5 Things I Learned After Visiting 50 Countries

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I am freakin' rich. Boom.

Well, in terms of finances, I am not.

But I'm sure you heard the cliché: travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.

And since I have visited 50+ countries despite my age of 28, I consider myself a wealthy person with massive experiences, lessons and connections gained through traveling.

This is not to brag. But to share my insight with you through 5 things I learned these past years traveling through four continents.

And how those trips made me a creative and mindful traveler.

Travel Gives You New Perspectives On Life

Some countries I visited were lower- or middle-income countries, such as India, Tanzania, or Zambia.

I experienced wildly different life conditions from what we are used to in Western culture.

Roaming through the bazaar on the narrow and dirty streets of Old Delhi, I saw some people selling parts of an unrecognizable animal in paint buckets. Some others were lying on the dirty, muddy ground playing with their phones.

While the beach in Zanzibar is pure joy and relaxation, with many Western people enjoying the dreamlike view, the scenery just a few hundred meters away is entirely different.

Children were playing in the dirt with empty cardboard boxes. The only supermarket in that little village was almost empty, and people stared at me while I tried to withdraw cash from the ATM.

The kindness of people in all these places was something in common, which got me even more. Despite their living conditions, they smile and welcome you with genuine warmth and hospitality. As some told me, their spirit does not depend on what they physically have.

All of these experiences got me to think about my living conditions. While I always knew how certain people in different parts of this planet could live so differently from me, seeing that first-hand changes how you perceive your life.

We live our fast-paced life but can easily forget to practice gratitude for what we have.

Visit places with vastly different living conditions than yours, and you will see things from a different perspective. Seeing happy people with much less than what you have will change the way you think about our materialistic world.

You Don't Need A Lot Of Money To Travel

In my early 20s, since I didn't have much money to travel, I had to seek creative options to afford to visit more places.

The scarcity of money and the deep desire to travel make you creative. I spent a lot of time researching options to buy cheap flights and mispriced flight tickets.

Eventually, this grew into valuable knowledge for me. I managed to fly from Budapest to London for only €0.50 with a day of layover in Berlin. Or, I managed to travel from Prague to New York for €145. Round-trip.

My creative side also found that the European Union funds many youth training. I applied to many and got accepted to a few. But I got to visit Brussels or explore Armenia - a country on my bucket list.

Starting a hobby travel website with fellow students also enabled me to travel. We put a lot of work into the site with no money but to grow it to a level where we can get invited to press trips - a great motivation for us.

This work eventually paid off as I could visit some European countries through the invitation of airlines to also attend their press events.

Okay, you might not be a student or have a travel site. And you don't particularly need it.

As I mentioned above, the scarcity of money and the deep desire to travel make you creative.

Having a small budget to travel should not stop you from exploring our world.

No matter which continent you live on, there are many options for cheap means of transportation. Despite the current economic environment, there are still affordable flight tickets.

Traveling by train is often an even better option. It's not only more environmentally conscious but can also be much more comfortable. Not to mention the scenery you can see while traveling through countries.

The takeaway of this section: embrace your desire to travel more.

If you have a comfortable financial situation, you have a great advantage.

If you have little money to dedicate to traveling, be creative. There are always cheap transportation and cheap accommodation - or even free, like Couchsurfing.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

Wherever You Go, There You Shall Be

Imagine that you are at the Eiffel Tower. You see shitloads of people around you, trying to get a few hundred shots of the tower - including dozens of selfies.

Then, fueled with colossal anxiety, they try to immediately post the best shot on Instagram so their followers can be how freakin' happy they are.

Is it familiar?

Are you also doing that?

Well, I certainly did it many times.

But traveling should be different. It takes away the essence of exploration and experience of other cultures.

As we spend a lot of time and effort taking photos all the time we travel, we block ourselves from enjoying the "deep time" during those trips.

It is good to take some photos and videos to capture moments and share them with loved ones. I do that too.

But it should not shift the focus away from that particular moment you can live through because that moment is not coming back. You won't live through that again, just the memory of it.

I also made this mistake for a while - shooting hundreds of photos and posting them immediately to Instagram. I wanted to show off.

But for a while, I prefer mindful travel. To deepen your time during a trip and focus on the exact moment and what's around you.

Sit down at the next possible spot during your travel and do a sort of meditation. Look around and observe the surrounding. Listen to the voice of the people, the sound of nature. Be mindful of the moment you are living through.

Travel Won't Cure The Heaviness Of Your Mind

In July 2021, I went on a two-week holiday with my friends. Before the vacation, I felt immensely burnt out from my job and wanted to escape to recharge.

Needless to say, coming back to reality after the trip was even worse than before. At first, I didn't understand what had happened.

"I spent two weeks of relaxation, fun and sunshine, so why the hell do I feel worse than before I left?!" - I asked myself.

It took some time to comprehend that I had the wrong expectation from that travel.

A trip itself might be an escape from the daily but not a permanent solution to those.

Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, explained this perfectly in his letters to Lucilius:

I had mental issues due to my burnout and other inner struggles. But there is no escape in the physical sphere from the mental battles you have.

You can escape to somewhere a few thousand kilometers away from your everyday life, but you still carry your problems in your mind.

People tend to use travel as an escape from their miserable life.

They use their vacation weeks every year to travel somewhere nice and fancy. They try to convince themselves that their life is fantastic and their everyday misery is worth it. They share it all with the people scrolling through their Instagram content.

But this is all a big fuckin' lie.

Those few weeks of our vacation should not be an escape from reality and pain. Because if your everyday life takes a lot out of you, you will never truly recharge on your vacations.

Instead, you need to start the tough work on the mental challenges that make you escape.

Travel shall not be a temporary painkiller. It won't cure the mind.

You Learn And Get To Know Yourself More Through Traveling

Travel is indeed not a cure for the mind, but it significantly builds your mental, intellectual and emotional wealth.

Travel gives you new impulses that enable you to open your eyes even more and learn from different cultures for your benefit.

Going through unpredicted challenges on your trips makes you stronger and wiser.

Throughout all my travels, I managed to get to such situations - no matter how much experience I already had.

Once, upon landing in Tanzania for a business trip, I only had enough cash for a tourist visa but failed to think quickly and request that one. The business visa was more expensive, but the closest ATM was already after passport control.

It took me a couple of hours to get escorted by a border patrol to the ATM in the country, get the cash and receive the visa. Not to mention that first they issued with the details of a complete stranger and I had to return to the airport to fix that. All of this while being alone at the age of 24.

This misery taught me to be more careful and proactive upon entering a country on a different continent, far from home, especially traveling alone.

Experiencing different cultures also means that you exit the bubble you live in. No matter which country you visit, people and their way of living can give you a lot of value you can implement in your everyday life.

Whenever I go to Greece, I come to such peace no other country can give me. Despite the economic challenges the country and its people face, the positive mindset of the Greeks is something to learn from.

When I had issues with my card and had no cash, the lovely waitress told me one thing: "Don't worry, be happy. You will come back tomorrow and pay then".

Going back the next day to pay, I asked the lady why she was not worried I couldn't pay the day before. She said:

"Would it be better for us to worry about the thing we cannot control? That would make me anxious. But I don't like anxiety. I like peace and sunshine."

She was a hidden Stoic philosopher working in a little taverna.

What should you take away from this and the previous example?

While travel is not a cure for your mind's issues, it certainly gives you an inner journey through all your experiences in a different culture.

I also encourage you to do solo travels sometimes. While it's a lot of joy to travel with friends and loved ones, going on trips alone gives you a whole different angle of experiences and inner journey with yourself.

No matter where and with whom you travel, you will gain more wealth than you imagine. New perspectives, new thoughts and new memories that will last for a lifetime.

So the next time you crave a new "toy" that would replace stuff you already have and work well, ask yourself:

What new experience could I afford with the money I wanna spend on that "toy"?

You will only know the clear answer if you go and travel!

Máté - The Mindful Guerilla

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• Lawrence Yeo wrote an amazing piece on how travel will not cure your mind - a piece that inspired me.

• Akta is one of my new favorite creators. She wrote her first newsletter issue on why we need to remember things that are truly important in life. Worth a read!

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• Exec Sum - A daily newsletter on the major stories from the financial world. It's fun, entertaining, and informative. Better than those finance outlets with shitloads of ads.

• Snail Mail by Slow Growth - a weekly newsletter delivered every Monday by Matt D'Avella's team with great motivational content on productivity. It's not the usual productivity bullshit that you find everywhere else.

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