When we feel that we are bored, tired or life has become too monotonous, for many the main way to shake up is to change the situation by going on vacation. But the holidays are not just a break in work, an opportunity to have a drink at lunch and a lot of new photos. More and more scientific evidence suggests that travel helps us stimulate the brain and even become a better person. If you ever thought that after traveling you start to feel better, you were right. Read about how to travel correctly.
In many countries, an increasing proportion of workers refuse to take vacations, preferring to work non-stop. In the United States, 42% of company employees did not take a day off from their vacation, and only 15% spent 20 vacation days in a year. The reasons are clear: in the conditions of growing uncertainty and competition, people are afraid that if they do not demonstrate their dedication and desire to work non-stop to the management, then there will be someone who will still be ready for it. Russians have other problems: they don't go on vacation because there is no money for it.
Against this background, scientists began to investigate the question: what happens to the body if you do not rest. It turned out (naturally) that nothing good. For example, data from the famous Framingham experiment (the world's largest study of cardiovascular diseases, which has been going on for 70 years) showed that women who take a vacation once every 6 years or less face a double risk of heart attack or other fatal heart problems compared to those who rest twice a year. In principle, it is harmful to work a lot — giving 10-11 hours a day to a career, we increase the likelihood of encountering cardiovascular diseases, depression and other consequences for the body.
At the same time, evidence began to accumulate that a vacation in the form of a trip somewhere has the opposite effect. This is the case when what is fun and pleasant also brings benefits. In part, this effect of vacation can be explained by the rest itself and the reduction of stress levels, but not only.
The brain is like a jungle
According to Paul Nussbaum, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Pittsburgh, travel has its own, independent effect on the body. As a "restorative" activity for the brain, they can help delay the development of conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. "When you find yourself in a new, unusual or complex environment from the point of view of perception, your brain reacts accordingly," he explains.
Anything can be new: language, smells, climate, length of daylight, and so on. Getting into unusual conditions, the brain begins to grow more dendrites — processes of neurons that receive information from other neurons. The more branched the dendritic tree is, the more input impulses the neuron can receive, which means that the more information it can process. In other words, the brain becomes more powerful. "It's literally starting to look like a jungle," says Nassbaum.
According to the researcher, this goal — the growth of dendrites — is also served by other types of activity: a new hobby, sports, a trip to the Philharmonic hall or just lunch in a new place. But traveling is the perfect method. When we leave somewhere, we "throw" the brain into a new environment, a place with different rules of behavior, atypical visual stimuli, unfamiliar people, perhaps an unknown language and culture. All this forces the brain to actively process signals coming from outside, and this requires more effort than processing familiar information.
In this sense, the trip may not be either long (it also makes sense to go for a couple of days to a place where you haven't been before), or relaxed from start to finish. Even stress (if it is short-term) is beneficial — difficulties finding the right address, fear of missing the train, nervousness before the flight-these factors take us out of the routine and require attention, analysis and other mental resources.
Fresh ideas
If creativity is important for you in your work and life in general, traveling and changing the situation should become your friends. Writers and other creative people have been using this trick for a long time: traveling and moving from country to country brought inspiration to Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vladimir Nabokov and many others.
Now, the impact of trips on creativity can be considered scientifically confirmed. Here again, the novelty of the environment is to blame. "The experience of being in another country increases cognitive flexibility, depth of thought, the ability to put together an overall picture from details and see the connection between different categories of things," says Adam Galinsky, an American social psychologist known for his research on the nature of leadership and power.
Galinsky is the author of several works devoted to the connection between creativity in a broad sense and travel. One of them demonstrates that memories of a trip to another country help us find several solutions to one problem and allow us not to focus on one thing when we need to make a decision. Another shows how the experience of living abroad increases creativity, using the example of top managers of companies from the fashion industry: brands whose managers had such experience were able to create more interesting (according to experts) clothing collections.
However, according to the researcher's observations, it is not enough just to go somewhere to learn how to gush with fresh ideas. In fact, this requires at least a temporary immersion in an unfamiliar environment and adaptation to it. Interestingly, in his study of the fashion industry, people who lived in 1-3 other countries were more creative than those who had experience of living in more cultures. According to the scientist, this is due to the fact that with frequent changes of place of residence, a person does not have time to qualitatively immerse himself in a new society.
By the way, Galinsky noticed another feature in his works: if another country is too much different from your homeland, life in it does not give an impetus to creative abilities. Perhaps this is due to the fact that in a culture that is too alien, we feel too constrained and awkward, and it is already more difficult to adapt.
A new identity
According to existing studies, a small and short-term effect can be obtained, even if you do not go anywhere at all: a group of Australian scientists found that just thinking about staying in nature makes the mind clearer. In an experiment with 150 students, they found that after contemplating photos of greenery for 40 seconds, participants kept their concentration better and made fewer mistakes when performing a boring, but demanding attention task. This tells us how important it is to disconnect from a routine activity at least for a short time.
But, apparently, the longer the trip lasts somewhere, the greater the impact it can have. When a person gets into an unfamiliar culture and begins to communicate with people, his brain tries to adapt to changes as soon as possible. The neural connections involved in this process are strengthened, and in the future it becomes easier for a person to accept new experiences, find compromises and control their own emotions.
Understand yourself
Travel also brings other psychological dividends. Mary Helen Immordino-Young, a researcher at the Institute of Brain and Creativity at the University of Southern California (founded by the famous neuroscientist Antonio Damasio), argues that cross-cultural experience strengthens our understanding of ourselves. "To date, many publications in the field of psychology show that communicating with people from a different environment helps us in this," she says. "Falling out of your social comfort zone works in a similar way." According to Immordino-Yang, the more diverse the cross-cultural experience that we receive, the more clearly we see our own values and beliefs.
In short
In addition to external and surmountable factors, it is difficult to come up with a reason why it is not worth traveling. Switching from routine to rest has a positive effect on a person's physical and mental health.
Trips to new places allow our brain to "increase power", that is, they help it process information more efficiently. Thanks to this, a person better finds the relationship between different phenomena and finds non-obvious solutions.
Caution: A long journey can make you better. Those who have spent several months or more in another country become more open to new experiences, are able to negotiate and are emotionally stable.
And thanks to travel, you can become a more integral person: a collision with a foreign culture helps to realize your own values and beliefs.
How to travel correctly
The main advice that makes sense to remember is repeated by everyone and always: when you go to a new place, be sure to communicate with other people, try to understand local traditions, try the cuisine, and so on. Thanks to scientific publications of recent years, we understand why this is important: a collision with the unusual stimulates the brain, takes it out of the everyday state of "everything is clear here" and makes it work more actively.
The older we get, the more useful it is to give the mind such a charge: everything that falls into the category of "not as always" activates areas of the brain associated with learning, memory, creativity and critical thinking. Studies on mice have shown that novelty against the background of a familiar environment has a positive effect in Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative, neurological and psychiatric disorders, including Parkinson's disease, the consequences of brain injury and stroke. That's why older people are recommended to break the routine in all possible ways, from mastering a new hobby to wearing a watch on one hand, then on the other. Travel is the perfect way to escape from the usual scenery and give food to the mind.
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