this new place. These relationships enrich your understanding of the world and remind you that true wealth is found in the hearts and minds of others. In decades, these fostered relationships will pay dividends in insights and opportunities. It's really hard to make new old friends, so start right now.
Number five: What you can take with you are your essentials. You learn what really matters when you're living out of a suitcase. Every journey strips down your needs to the bare essentials and it teaches you that true freedom comes from owning less but experiencing more. When you travel, the clutter of life just falls away. You realize just how much of your day-to-day life is your phone or your laptop. As long as you have access to money and an internet connection, you don't really need much else. Just how magical is it to take your buying power with you, as well as your familiarity with the online universe? The simplicity of this revelation brings freedom: freedom from excess, freedom from distraction, and the unnecessary. The weight of your luggage pales in comparison to the lightness of knowing what truly matters.
Number six: Embrace JOMO—the joy of missing out. Social media is designed to make you want to be somewhere else, right? You'll be in one of the most beautiful places in the world, open up your Instagram, and see people somewhere else thinking, "Oh, how cool would it be to be there instead?" Then you slap some sense into yourself and realize they're thinking the same thing about your experience. Once the realization that all of this is by design kicks in, you start to embrace the joy of missing out. It teaches you the joy of presence, of fully immersing yourself in the moment, detached from the constant pull of what's happening elsewhere. Missing out becomes a privilege, not a burden. Because in missing out, you are fully present. Because, look, okay, what is more luxurious or enviable than actually being able to savor the present moment?
Number seven: Every culture has different priorities and forces you to recalibrate yours. The worst kind of travel is to take your narrow understanding of the world and expect the rest of the world to play by your tiny rules. Travel invites you to reassess your own priorities, to recalibrate what you once thought was essential, and to recognize that there's no single way to live well. They've been living happily over here, believing in different gods, eating different foods, and structuring society totally differently from what you know. You know one of the biggest cultural shocks lies in the utility of money. Although everyone in the world wants it, the reasons are as varied as the number of cultures out there. You want money to buy bigger and better things. You want money because it brings you status, and that is what sets the trap. Working more leads to more money, so more things and more status. But while you're actively trading your life for status, other people are enjoying siestas, playing with their kids, and having amazing meals with their friends in the middle of the day. At the end of your life, who do you think is richer? To step into another culture is to borrow its lens, allowing you to see your own life with fresh eyes and wiser priorities. So figure out what you can borrow from them.
Number eight: Build something that will last millennia. Do you realize the Coliseum in Rome was built 2,000 years ago, and to this day, people still go and stare at it in awe? What will you build in your life that will even come close to a fraction of the longevity of such a thing? In ancient ruins and enduring cities, you're reminded the most meaningful contributions are those that outlive us. The monuments of past civilizations inspire us to build lives, relationships, and legacies that stand the test of time. If you can't build them in stone, at least try to build them with purpose and lasting impact. Etch your presence into the lives that live on beyond you.
Number nine: Tourism, travel, and living are all different things. Tourism is when you hop on a bus, when you drink a Starbucks and eat McDonald's despite being nowhere near the US of A. But here's how we want you to look at it: tourism is the act of observing; travel is the pursuit of understanding; but living—that is immersion. The longer you stay in a place, the deeper your connection, and the more you become a part of its rhythm. Travel teaches you the art of shifting between these modes and recognizing the value in each.
Number ten: The wisdom in strangers and how context provides deeper lessons. When you travel, you're more aware of what's happening around you, right? Your eyes open up more. The most profound wisdom often comes from the unlikeliest of sources: a conversation with a stranger, a chance encounter in a distant land. These are lessons you'll bring back home with you. In these moments, context enriches meaning, teaching us that the value of knowledge lies not just in what is said but in where, when, and why it is shared. Your brain is primed differently to learning when the quality of the air changes, and we love exercising our learning muscles when we travel.
And you know, there are three things that are essential to us when traveling. First of all: a book. We find reading when traveling just hits differently, especially if the book fits the context of your travel or at least where you are in life. Second is a journal. We write down every piece of insight we find and express gratitude constantly on how lucky we are to live this way. And third: a great partner for deep conversations about life, business, health, etc. Someone to challenge your beliefs and force you to see the world differently. Over the past two years, all of these have been merged into the Alux app. We maintain our morning routine even when we're traveling. As we drink our morning coffee, we listen to the daily Alux session that expands our brain and reality. Then we write our daily findings in the free journal included within the app, and then we go about our day with a great framework to explore. Even if it's just a weekend getaway, try our app out by getting it at alux.com/slapp. It's the closest thing we found to taking your mind to the spa. And if you're more into, like, 9-hour books, go to alux.com/slffreebook. If this is the first time you sign up for Audible, you'll get a free audiobook since you're a subscriber to our YouTube channel.
All right, now let's get back to the video.
Number eleven: If things aren't good back home, your holiday will suck. Although your physical world stays back home, your mind doesn't. All of your worries, anxiety, and stressors are coming with you. Although travel might offer a temporary escape, unresolved issues at home will always shadow your experience. True enjoyment of a journey begins within, by addressing what's weighing on you before you even board that plane. No matter how much you try, you can't outrun your troubles. And even more so, as you're supposed to relax and unwind, your brain is paying interest on the unsolved issues going on back home. So let's expand on this point, because a lot of people are suffering from this.
Number twelve: If you're not happy away, it's not the location that made you miserable in the first place. Because travel, in essence, offers not escape but confrontation. When you find yourself dissatisfied in a new city, a new country, it's not the geography that's the problem, okay? It's not even the emotional luggage you've packed with you, but who you are as a person. You've become someone whose default state has become unhappiness. And look, okay, not to sound like one of those spiritual gurus out there, but true happiness isn't found in a place; it's cultivated from within. Okay, that is the truth. It's a muscle that you haven't trained in decades, which has become frail and weak, now making you bitter and miserable. The landscapes might change, but it's still you in this new environment. So use it to foster a different set of habits while you're there. Build your happiness muscle up and see what it is about your old environment that lacked the proper nutrients for your soul.
Number thirteen: Travel exposes the limits of your control. In travel, as in life, we're constantly reminded that we are not the masters of the world but the recipients of its whims. One of the humbling lessons that travel offers is the realization that much of it is just out of our hands. Whether it's the weather, a delayed flight, or a missed connection, travel strips you of the illusion that you're always in charge. It forces you to surrender to the unpredictable, and in that surrender, you gain the wisdom to adapt and thrive. Control is great, of course, but absolute control removes the magic that life can provide. And magic only comes from the uncertainty of how it all works.
Number fourteen: Distance allows for breathing room. Now, there's a certain clarity that distance provides, like stepping back from a painting to see it fully. When we distance ourselves from our routines and responsibilities that consume our days, we can create space for reflection. Distance isn't just about miles; it's about perspective. Sometimes stepping away is the only way for us to see where we truly stand. A city, a job, a relationship might look different when viewed from afar, granting us some breathing room to re-evaluate and recalibrate. This breathing room removes the urgency of making decisions that you're used to if, on a daily basis, you have to make decisions in minutes. Travel gives you perspective on the bigger calls you have to make in life.
Number fifteen: The joy of returning. Now, perhaps the greatest gift travel gives us is the rediscovery of home. Travel has a paradoxical way of renewing our appreciation for what we already have. The unfamiliar, with all of its intrigue and excitement, sharpens our awareness of the familiar. The joy of returning lies not just in the comfort of routine, but in the rediscovered beauty of the life you momentarily left behind. A life that you built for decades to fit who you are like a glove. When you return, you're never quite the same person you were when you left, which brings the opportunity for shedding some of the weight and setting everything up in a way that will better fit who you're becoming instead of catering to who you used to be.
Now, you've traveled a few times in your life, and as you're watching this video, maybe a couple of trips came to your mind and resurfaced some feelings and lessons you were taught. So we're curious: what's the most valuable lesson you learned on one of your travels? We love learning from you, so please leave your answer in the comments.
And since you watched this video until the end, here's your bonus: travel teaches you the art of navigating. You'll learn the patience to deal with a delayed flight; you'll learn the diplomacy needed to deal with a hangry partner, family, relatives, or the persuasion of securing yourself a room upgrade or a table at a sold-out restaurant. You'll learn the plans you made at home don't necessarily fit the reality in the field. All of these are parts of navigating the world based on what's already there. You become a good navigator when you're able to use the tools at your disposal to get to where you want to go.
We found travel to be the ultimate tool to see the depths of the people you know. If you want to get to know someone, travel with them and see how they navigate. If you're the captain of your own ship, write the word "captain" in the comments. It'll confuse the hell out of those who never watched our videos until the very end, but we will know who the real ones are.