The Ultimate Guide to Travel Alone and Love It

The majority of our readers are either Millennials or 50+. In both cases traveling solo, they are living through life stages that involve making choices. They tend to be more independent than those in their middle adult years and less central to meeting the needs of others. This puts them in a position to truly explore who they are and make decisions about who they want to be.

One of the best ways to explore all your potential strengths, weaknesses, and options in life is to travel alone.

While this site has over 1,000 articles on the details of how to travel solo, here, in one place is the ultimate guide for those who want to travel alone and love it.

Make Life Better: Travel Alone

When you travel alone, you travel on your terms. You get to do what you want when you want. You can connect with people if you wish or avoid them completely if you want. Those are the obvious benefits for going solo as a traveler.

But there are so many benefits of solo travel that affect your whole life. The experience encourages you to stretch and grow as a person. Here’s how.

You gain confidence. When was the last time you were responsible for everything for more than a few days? Take on full responsibility for a week or more in an unfamiliar destination and you cannot help but gain confidence.

You learn problem-solving skills. At home, we deal with problems based on previous experience because we are in our own milieu. Travel solo to a foreign destination and you are challenged to problem solve in a new way. You have to start with what you absolutely know. This is called first principles analysis. Watch here for how Elon Musk describes this type of problem solving.

You become a better global citizen. There is no better way to become a conscientious global citizen than to travel the world and see how life works elsewhere. You’ll gain a new appreciation for different value systems, economic challenges, and political roadblocks. You’ll bring home valuable language, ideas, and understandings that you can share.

Your compassionate side grows. The mere fact that you can afford to travel means that you are privileged. Living in a privileged bubble automatically limits understanding of others outside the bubble and constricts compassion. As you travel, you’ll understand other people’s positions and perspectives better and gain compassion.

You learn to take smart risks. Risk-taking can be good and it can be bad. Traveling solo, you will take the occasional risk but it will/should be calculated. As you do so, you develop your confidence to take the occasional risk and your ability to take one safely.

You are seen differently by friends and colleagues. There’s nothing like traveling solo to cause people to look at you as adventurous, capable, independent, knowledgeable, and so much more.

You understand yourself better. Strengths, weaknesses, interests, passions: these all become clear as you travel alone.

You become a more interesting prospective employee. There are so many ways that this works. Here are two. Combine your ability to travel independently with past employment experience as a team player and you become a person who can play on a team or be a leader. The problem solving that you need to do as a solo traveler can be very valuable to an employer.

Your independent experience opens entrepreneurial opportunities. Side hustles, freelance work, and small businesses are all started by people who are confident in their ability to act independently.

You’ll learn to depend on yourself rather than others. Community is very important but, sometimes, our community, family, and friends fail us or they really need us to step up. They need us to be strong. It is critical in life that we can depend on ourselves for what we need.

Your palate will expand. It is such joy to discover different foods as we travel. It makes us more experimental eaters when at home.

You learn that being lost is just the beginning of something new. Getting a bit lost as you travel solo is not a serious problem. In fact, there are occasions when I do so intentionally (safely) and often discover surprising aspects of my destination. Getting lost can also be one of those confidence builders as you navigate your way back home.

Minimalism will become more natural. Traveling solo, you have to carry everything. I only own a carry-on bag. Packing as little as possible and living with those limitations for a few weeks truly shows you the potential of minimalism.

You become more flexible. Not everything on a trip will go according to plan. When this happens, you, alone, must come up with the flexible solution.

You learn to stay calm in difficult situations. Losing your cool gains you nothing when trying to address a problem. When you travel with a friend, sometimes it’s one or the other of you that will stay calm and deal with the difficult situation. Travel alone, and you’re the one to stay calm every time.

You discover how to make what you want happen. As you take control of your trip you are also taking control of life. You make things happen on the road and you can make things happen at home.

You learn to trust your gut. This is one of the most basic lessons that comes from solo travel. Without anyone else involved in decision-making, with all safety up to you, you learn to trust your gut.

You become more decisive. Whether it’s problem solving or making things happen, when you’re alone you have to come up with a decision. It’s great practice for everyday life.

You learn patience. You especially learn to be patient with yourself. When you land in a new place it can take time to figure it out and get comfortable. The more often this happens, the more you realize you have to be patient with yourself.

You become a more interesting person. All of this adds up to you becoming a more interesting person. How can you not be after all the experience you have as a solo traveler?