You don’t know who you are until you understand the decisions that you make when no one’s looking at you. When you solo travel, it’s you and you. I wouldn’t consider myself a people pleaser, but I realized that in the past, I often found myself surprisingly laid back in group dynamics simply because of how much I didn’t want the responsibility of making a bad decision.
Let me tell you, nothing builds character like privately grappling with the embarrassment of a poor decision. One second, you’re in a taxi at 4am with your phone on 2% in a foreign country attempting to make it back home…and the next you’re back at your Airbnb thinking about how you thought that risky behavior was cute in the moment, but could have been a tragedy. You wash your face, swallow the anxiety of what could have been, and go to bed, knowing you were the only one in danger and no one is there to call you stupid. You sleep in peace, but your mindset shifts.
The Number One Reason Why Solo Travel Changes How You Think
It forces you to make decisions because there’s no option to divert the authority of decision to someone else. You call the shots and you handle the consequences. Honestly, if you’re someone who suffers from decision fatigue, prepare yourself. I personally look forward to it. This is how I’ve been able to learn what my preferences actually are and how to say yes/no.
In solo travel, you can’t lean on saying “Sure, whatever you want.” or “What are you feeling for?” or my favorite: “I’m down for whatever.” To be able to have a good experience, you have to outgrow decision fatigue.
Essentially, this change transforms how you travel. If there’s no one to make decisions for you, it makes you interrogate and learn your priorities. Are you eating somewhere because your travel partner/group picked it from TikTok? Or are you picking a local restaurant that you found on a walk that looks like a hole in the wall that might off put other vacationers, but that resonated with you?
It turns travel into an introspective learning game: what do I like, what are my preferences, what are my boundaries, what makes me feel good, what makes this feel like an intimate experience? You might learn that you’ve been living according to the preferences of others your entire life. Once you unlearn that, it’s hard to return back to group think behaviors.
The Second Reason
Building off the fact that you have to make all decisions, you have to trust and believe that you know the way. Transparently, building a strong intuition and sense of self belief is at the absolute core of success in life, period. Without it, you are never convinced that you’re grounded and walking the right path. The doubt lingering in your mind paralyzes you into stagnation. You don’t have time for that on a solo trip. It’s do or die.
Okay not really, but if you don’t trust yourself to drive at night, but your Airbnb is a drive away from the nearest restaurant, and there’s no Uber, then… are you going to starve? True scenario from my solo travels in Costa Rica. It was me, an unlit dirt road, and a fat bowl of rice and beans at the end of it. I did that. And so can you.
Assess the potential danger of a situation, make the necessary steps to protect yourself, and go. There’s only so much you can protect yourself from in life. The rest is in the hands of something higher than all of us.
The Last Reason
The confidence boost that arises from planning and executing a successful journey is absolutely unmatched. You booked the right flights, chose the perfect activities, planned the best outfits, picked the tastiest restaurants, everyone wants your itinerary, your photos went STUPID, and you finally started posting on TikTok like you said you would. Now your self esteem is through the roof, you start to believe that you can do things you previously never thought was possible, and your life and thinking process are forever altered. You are no longer the same person. You are evolved, and this is all because you craved travel and exploring on your own. You believed in yourself and went for it. No hesitation.
In summary y’all, honor what you want. In our regular lives, we engage in “group think” way too often. We make decisions to please, appease, or satisfy the people around us before we show up for ourselves. I know you’re tired of that. When you travel alone, you realize how much of a people pleaser you might be. Your own preferences and desires should be the priority, so stop putting others in your driver’s seat.
