You know how people talk about “finding themselves” while they travel? What does that even mean? How does it work? And can anybody learn to find themself again?

We certainly believe so. Whether you’re soaking up the sun on the Andalusia Costa del Sol or swimming in the Mediterranean off Majorca, you’re spoiled for places to learn to find meaning in your life. A trip to Spain is the perfect way to find new life again, renew your passions, and find a new purpose. In other words, to find yourself you need to start in Spain.

Remove Outside Influences

As you travel to places like Lloret de Mar and Malaga, the first thing you’ll realize is that you’ve removed yourself from anything that’s familiar and comforting. When you get a taste of the Spanish culture, you’ll discover that you’re a long way from home. And that’s a good thing. When you remove yourself from all things that are familiar, you force yourself to re-examine everything.

Can’t get the same breakfast that you normally would? Have an experience trying out something new. Don’t know where to go for dinner? That’s ok because it forces you to explore something you may have never tried.

The first step in any self-discovery is to remove the old ways and old habits. You can’t find yourself if you aren’t looking. And being unfamiliar forces your eyes to look around.

Volunteer

Alongside the idea of being outside of your own experience, why not try volunteering for a new experience?

When you spend time serving others, you actually learn something about yourself. When you focus less on your own needs and more on the needs of those less fortunate than you, you get to find what really matters to you. You forget about your own troubles and worries, choosing to look past them and working on another issue.

This is a great way to find yourself, by letting go of the troubles and worries and stresses that you once thought mattered so much. Let your own anxieties fall away as you rediscover what it means to give back.

There are a number of organizations that you can volunteer with in Spain. You can teach English as a second language, help research marine life, or work with children and develop education systems to assist them.

Step outside of your experience and see the world through the eyes of someone else to discover who you are.

Learn a new method of doing something

When you are at home, you probably fall into some version of a routine. It could be that you always eat at the same time, have the same cup of tea, watch the same TV shows and go to bed to repeat your life all over again the exact same way.

When you travel to Spain, you’ll find that you’re forced into a new method of doing life. And the truth is that it doesn’t have to be that different. You could simply discover that dinner doesn’t have to be served at 6 PM on the dot. The Spanish culture has dinner served much later with a focus on spending more time at the table, socialising and savouring the experience. Chances are that in this whole new culture, you’ll find some new tradition, cultural habit, expression, or method of doing things differently to how you normally live your life.

Novelty forces you to engage your brain and step outside of your normal routines. This isn’t just about having some new experience. This actually changes your brain’s wiring. New experiences force your brain patterns to rewire themselves as you study it, contemplate it, and discover if you want to try it for yourself.

Face Your Fears

Find something that scares you every day and go do it.

That’s one of the most common ways to rediscover yourself as you travel through Spain. Find something that is outside your comfort zone and make the conscious effort to do that thing. It’s known that your comfort zone, while helping you to feel good, keeps you from being your most productive self. Studies tell us that comfort breeds unproductive actions.  Pushing outside of your boundaries shows you what you are truly capable of, figuring out where your REAL limits lay and not where you imagine them to be.

Also, when you face your fears, you develop a thicker skin. You create an ability to handle whatever comes your way. The more often you face your fears, the more capable you are of facing the next problem or issue. Instead of pretending that fear doesn’t exist or trying to avoid it, you can challenge yourself to face it, adapt yourself to fight it, or figure out ways around it.

Find New Appreciation

When you are on holiday, one of the greatest gifts you’ll give yourself is an appreciation of what you truly value. Would that be your stuff? would it be your job? Or would it be something different, like the family you have or the creativity you possess?

And the thing about finding new value is you don’t really know that you have found it until well after the holiday is done. Let’s say that you travel here, you book yourself a private villa so you can live like a local, you engage in a whole bunch of new experiences, and you go home thinking you had a fun holiday.

But was that all you experienced? Maybe you really appreciated the alone time you got while you were on holiday, and you seek out that alone time again when you’ve returned. Maybe you find that you appreciate your little home better when you’ve been away from it for a while. Maybe you’d like to simply appreciate the friends you have and the time you get to spend with them. You can’t put a price tag on appreciation. You can’t point to it, photograph it, or capture it in your suitcase, but I promise that you’ll come home with a whole bunch of appreciation that you never intended to bring back.

Finding yourself doesn’t have to be a long, complicated journey that takes years. You can find yourself in places like Spain to truly figure out who you are, what you love, and what you want your life to be like. Go ahead. Take a step out of your normal routine and discover once again who you are meant to be.