Holidays out of your comfort zone(안락지대)

 

It's tempting to default to the same vacation spot each year: a familiar beach town, your favorite city, that resort your family has always loved. We often choose to spend our hard-earned dollars on comfort, predictability, and relaxation - and there are benefits to doing so. But travel can also be an opportunity for personal growth. According to research, holidays that push you out of your comfort zone, expose you to uncertainty, and promote exploration and learning, yield three importnat benefits:

1. Spending time in unfamiliar places helps you become tolerant (and even accepting) of your own discomfort and more confident in your ability to navigate ambiguous situations. This increases your emotional agility; instead of reacting immediately to emotions, you learn to observe those that arise, carefully collect information to understand the possible causes, then intentionally decide how to manage them.
2. Empathy also increases when your travels bring you into new territory. You develop a greater tolerance and trust of strangers, which can alter  your attitudes toward strangers, colleagues, and friends back home. You may become more appreciative of people who have different knowledge, philosophies, and skills than you.
3. The third benefit of beyond-the-usual vacations is creativity. Greater exposure to other cultures through traveling, having international friendships, studying languages, and consuming new music and food, is likned to unconventional problem solving.

Harvard Business Review,

Adapted from "The Mental Benefits of Vacationing Somehwere New," by Todd B. Kashdan.