Travel, I believe, is an essential and necessary element of life’s journey. Travel opens your mind to new places, new people, new ideas – travel makes you a better citizen of the world. One of my favorite quotes on travel is by Mark Twain in his book The Innocents Abroad. He said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” Wow. Just read that again and let it soak in…….. Those words are so powerful and so true! Travel definitely changes your perspective – it changes YOU. The places, people and cultures you experience WILL have an impact on your life. Travel makes you appreciate home but also allows you to see the value and worth in how other people see and do life differently in other parts of the world. Travel forces you out of your comfort zone and normal life routine allowing you to experience personal growth.

I would argue that for you to become the best version of yourself, you must travel. But how? How do you make travel happen in your life?

Here are a few practical ways to get more travel in YOUR life:



1) Make some short-term and long-term travel goals. Most things in life worth having don’t happen by chance. They are usually achieved through goal-setting. So….make some short-term and long-term travel goals. They could be smaller goals for a year’s span or larger goals that may not be fully realized until the end of life. For example, I have a lifetime travel goal to visit all 7 continents. In the next 3 years I want to make it to Africa.

2) Make a list of places you want to visit and prioritize them. When my husband and I first started dating, we each made a list of the places in the world we wanted to see and then ranked them using a scale of 1-10 based on how badly we wanted to see each place. Next, we combined our lists and scores for each place so that any places with a score of 20 were the very first places on our “to-see list”. It’s been so much fun over the years to make progress on the list and also add new places to it.

3) Make travel a line item in your annual household budget. If you only plan to travel when there is a little leftover money, you’re not going to do much traveling. You must make travel a priority in the budget, too. Maybe you need to spend a little less on clothes, or get a used car instead of a new one. Whatever the case might be, make room for travel in your budget – it will be worth the sacrifice! The memories you will make and the experiences that will shape you as a person are a very wise investment in yourself.

4) Invest some time researching travel ideas and deals. An exercise in this activity while forgoing that extra hour of TV at night will go a long way in improving your life and making travel happen for you!