Travel broadens the mind, and can teach you a huge amount of things about people, the world, and yourself that will stay with you for the rest of your life. If you are planning to take a year or more away from home to go and live in another country or travel the world, then you are sure to come back with countless new skills and a wealth of useful experiences that will help you in your career and your social life. This is just a natural side effect of getting out of your comfort zone and interacting with new people and places. However, if you want to make your time traveling even more transformative, you could also set yourself some personal goals for self improvement to work on while you are away. Here are a few ideas:

Study for an Online Degree

A great way to use your time traveling, if you will be in places where you can access the internet, is to start studying for an online degree. You can do all kinds of courses online these days, so whether you want to start a vocational degree, study business, or get a postgrad degree like an MSN administration degree, you can study wherever you are and come back from your travels closer to an important qualification. Travel tends to involve some exciting and busy times, but also quite a lot of ‘dead time’ while you are traveling between locations, or where you don’t have your usual sources of entertainment and social interaction. Studying something like online RN to MSN programs can help you use all of that time productively.

Get Fit!

Some people get out of shape while traveling, thanks to all the interesting foreign foods and time spent in hotel rooms. You don’t have to be one of them, and by setting the goal to come back in better shape, you can actually make more of your trip. Walking, running, swimming or cycling are all good ways to see more of the places you visit, and of course, depending on where you go, there may be other opportunities to do active things like watersports. Many hotels have gyms or pools, and if you are staying in more long term accommodation, joining a local gym can be a good way to meet people, too.

Learn a Language

Whether you are traveling to places that speak English, like the UK, Australia or New Zealand, to a place where another language is spoken, or to a variety of places where all different languages are used, traveling can be a good time to start to learn another language even if you don’t need it for your trip. With online tools and mobile apps like Duolingo, you can study a language in your downtime for free, and if you happen to be somewhere where you can use it, watch TV in it, and really immerse yourself in it, you’ll get great results really quickly.

These are just three things you could commit to doing to make your traveling period an even more life changing experience.