Life can be hard sometimes. The news is full of bad things in the world. Your job can be repetitive, boring and frustrating. And your family can wear on your last nerve.

Life can be stressful. In an American study, almost half of all adults claimed they had some sort of stress in their lives – and that number is up dramatically from last year.

What are you going to do about it? Go to a spa? Book a massage? Soak in a lavender-scented tub? These are just temporary solutions for a problem which is much deeper than what a soak can help with.

You need to make a drastic change, and maybe travel is just the thing you need. Travel, even just on small trips, can make all the difference to your mood, your wellbeing, your health and your general attitude toward everything else in your life.

Travel Strengthens Relationships

If you’re not travelling alone, a holiday can be quite rewarding. Shared experiences bring people together, and it’s a great way to strengthen the relationship with your family and friends. Your children get to have time with their parents, and you get to have time with your children.

If you’re spending time with your significant other on a trip, you can renew those feelings of romance and passion that daily life can steal from you over time. With the benefit of extended time together, something that can be nearly impossible to find at home, you can share and dream, laugh and reminisce, and generally soak up each other’s presence. You also get to have fun, something that infinitely renews and restores a damaged relationship.

Plus, when you travel, you become more open to meeting new people and becoming an engaging person yourself. You’ll come back from your holiday feeling better and therefore more able to connect with people around you. It’s an instant boost to your mood that you can enjoy for weeks after the travel is finished.

Bonus tip: book a private villa that enables you to spend more time all together rather than spending time apart in small hotel rooms spread over many floors. A private residence allows everyone to enjoy meals together, swim together and have fun in their own space.

Practice Gratitude with Travel

Part of the problem with a grumpy mood can be your outlook on life. You get disheartened and disillusioned by the events happening around you. You forget to slow down and be thankful for what you have.

This is where travel can “reset” the mood and get you back into a mode of thankfulness. Have you ever noticed how quickly you appreciate a glass of water after spending a long day in the sun? That’s what travel can be like at times. It’s fun to enjoy another culture, see new sights and experience new foods. But, before long, you miss the comforts of home, the familiar coffee mug you use, and even the shows on the telly.

When you’re on holiday, you can take the time to reflect on your own life and the freedoms you have that allow you to travel in the first place. Not everybody has the luxury of travelling, and it’s a rarity that didn’t exist over 200 years ago for the average person. Now, with the click of a mouse and a few hundred quid, you can be halfway around the world in 24 hours from now. How cool is that?

Acknowledging your privilege is a major mood booster, and one that people report significantly improves their lives after they return from a trip.

Travel Affects Your Personality

Although many people don’t expect it, travel can really change your personality. Around the 1700s, if you were a travelled person, you were revered as much as someone who attends college today. It’s the same life-changing experience today, but we tend to forget it.

When you’re on holiday, you get affected by a number of different events. You get more sleep, because you don’t need an alarm clock. You get to have different experiences, making you more aware of your surroundings. You get a break from the stresses of your job and your home. You can spend extended periods of time on fun activities. All these experiences transform who you are.

People who travel come back from their holidays feeling more empathetic, more agreeable, and more carefree and easy-going. They come across as warm, giving and inviting. People respond more openly and feel more attracted to that sort of personality. It’s a wonderful side benefit of an already great experience.

The Best Part is the Planning

Do you know what the best experience of having a holiday is? It’s not the beach time, the fun nights out, the incredible sights you see. Most people report that they were happiest when they were planning their holiday. This feeling goes beyond hoping and dreaming.

That feeling of an actual holiday, booking plane tickets, arranging stunning accommodation and planning exciting activities brings so much joy to people. That anticipation creates a mood swing that far outweighs the actual holiday itself.

Oh, don’t worry. The holiday will be fun, but the planning itself can be enough for some people to get out of their funk and feel brighter about their lives.

A word of advice: don’t plan too much. Life gets in the way, and you can’t know everything about where you land before you arrive. Sometimes, it’s better to make a few plans for the big things, and figure the rest out along the way. As a seasoned traveller, I can say this has led to incredible experiences and memories that far outweigh anything I could have worked on sitting at home on my laptop.

Travel: The Bad Mood Buster

If you feel life is getting you down, if it feels as though you’re smiling less and less, maybe it’s time to pull out the calendar and plan your next holiday. Even if it’s just a few days away from your normal life, the lasting effects on your mood will be felt for weeks and months to come.