We’ve all heard the platitude about travel “broadening” your life; once you’ve experienced a different culture — even if it’s just one state or one town over! — you’ve expanded your perspective and adjusted your expectations of what “the world” is all about. Whether it’s a destination where you’ll be pampered or one where you’ll rough it like a wilderness survivor, perhaps the best benefit of travel is an inner paradigm shift, and most of the time for the better. At Toscana of Desert Ridge, you can experience this shift of your daily reality. A vacation in Arizona can be a breathtaking and life changing experience, whether it happens on the edges of the Grand Canyon, or in your day to day in our beautiful Condo community. Here are a few aspects of welcome changes to which frequent travelers attest that even you can experience on your next vacation.

1. It Can Make You Braver.

Just packing a bag and planning an itinerary is often an act of courage: you’re volunteering to go to a place where you may not know the language, may not tolerate the food, or may be thrown into situations far beyond your control. If you confront this kind of change in your career, you consider overcoming it a feather in your cap. The same idea applies to your travel experiences!

Some folks deliberately test their comfort zones — they get on airplanes despite fear of flying, they ride rapids despite being only moderate swimmers, or they walk trails in deep woods when they’re normally challenged by the directions in a mall parking lot. If you’re one of these people, congratulations! Once you’ve taken on these challenges and conquered them, you’ll feel a boost in your self-esteem and confidence, and both of those are good things to draw from any experience.

2. It Can Relax You. Really.

If you’re striving for the “perfect vacation experience, you can find it when you begin to let go of the life that you live day to day. Breaking this routine is exactly why a vacation is so needed. Your vacation may not go as perfectly as you planed, but that is all part of the adventure.

When you go on your next vacation, don’t be afraid to spend a little time doing nothing. In our busy day to day, it’s hard to not be striving for some productivity. Often times however, the most important task that you do today is giving your body the serenity that it’s been missing. Take time on your vacation to get pampered, or go to a spa. Travel gives you the motivation to do so.

3. It Can Reverse Your Limitations.

Besides increasing the things you feel able to cope with, and teaching you how to relax when things go wrong, travel often empowers people to become larger, better versions of themselves — or “try on” new approaches to life without worrying about whether someone will object or try to “box them in” again.

A lifelong introvert, thrown into a situation full of strangers, will often find herself making friends of other travelers without the usual painful shyness: they’re all in the same boat, and if they get to know each other, they’ll have allies in alien territory! Likewise, a lively extrovert soon discovers that, in a new place, a little quiet observation can go a long way. These changes, even when exercised short-term, can often transform a person’s view of him- or herself forever.

4. It Can Remind You What “Awe” Feels Like.

Once we reach adulthood, many of us mourn our seeming inability to see life with the “eyes of a child.” Traveling, however, can reopen those eyes in ways that can make you feel reborn. Glimpsing wonders of the world you’ve only dreamed of seeing before is a humbling experience — one that imprints itself upon your memory and opens doors of perception and appreciation you may have thought shut tight.

Gazing down the depths of the Grand Canyon, seeing the infinite variety of color in the Painted Desert, or watching the billowing mist off Niagara Falls from the Maid of the Mist is an experience that can’t be truly lived except being right there, present at the site — and present in the moment. The impact of seeing this great, wide, wonderful world in all its splendor can reopen your childlike eyes, if you’re paying close attention. And vacations, at their best, teach you to do just that.

Getting Away…to Come Truly Home

These are just the beginnings of what travel can do to improve your life. Refreshment, revitalization, renewal, and reawakening are all part of a well-lived traveler’s life. They will help you come back with new eyes, more at home in your own skin and more appreciative of the larger world around you. Travel can do all that, and more — so don’t hesitate to do it as often as you can!

Toscana of Desert Ridge is a beautiful Condo Community located in the heart of Scottsdale, Arizona. We offer Condo’s to rent and to buy, so whether you desire to visit Arizona or make it your home, we welcome you with open arms!