18 Ways Traveling Alone Can Help You Heal and Love Yourself

Gets You Out of Your Comfort Zone.

If you have never embarked on a solo travel adventure before, you’re in for an awakening. You may believe you’re fully prepared to go off jet-setting by yourself, but you'll quickly realize, wow, this might be a little more of a surprise than you thought. 

Teaches You How to Spend Quality Time With Yourself

You may believe you know yourself inside and out, but until you experience traveling alone, you don’t truly, authentically “know” yourself. As you explore new environments, languages, and cultures, you will uncover facets of yourself you may never have dreamed of. 

Allows You to Challenge Yourself

Without a doubt, traveling alone will be a challenge. Whether it's a welcome challenge or a tough one, solo travel really forces you out of your shell and into mega problem-solving mode.

Gives You a Glimpse of How the Rest of the World Lives

If you have never traveled before, you can never claim to know anything firsthand about the rest of the world. Whether it’s solo travel or companionable travel, learning about the world through your own lens is truly a privilege and a learning experience. Immersing yourself in new cultures, languages, native people, cuisines, traditions, and more is one of the most enjoyable parts of travel..

Encourages You to Have New Experiences

You may be a person who isn’t inclined to try new things, but when you jump into the realm of solo travel, you will inevitably become that kind of person. It doesn't even have to be in an “extreme” way. No matter where you go or what you do, solo travel embodies the entire notion of new experiences. It’s a brilliant way to get more out of your life. Solo travel is never boring. It’s likely you’ll do or see something new every day and, in turn, alter your thought patterns along the way.

Opens Your Mind to New Ways of Being

Mark Twain once brilliantly said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” And he couldn’t be more correct.

Builds Your Confidence and Independence

As you gain experience and realize that solo travel is, in fact, something you really can do, you’ll slowly notice that you have more confidence in traveling alone.

Convinces You That You Can Be Bold and Take Risks

After you’ve discovered that you can, indeed, conquer the quest of solo travel, and after you’ve also realized how confident you are, you’ll move into the sphere of boldness.

Allows You to Leave Certain Stresses Behind You

It’s easy to feel like you’ll never escape the stresses of daily life. After all, you’ll have to return to it all at some point. However, if you allow yourself to let go for some time, to just “be,” you may discover that traveling allows you to compartmentalize the stresses of home from the fun of travel. Furthermore, you may end up reflecting a lot on those familiar stresses while you travel, making it easier to face the obstacles face-first once you return.

Offers a Change of Scenery

No matter what, solo travel always offers a new environment for you to traverse. While the change of scenery is a welcome one for discovering new places, it may also be beneficial to immersing your psyche into fresh surroundings.

Forces You to Be More Social and (Hopefully) Less Lonely

As mentioned before, solo travel is only what you make of it. This means that you must use the opportunities in front of you to your advantage. Loneliness doesn’t necessarily signify that you are physically alone—rather, that you are mentally alone.

Helps You to Learn Who You Are and Who You Want to Be

It’s likely that in the stuffiness of your closed-minded, same-old-story hometown, you were never afforded the opportunity to explore your identity and discover your purpose in much depth. With solo travel, you unlock a world that is abundant with new experiences, new belief systems, new interests, and new skill sets.

Creates a Sense of Capability

Before you conquer the battle of building confidence and taking risks, you’ll notice first that you’re simply capable. You took the leap, and you successfully set out on your solo adventure. You can do this. Which means you can also learn to love yourself and understand how to heal. It starts with a single step, and knowing you can accomplish even the basic challenge opens up a whole new universe of self-care.

Confronts Your Old Habits and Patterns

Ah… the old comfort zone again. If you don’t tackle your long-held, toxic patterns, you’ll never move forward into self-love and healing. When you embark on solo travel, you automatically confront these old ways and for many people, it is taking this giant leap of faith that helps them realize how they are wasting their life back at home. You can use your solo travel experience to refresh and rebuild new, healthier habits that are conducive to self-improvement.

Gives You the Time to Run Away for a While

Should you run away from your problems? Usually, no. But solo travel isn’t running away from problems as much as it is running full speed toward yourself. And yes, this includes your problems. Many inexperienced travelers like to daydream that their next adventure will help them solve every issue in their lives, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Running away to travel alone will help you evaluate certain problems in your life, but it takes a lot of inner work on your part. 

Inspires You to Dig Deeper

So you’ve started reflecting, you’ve started the inner work, and your solo travel adventure has been one for the books. You can only accomplish so much healing in one trip, though. While traveling alone certainly presents you with plenty of time for introspection, it’s not going to give you all the “Aha!” moments at once. When you return from your travels and settle back in at home, this is where the work continues. Solo travel surely helps you dig deep, but contemplating all you learned on your trip will help you dig deeper.

• 20 Thought Provoking Journal Prompts for Self-Discovery

Puts You in Your Place to Find Your Humanity

One of the most valuable lessons of solo travel is not just about you—it’s about humanity as a whole and how you fit into this amazing world. Your solo travel expedition is so multidimensional that learning how to self-love and self-heal is only a small part of the journey. Your perspective is bound to change in about a thousand different ways, and part of your healing journey will most definitely include your relationship with not just yourself, but with the world. That’s when you truly evolve.

Here Are Some of the Best Destinations for Women Traveling Solo

Ready to set out on an adventure?

• Here are first hand recommendations of the best destinations for women solo travelers.