Travelling on it’s own is a pleasure taking experience and can become a way to procrastinate other emotions or skills. But it doesn’t take much to enrich it to become a fulfilling experience as well. It’s the little but hard things you do that enhance your skills which makes the difference.

Currently I’m travelling in a new country, and in just the first 24 hours, I honed into skills I had build up over previous travels. Practicing these skills led me to some small moments that I may forget in a few weeks but make travelling in the present moment so much more worthwhile.

Creating quick connections to multiple groups

One thing when travelling is to get rid of your fear of awkwardness and potential embarrassment. Mostly because those negative things never materialise and because you have limited time, sometimes just minutes to connect with people. Connecting with people as part of communication is one of the most important skills in life. It helps you in everything and yet most people completely disregard this skill once they start work.

Think about it, we go from meeting so many new people at school, at university, and maybe once you start a job and then nothing. Most people’s life become so stagnant, just talking to new faces becomes a rare occurrence.

Travelling, especially in hostels, gives you the opportunity to talk to tens if not hundreds of new people in days. If practice makes perfect, this is the perfect time to practice hard.

Yet I see many people who let their shyness, introversion or just fear of awkwardness get in the way of that. Even if your natural preference is to be introverted, there is no reason to miss out on opportunities to practice skills that are outside of your comfort zone. Especially since, even if you “mess up”, no one will remember or care far away from home.

Here are a few examples from the last 24 hours that are small distinctions but have already made this trip so much better:

• Wearing an university t-shirt or similar gives people an easy ice breaker to talk to you. Even though I initiated a conversation with 2 British girls, it was smooth sailing once they mentioned that they studied in the city next to where I did.
• Overhearing Spanish speaking group in a guided tour, I used the opportunity to practice my Spanish with them and gave me an easy intro – “Vivo gran parte del año en españa!”
• Going to a restaurant and seeing 2 guys from the tour and joining them for dinner. Turns out, one of them had very similar family experience with immigrating early on in life and works in a field that indirectly links to my skills.
• Pushing myself to talk to the taxi driver who did not speak English but somehow spoke Serbian and had Serbian music on his phone as he loves traditional pop folk music. If only he had heard Bulgarian pop-folk, he would have definitely been speaking Bulgarian instead!
• Getting a haircut in the country you are travelling to. Barbers and hairdressers are natural conversationalists, their day becomes dull without a little gossip, sport or whatever. There is nothing funnier than trying to find common things to speak about with someone who hardly speaks your language. It’s easy to stay quiet and just get the haircut done with, but that’s a wasted opportunity.
• Overhearing an English speaking group in another restaurant, taking a few minutes to decide and finally asked if I can join them. Turns out they had all met recently, with 2 of them riding motorbikes around Europe together for a few days. The thoughts that pop in to your head telling you not to do something because of some irritational fear? Ignore them. The worst thing that would have happened is for them to say no. Because I asked, I got good travel tips and will probably catch up with one of them at a later destination.

All of the above are small and easy things you can do to enhance travelling. Especially if you are travelling with someone else, where it becomes easier to “ignore” others while travelling, you should take the opportunity to connect with as many people as possible.

You will be surprised how quickly people can share deep thoughts, feelings, and ideas when there is a time limit to a conversation, when the risk of people’s normal circle finding out is next to nothing. When you get the hang of how easy this is, you can then apply it in your normal life too.

Applying travelling skills to work and relationships

The ability to connect quickly with people is essential in any career but especially sales, entrepreneurship, and management. And even if you do a more technical or back-end job, having strong communication skills will give you more negotiation power when it comes to promotions and salaries.

Friendships are different now than they were anytime before in human history. Take back just 100 years and the majority of your friends would have been from a relatively small community that didn’t change much. Now? You have some core friends that you see once in a while, but have a social necessity to meet and click with new people all the time.

Especially if you move to live in new places often. To avoid boredom and lack of social interactions, you must be able to speed up the connection making phase. In reality, it doesn’t take long to build a solid connection with people whose company you enjoy, but many people lack the experience on how to do it. They are used to it taking time purely from spending long periods with the same people. And yet, all it takes is asking a few more daring questions and also willing to be vulnerable to open yourself quicker to people. With a little calibration, you can quickly filter our people that are compatible so that you always have a strong social group, no matter how often you move or your location.