Travel Alternatives While Grounded

When you want to get away, nothing’s worse than being grounded – let alone sequestered for health reasons. However, there is some encouraging news to help you accept any travel-related restrictions thwarting your immediate plans. According to Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, we travel with our minds, not our bodies.

In fact, our “remembering self” has a much bigger impact on who we are than our “experiencing self,” the fleeting part of our brain that gets to live through an adventure without ever revisiting it. For that, we depend on our “remembering self,” Kahneman says. When we accept that truth, a world of possibilities opens up to travel with our minds as much as our bodies. Therefore, when funds, time, energy levels, or travel restrictions prevent you from “going places,” consider these practical travel alternatives.

Update Your Bucket List

Failing to plan is planning to fail. If we want to see and do things in life, we have to make a list. However, as interests change with age and experience, we often need to prioritize, add to, and/or remove things from our bucket lists that no longer apply. Whether you’re marking something as “completed” or not—which in itself feels empowering—redraft your bucket list or start anew if you’ve never done it before.

Plan Your Next Trip

Anticipating an adventure can be just as powerful as actually visiting a place, according to science. Moreover, you can’t look forward to something unless you plan for it. Even though you might not be able to select specific dates at the moment, you can start by creating your ideal itinerary with things you want to see and do in certain locations. Using satellite view and other online travel guides, explore your hit list with rich and exhaustive detail. Chart every square inch of them. Then bask in the waiting period until the means become available.

Live Vicariously

If we mostly travel with our minds, we can trick them sometimes without ever taking a step. Think adventure documentaries, travel guides, foreign cinema, or even international television and music. You could also ask a well-traveled friend or family member to share their greatest experiences and stories abroad. Alternatively, consider traveling with your stomach by cooking a foreign cuisine at home. In other words, mental road trips can be almost as rewarding as physical ones.

Disorient Yourself

Seeing or doing something you’ve never experienced is the easiest way to change your perspective. Consequently, you don’t have to leave your immediate surroundings to accomplish this. This could be accomplished through a day hike or an afternoon trip to a less familiar side of town. Also, consider visiting the most popular nearby tourist attractions. Depending on current restrictions on large gatherings and museum closures, this will vary by city. Nonetheless, you’ll never know unless you get out there and explore for yourself.

Learn a New Skill

There’s no doubt about it: foreign places challenge our worldview arguably faster and more unexpectedly than any other activity. However, you can achieve similar results from home. You could commit to learning a new language for your next planned trip that you can’t quite book yet. Additionally, enrolling in an online class (or with a local tutor) to learn something new is a fantastic option. For instance, creating art forces us to view the world from a different perspective. That’s precisely what all good travel should do.

Get Offline

Whatever you do, consider taking an extended break from digital news, social media, and pervasive connectivity. Often, a simple walk around the block or letting the sun hit your face can fill you with hope, relief, reassurance, and literal fresh air. Furthermore, we can’t fully appreciate fresh air if we’re too busy worrying about what’s happening elsewhere online. When we succumb to FOMO (“fear of missing out”), we ultimately miss out on the present moment.

Nothing can replace the act of physical travel to foreign places. Nevertheless, the mind is a powerful thing, capable of getting us at least halfway there until conditions allow for the full experience.