At age eighteen, I took a deep breath, waved my parents goodbye and stepped onto a one-way flight from Australia to Germany for three months of travel.

It would turn out to be the beginning of a long and enduring romance with adventure and travel that today, almost ten years later, shows no sign of slowing down.

Over the last decade, I’ve been all over the world, learning about culture, language, history and even picking up a few survival skills – but the thing I’m most grateful for are the life lessons I’ve learnt.

These lessons have helped me not only in my travels, but also in my career, friendships and personal life. Here’s the top five things that travel has taught me.

Five Life Lessons from Ten Years of Travel

#5: We are all different – and that’s okay.

One of the lessons that I am most grateful for is learning to embrace and celebrate difference.

Of course, there are some values (such as equality for all genders, sexualities and races) that I believe should be universal.

Beyond that, however, I have met people who have entirely different views on life than myself; perhaps different religious beliefs, goals they’d like to achieve or ideas about what success looks like. Maybe it’s even something simple like different fashion or music tastes.

Travel has taught me not to see these differences as barriers to us becoming friends, but, by contrast, as something we can discuss and I can learn about.

At worst, you’ve had an interesting conversation – but at best you may be inspired to see things differently yourself or make a lifelong friend. Travel has certainly taught me not to judge others who are different, but to be glad that the world is diverse and interesting.

#4: You are braver and more capable than you think.

Before I left home on my first trip overseas, I was an incredibly shy teenager.

Simple tasks like asking a shop assistant a question or answering my mobile phone would cause me to panic – so my family were quite shocked when I announced I was going to visit Europe and Egypt at age eighteen.

Honestly, it wasn’t without moments where I thought, ‘I can’t do this’ – but I did do it, and proving to myself that I could was a huge life lesson.

Whatever it is in your life that you want to do – you can.

It’s normal to feel some reservations about travelling the world, starting a new job, or choosing a new career.

But just as I learnt when I successfully navigated Cairo Airport and the Madrid Metro on my own, you don’t know how brave and capable you are until you’re pushed to test it out.

It’s like the saying: great things lie beyond your comfort zone.

#3: Gratitude will make you happy – comparison will make you miserable.

The closest thing I’ve learnt to the secret of happiness when travelling is that the key to being content with your life is to be grateful for what you have.

On the road, I’ve met people from multi-millionaires in Dubai with properties just for their Ferraris, to people in remote parts of Africa who don’t know where their next meal will come from.

The thing I’ve consistently found is that the people who focus on what they do have (perhaps a loving family, or something as simple as a favourite football team) are generally content.

By comparison, there’s always going to be someone who has more than you do, or is more successful than you, or has more Ferraris than you.

Comparing yourself to these people does nothing apart from make you dwell on what you don’t have and ignore the things you do.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with wanting certain things in life, but simply comparing yourself to others is likely to just make you unhappy.

#2: Don’t dwell on short-lived bad moments.

Just like in everyday life, there are days on the road where things go terribly wrong.

I’ve gotten food poisoning from street food, missed trains, met rude people and gotten hopelessly lost.

It’s easy to let these experiences ruin your day or even your entire trip – however, when you really put them in perspective, the event itself is only a fraction of your entire holiday. Usually, it’s the mulling over how upset, angry or frustrated you are that really takes up most of your time – and is totally pointless.

Accept that bad things are going to happen, and when they do, keep them in perspective.

Of course, we’re all human and sometimes negative emotions are unavoidable.

However, a little bit of perspective can help you to treat these moments as minor inconveniences, rather than holiday-ruining disasters. In fact, sometimes holiday disasters make the best stories, or lead to unexpected holiday delights, such as the gorgeous cafe you found when you turned down the wrong street.

In life generally – not just while travelling – I’ve learnt to keep things in perspective and realized that it’s always easier to change your attitude than it is to change the past.

#1: The world is a much kinder place than the news suggests.

If you only ever take information about other places and the people who live in them from what is published in the news and on social media, you’ll probably have a very negative view of the world.

Apart from the odd inspirational story about a rescued kitten, the news tends to be an endless loop of tales of war, crime, accidents and disasters. It’s no wonder that so many people feel frightened to walk out of their own door, let alone fly to another country.

My travel experience has taught me that the world is far, far kinder than most of us realize.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been lost on the street and someone has stopped and taken time out of their day to help me find where I need to go – and, by contrast, I’ve never been pick-pocketed let alone experienced violent crime.

Similarly, I’ve visited countries from Jordan to Zimbabwe as a female solo traveler and experienced nothing but genuine hospitality and made lifelong friendships.

There’s no denying bad things happen in the world, but travel has certainly taught me that it’s absolutely dwarfed by the good.

I hope you can learn from these five life lessons from ten years of travel and see the world yourself! You have only one life, remember that.

Have an interesting life lesson? Tell us below!