Do you find yourself doing things while travelling that are totally not you? Do you find yourself peer pressured into things that you rather not do? Or is it hard to stick to budget constraint, or your ideal diet?
Sticking to your values can be difficult while traveling. You are in this new environment and have plenty of opportunities to be a different you. Usually no one knows you abroad and you can redefine yourself.
Once I met a German volunteer in Spain who told me that his family said that he should not return home if he hasn’t seen the most important sights of the island. I was surprised and smiling at this statement. If my family would have told me that I would have responded with, “you never want to see me again?”
Make sure you know for which reason you travel and for whom. Do you travel for society, your Instagram feed, your blog or your family? Or for yourself?
And I’m not saying that this guy traveled for his family. Maybe this statement didn’t bother him at all. We are all individuals. I’m also not saying that you it’s wrong to check out attraction A because your best friend was talking about it for ages. Just set clear boundaries and priorities. What are doing for yourself vs. what do you do to be seen, validate or excepted?
What are values?
Values are personal ethics/guidelines that help you to make decisions, build relationships, and solve problems. Values develop during childhood, but can change throughout your life. Parents, society, culture can influence your values.
Make sure you know your core values. Studies have shown living in alignment with your values contributes to your well-being. Take some time to discover what’s important to you. You can even do some online assessment if you are unsure. Knowing your values can help you to understand yourself better and others, knowing that not everyone has the same values.
In times of social media, I believe it is difficult to not get influenced by others’ opinion and values. Especially young teenager can be easily influenced. Therefore, it is more than ever important to check in with yourself to see what’s essential to you.
Example of values while traveling
When it comes to travel, values are indeed very important. Especially while traveling with someone else. Some travellers love to be flexible. They go with the flow; they wake up and have no plan for the day or whatsoever. And they are fine with it. While others have a strict itinerary with all accommodations booked and sights to visit.
For some travellers, sustainability is a very important value. For those, it might be difficult to travel with someone who doesn’t care about sustainability.
Reliability and punctuality are another value that might even change its meaning within cultures. Make sure you are to consider that before choosing travel buddies.
For example, when the news about Amazon’s poor treatment of employees went around the world, I stopped buying things from Amazon because it doesn’t align with my values.
Another example from my exchange semester in Mexico. The exchange students would often go to a club that had parties specifically for exchange students. I researched the club and found a critical review that the club was racist for not letting dark-skinned people in. I spoke to a friend who confirmed this and also told me that it was getting better. A few days later, however, the criticism had disappeared. I’m not sure if the management has changed. But I didn’t visit the club when I was in Mexico. Maybe also because I wasn’t in a clubbing mood. To be honest, I felt a little old haha, let’s say wiser.
Tolerance for all types of values and cultures
Once I saw a video of a travel blogger. She attended a party at foreign country. Of course there was food, and she was presented with all kinds of dishes, including meat meals. She was at her beginning of becoming vegetarian or doing a challenge of being a vegetarian for a while. However, her host tried to convince her to eat everything. Which I found shocking.
The host religion didn’t include alcohol and their values were also to not drink alcohol and travel blogger accepted that. But her value was not accepted.
That was shocking to me and triggered me to write this blog post.
Because no one should convince you to loosen your values a bit for one evening. Those are your values. If they do not harm anyone, then no one has the right to tell you that you should forget your values.
Communicate boundaries and say no
Boundaries are very important. If you don’t set your boundaries, you could overdue you. Imagine you had a busy day sightseeing in Istanbul and not you look forward to eat your take away dinner at your hostel. Read your book and have a shower before calling it a night. However, at the hostel you meet fellow travellers who invite you for a party night. You don’t really feel like going. But your travel buddy wants to go and convince you to join him/her.
In case you join him/her, you will sleep in the next day and miss the opportunity for a free city tour which you where looking forward to. You feel tired and maybe hung over the next day. Set clear boundaries.
Especially in times where you might hear phrases like “come on, don’t be boring” “it will be fun I promise” “you always (do this or that)” “let’s have fun for once”.
In addition, if you are someone who’s trained to be “nice” all the time, and you haven’t learned to set clear boundaries. Or even to check your emotional state in order to recognize your well-being and the need to set boundaries. Unfortunately, we do not learn this in school.
Don’t sell yourself too short!
But how can you actually stick to your values while traveling
- Have a paper with your values in your wallet or a screen saver on your phone
- Be tolerant and ask others to be the same
- Communicate clearly
- Stay strong sticking to your values – if you don’t stick to your values, it is easy for others to come along and influence your values or you are getting pressure and let society influence your values
- Journal, what does it look like living in accordance with your values? How do you respond in certain situations and identify what’s a non-negotiable is for you?
- Make decision based on your values
The author of the blog
Lisi is an adventurous, mostly solo traveler from Austria. She likes to travel slowly, discover underrated countries/regions, and of course, learn about cultures. She has been traveling the world and creating travel content since 2016. With a degree in tourism management and a passion for travel and cultures, she wants to tell stories that inspire her readers and help them travel more consciously.
