Elevate your travel experience: make it feeling-forward
Have you ever experienced that nature smells sweeter, food tastes better, buildings seem more photo-worthy, and people-watching is far more engaging when you are travelling?
It’s not that these simple experiences are never “as good” at home, but rather foreign or different settings can heighten or deepen the way we process the moments as a travel experience. It’s largely psychological: our minds are primed by unfamiliar surroundings, stimulated by new challenges, and highlighted by emotions. Travel (and solo travel especially) puts us into a state where we notice more and feel more.
Notice More and Feel More in a Travel Experience
It makes sense. When I’m in a new or unfamiliar place, my brain is in high gear, working hard to soak it all in while also trying to accomplish the simple things that we usually do unconsciously in our regular routines. Things like being without all my ‘stuff’, getting my bearings, figuring out transportation, exploring a new grocery store, or even navigating laundry, all while translating a foreign language. This frenzy of new and exciting sounds, smells, language, tastes, and sights wakes up and re-wires our brains by firing connections between synapses to create or strengthen our neural pathways.
Positive feelings are amplified because travel also stimulates the brain’s reward system. This happens in a few ways.
Travel anticipation and being on an adventure releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter connected to joy and stress relief.
An active travel experience contributes a further surge of endorphins that boost our mood while being physically healthy.
Travel (even for solo travellers) invites social interactions which further contributes to the cascade of happy neurotransmitters including oxytocin - the love hormone!
Feelings in a Travel Experience
Feelings are the key to your most memorable travel moments. In his book The Art of Making Memories, Meik Wiking writes that feelings help memories to stick. Imagine feelings as one side of the velcro, experiences are the other side. Travel memories will stick (giving you longer positive feelings) when we pair up the feeling side of the velcro to an experience.
This “sticky” connection between feelings and travel suggests that we can also play a proactive role by seeking positive travel emotions in how we design our travel experiences. We can shape a trip with intentions about certain feelings making it easy for the travel experiences to become a “sticky” well-being boost. Travel Coaching teaches this human-centric approach by getting to the roots of why people travel and helping them use travel as a means for transformation, well-being, personal development, relationship development, or reaching specific goals.
During a recent Travel Bug Tonic group session, participants explored what feelings they were hoping for from an upcoming trip. Many admitted that naming travel feelings was new and felt like a tangible shift towards being more intentional. From this simple visioning activity, I sensed an immediate impact and felt a change of energy in the group. The idea of going to a place to feel something specific changed the approach to planning and anticipation.
How a Feeling Can Influence a Travel Experience
Each person shared 3 feelings that they were keen to foster in their upcoming travel adventures (both near and far.) Discovery, closely followed by connection, gratitude, and adventure were the feelings that emerged. It was “connection” that sparked a group conversation related to how people could visit a destination when a feeling of connection was part of why they wanted to travel.
Summary of the travel feelings identified by group participants.
Pre-trip awareness of the desire to feel connected might lead a traveller to:
Explore booking at a B&B or with a Homestay as a change up to hotels or self-catering apartments.
Make it a solo journey which ironically has been found to increase possibilities for connections.
Choose a contemporary immersive experience such as a sporting event, cultural festival or cooking class instead of, or in addition to, a city tour.
Eat at restaurants outside of the tourist neighbourhoods or buy food to cook yourself at a neighbourhood food market.
Buy artisan creations instead of “made overseas” souvenirs.
Take public transportation instead of renting a car or calling an Uber.
Learn and make an effort to use the language.
Visit off-season to see a place with fewer tourists.
Spend longer at a destination - staying long enough to see behind the gloss.
Select day tours that highlight local guides and ways to interact with people and culture.
Name and Seek A Travel Feeling
I often write about the research on the well-being power of wonder and awe, but many other emotions surface with travel. When wanderlust strikes, our hearts and brains are actively seeking to feel something!
10 examples of travel experience feelings
Rejuvenation as the warmth of the sun relaxes the body and thoughts of the past and future melt away.
Achievement when an enormous Fitbit number inadequately represents the distances travelled through the history of ancient cultures.
Feelings of being stuck-in-a-rut vanish when feelings of adventure drive your itinerary.
Ditching the roles that are carried at home, leaves a feeling of authenticity and the ability to be yourself - no strings attached!
Clarity around what matters, what interests you, what makes you joyful, and what you miss most (and feel grateful for) about home.
Courage and pride to do things even though you are scared or feel unsure.
Creativity inspires journalling, photography, painting, or sketching. You find yourself humming. You welcome a rush of new ideas in a foreign shower.
Freedom to choose, without compromise.
Discovery - because you didn’t know what you didn’t know…and welcome learning something new! This happens around each new corner, but also in every new conversation.
Reconnecting with the magical feeling of fun and playfulness - chase some waves, laugh with a local, skip down a pink-painted street.
There are so many more! Brene Brown has mapped 87 key emotions and experiences in her book Atlas of the Heart, while research out of Berkely names 27 categories of human emotion and feeling.
What about you?
What feelings have you attached to previous travels? What feelings would you like to experience on your next trip to help make those travel memories stick? And what might you consider doing differently to help influence a feeling-forward travel experience?
Comment below or on FB or Insta.
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Travel Vision Board Mini Guide and the Bold Action Guide to Transform your Bucket List to Travel Bliss are available to download here! (along with many more of my travel resources!)
